unexpectedly dangerous commands

rsync! unexpectedly dangerous!

rsync -a . root@pom:~
sending incremental file list
./
.acl
README.txt

oops, I should have specified a sub-directory.
and then...

ssh root@pom -i ~/.ssh/id-key
root@pom's password:


ssh no longer accepts my key.
because rsync's "-a" flag changed the ownership of the target directory