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Beware The Campus Police
geisler writes: "According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a professor at Virginia Tech had her computer seized so that university police could try to track down someone who emailed her. She was denied the chance to backup before the computer was taken, and there seems to be some differences in stories between her and the authorities."
Sounds like this is a case of Bring Your Own Computer.
Their tactics were too heavy handed, and the situation could have been dealt with better, but if you're going to use a computer and expect privacy, the very first thing you should do is use your own computer! When you're using university property, the idea of "privacy" should be nonexistant.
It's still infuriating that people get pushed around like this, but this situation isn't exactly good grounds for a valid complaint.
I just read through the article briefly, after thinking to myself (probably like a lot of other readers) "That sucks -- it's her own machine, and they just came and took it?"
hmmm. As I read the article, I learned that the machine was "University issued".
And she got it back the next day. Apparently, they were looking for an e-mail regarding a vandalism incident.
Now, they could have just asked her for the information, and maybe it was a bit harsh to just up and take the computer, but it was university issued (means university owns it, tough cookies). Maybe the document was sensitive enough that they didn't want to give her the chance to delete it?
Karnal
What's next? Nobel Prize Contending research lost when hard drive crashed.
Employers right to access company hardware trumps any privacy for the employee. The police were just doing their job. What if they let her erase important evidence?
Like it or not campus police work for the college and represent the authority of the college in these matters. I say good job.
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Ok, even me (a student) have to agree with the university on this one.
Do you expect privacy on a work computer in any industry? Of course not. If you dont own said computer, dont expect any rights to it.
And as for the teacher worried about explaining why her personal life was on it, i would ask, why are you even doing anything that could be considered personal on a work computer? cmon, you should know better.
This
1. How about using a little fucking PGPDisk.
2. Obviously, a group that sprays shit all over God's great fucking earth isn't exactly infuckingconito -- so why all the privacy issues?
3. They emailed 15 people to claim responsibility. See aforementioned comment about infuckingconigto. This is as not fucking infuckingconito as it comes.
4. "Some" professors. Fucking journalists. This is a standard tactic used by both pissnugget jouranalists and lazy English comp students who make blanket assumptions based a small fucking pool of information. More precise: X number of professors. Let's see how many people are keen on flagrant fucking vandalism.
5. "Anti-rape slogans." This makes no fucking sense. I'm sure that a shitload of spray paint will be so fucking effective that rape will drop to zero. This is *not* what that bumfuck Thereau meant by civil disobedience.
6. I cannot count the number of times I have heard some paunchy twink professor claim "academic freedom" as a blanket excuse justifying every action they do whilst acting the part of a PhD.
If she was so concerned about the privacy of her files, encryption would have been a good place to start.
Ask Slashdot - google for stupid people.
You and everyone else here talking about legal rights misses the point. It does not say in this article that McCaughey is suing Virginia Tech. The point is not whether a coporation has the right to do this, but whether a UNIVERSITY should do this. (I said SHOULD, not CAN, not HAS LEGAL RIGHT TO). Is it in a university's best interest to seize faculty machines over a little graffiti? What kind of impact will that have on student/professor relationships, academic freedom or faculty recruiting? Perhaps, for the sake of the University, privacy should trump attempts to stop graffiti.
I imagine McCaughey's attitude is "well, you have a bad policy, so you deal with the bad PR". I say she did a good job.
Like it or not campus police work for the college and represent the authority of the college in these matters. I say good job.
You don't know enough to say that. There is a discrepancy in stories between the professor and the campus police--whoever is speaking mistruth did a bad job. The college doesn't have the authority to lie. And I'm not even sure that "campus police represent the college", on some campuses, they can arrest people--they're real cops. Wouldn't the 4th amendment then constrain them?
Switching gears back to legal rights, I wonder, if a student submits work to the professor, does the university automatically get the right to see that work? In a world with more and more property owned by coprorations and governments, isn't it time to reevaluate this "Employers right to access company hardware trumps any privacy for the employee" rule?
What we need in this country is some basic respect for law and order. If we let these punks get away with breaking vandalism laws in protest marches then why not let vigilante groups hack to death any man they find who might have raped someone. After all the students feel compelled to do something about the rape problem. In the mean time I haven't raped anyone but have to look at graphitti where the intent is to make me feel guilty for crimes I didn't commit.
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