Ask Carl Kadie About Censorship and Privacy at Colleges

We've received a lot of inquiries recently about computer policies at various colleges and universities - usually the policy goes something like: "Anything you do or say on this network is ours, we own it, we can read your email, we can delete you, too bad. All your data are belong to us." Oddly enough, these sorts of policies are in place even at schools that would never dream of snooping on students' postal mail or the books they read at the library. Carl Kadie has been EFF's longest-serving volunteer, doing work for the past ten years in the area of academic freedom and computers. He's written two book chapters on the issue and helped examine, critique and improve the usage policies at many universities. Post below any questions you have on computers and academic freedom - maybe your school has a particularly bad policy, maybe you just have a general question - and we'll pick the best ones and forward them to him for a response.

Comments

With Power comes responsibility...

[Zachary DeAquila]

What responsibilities do universiies incur when they have such overbroad AUPs and reserve such powers for themselves? What if, in their browsing through my data, they delete or destroy important information (thesis data or papers or somesuch)? Are they liable for it? What if they 'leak' damaging data either unknowingly or through misunderstanding? Can they be held responsible?

I'm afraid that I know the answers to all these questions and am even more afraid of those answers. So what can be done about it beyond the standard SSH and PGP rhetoric ? Is there a way to make them take responsibility for these actions, preferably a heavy enough responsibility to discourage them from wanting to take these actions in the first place?

--Z

University policy

[Pacer]

I lived for two years in University residence and, frankly, my college didn't seem to have much respect for the privacy of students in any regard: all mail came through University-owned mailboxes, and packages had to be picked up at the dormitory desk, staffed by hall RAs -- students with a significant disciplinary function. All telephone service went through the university switchboard. Your room could be searched, by university staff or by police, without your permission and without any sort of warrant. Most tenant rights were violated (for instance, eviction with two weeks' notice any time of year), and now the university informs students' parents of on-campus alcohol or disciplinary violations (these are adults whose academic transcripts cannot be released to parents without a signed waiver).

It is not any surprise to me that fascist user agreements are in place concerning electronic media in light of the general control-oriented attitude of many universities towards their on-campus student populations. Perhaps the problem runs deeper than simple technophobia?

Pacer

Linux acceptability

[dwbryson]

Carl- I have fought a battle at my college over Linux being on the network. I told the UTS( Univeristy Technology Services ) that I was a big advocate of Linux and was starting up a Linux User Group on campus. But first I wanted their approval. They swiftly told me that, "You can absolutly not encourage the use of Linux on OUR network, and you should be lucky that we don't ban it on campus." I was completely uphauled by this, and so promptly turned around and tried to get as many people interested as I could in Linux. And eventually started my own LUG. Do they have a right to tell me what OS I can use on their network? They of course support windows, and allow Mac's, but flat out tell me I can't have linux on their network. Do you have any suggestions on what rights I as a user have?

Legal Recourse?

[CU-Ballistic]

I attend a rather well-known University in the South. Of course, they have the requisite "we own you and your data" policy. They state in very explicit terms that they have the right, at any time, to search and confiscate my computer, hard drives, and other media. They say that they also have the right to monitor network traffic, and disable any account which is exhibiting "unusual or excessive" activity. This all seems incredibly arbitrary to me, and worries me very much. My question to you is: Do I have any legal recourse? My main quarrel is that as a first-year student, I am forced to live on campus, and many classes require work to be submitted electronically. Since I am unable to "opt-out" of their heavy-handed policy, do I have any legal recourse if I were to encounter a search-and-seizure situation with the Administration here?
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Re:You have no reasonable expectation of Privacy .

[dvdeug]

What do you mean, my dorm room is not my personal residence? I live here, and pay for the privilege. Would you be so happy if your employer forced you to live in a certain apartment building, and forced you to use the LAN instead of a modem, and then told you that they could listen in on anything on that LAN?

Finding Balance?

[PapaZit]

Here's a shot from "the other side."

I work in Computing Services for a tech-oriented private university. Our usage policies aren't as bad as some, but they definitely give us broad priviledges. We've been through many, many proposed revisions that keep being killed by some combination of faculty, staff or lawyers. The basic problems:

• There doesn't seem to be a concise legal way to say "Don't be an asshole and don't break the law," which is all we really want.
• It's occasionally necessary for staff to look at private information for technical reasons (reconstructing mail spool after disk crashed, making sure the nifty new backup program actually worked, etc.). We have a huge infrastructure, and if we had to stop and check every time we might accidentally see something, we'd never get anything done unless we made our staff size much larger. We don't have the budget to do that.
• Occasionally, the sysadmins will find something really bad during the course of routine work. "Spending a long time in federal prison" kind of bad. We try to keep these sort of events quiet to avoid publicity for the user in case it's not their fault (someone cracked their account, etc). We don't want our users on the evening news, but this'll happen with most "notify lots of people before doing anything" plans.
• There are two opposing viewpoints that are both vocal in our community. One says "privacy over all" while the other says "learning and sharing over all". We have quite a few people who make their home directories publicly readable as a sort of protest against the "privacy freaks" (their words). Finding a policy that makes both happy is very difficult.

In light of these constraints (financial and social), how do we give more rights to our users without seriously impeding our ability to do our jobs?

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