Media Server :: Playing Published Streams Through An Administrator Connection?

I am building a custom administration application which has to review streams published to our FMS application. This is to ban clients publishing inappropriate content. I am wondering if I have to make a connection to the application, as normal users do, in order to play the published streams? I am getting the list of streams using another connection, to rtmp://domain:1111/admin, like outlined in Administration API, and issuing the 'getLiveStreams' call.
 
The reason I am asking is because firstly, I remember that the Administration Console can play streams published to the server, but I don't recall it incrementing the connection count which shows amount of user clients connected to an application. Maybe I have missed however, but if I am right and it indeed can play streams without connecting to the application (which actually DOES sound a bit unlikely, given how the stream names are local to an app.), then maybe I can do it too? Secondly, I presently have to differentiate users and administrators in my 'onConnect' script, because are perform completely different roles. If I could relieve my admin. app from connecting to the application, I could also dump the role switching.