Thanks to everyone for your responses. The mean response is, frankly, what I expected: be professional & trustworthy, because it's not our job to be otherwise. This is both heartening and worrying; some of the examples above from admins who did "the right thing" set my teeth on edge. I like to think that I'm an honest, open person. However, as Feynman famously said: "The easiest person to fool is yourself". Thanks to the folks who shared the USENIX/SAGE links above. I've now got a copy of the sysadmin code posted right above my KVM/WIP stack, so I'll see it regularly. Optics was easier: photons don't concern themselves overly much with morality and ethics.