Carnegie Mellon Resists FBI Tapping Requirement

roach2002 writes "Carnegie Mellon University is fighting back against a requirement that taps on campus internet access must be quickly obtainable. The technology that would allow the FBI to monitor internet access, after a court order, "at the flip of a switch" would cost at least $450 per student. MIT is also covering the story." From the article: "'The Department of Justice wants 24/7 access, whenever they need it, and they want remote access. We find that too extremely burdensome in terms of money, staff, and technology,' said Maureen McFalls, Director of Government Relations for Carnegie Mellon and the coordinator of Carnegie Mellon's response to this issue. According to an ACE press release, the cost to universities could be upwards of $7 billion, or at least $450 extra on each student's tuition bill."

Comments

The story from the other side

[Wesley Felter]

The FBI has a whole Web site about CALEA, including details about cost recovery. It looks like they set aside $500M to cover the cost; I guess the money has all been spent by now, so the universities are left with an unfunded mandate.

Re:Call me jaded...

[sconeu]

Don't forget the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

Suprise, anyone?

[ONU CS Geek]

As a former PBX Administrator for a private university, I can say with some certanity that making sure that ensuring that they're getting the right information and monitoring the right person is not as easy as it seems. About five years ago, we had a situation where one of the janitors was downloading child pr0n onto campus computers. The Feebies brought their "Carnivore" system in, then we set up the proper configuration on the cisco gear. They asked us to change the disks daily, and they sent a courier to pick the Zip disks up every evening.

I have also had instances where drug task force officers have 'stormed in' to the switch room and demanded the information of someone who called a campus extension. These requests were met with resistance on my part (they never had a warrant), until they left -- university policy was if we were asked for something specific we were to look it up without their presence, then forward the information to the legal department who would turn it over if a search warrant or subponea was issued for the information. Law enforcement also attempted to pressure the university into letting them wiretap all of the public phones on campus (again, to try to curb drug-related activity), however, the university resisted and finally they gave up on trying to get such a broad scope of phones wiretapped (they did manage to get one phone wiretapped for a month; the interesting factoid of that was that the phone was only used 4 times that month, all dialing campus security to help them get back into their locked car -- the law enforcement types were quite livid at the end of their wiretap and they didn't have anything)

I can see where CMU has issues with this (isn't their campus network totally fiber-optic gigE? that will run the cost up), and I can also see where the professional side of me would want more university insight to make sure that the law enforcement types are doing this on the up-and-up.