Complaint Challenges Univ. of Hawaii Email Partnership Wth Google

An anonymous reader writes "A recent move by the University of Hawaii forcing all students and faculty to migrate their independent university email accounts to Google has raised serious questions, prompting one student to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, with senior faculty questioning both the implementation and scope of this partnership." One of the stranger notes: a clause, defended as standard, naming Google a "school official" of the university.

Comments

Sounds like shilling

[bky1701]

If my Community College can get away with forcing (it is actually required you use it) all students and faculty to use Hotmail, which works properly on precisely zero of my three main computers, I don't see how Gmail warrants a shitfit for any reason other than some MS bribery.

Re:Sounds like shilling

[poetmatt]

Considering the kid made the typical anti-google statements, I would tend to agree.

"Fread has filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education, saying, “They’re [UH] absolutely ignoring Google’s abysmal record with privacy.”

That's word for word, isn't it. quoted from fox news: Yep "Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research, wrote on FoxNews.com that "[Google's] abysmal track record on privacy "
Or here's one for facebook: http://rsjrealestate.blogspot.com/2012/02/google-facebook-privacy-and-digital.html "Facebook, with its abysmal track record on privacy"
How often do people trot out this line as if it's facts?

Re:Sounds like shilling

[NeutronCowboy]

1) What does being a former marine have to do with privacy laws?
2) What does being a former superintendent for federal contracting projects have to do with privacy laws?
3) How do you know he is quite well versed in privacy laws?

Sounds to me like you're substituting an ad hominem with two unjustified appeals to authority and an unsupported statement of fact.

It's not good to show up to a battle of wits with nothing but wet blanks.

Re:Sounds like shilling

[Jeng]

Hard drive contents from the Street View collection?

Really?

Got a source on that one, cause that sounds more than just unlikely it sounds like a complete lie.

My old Uni did this.

[Anonymous Coward]

My old university moved from forcing every student to use an email account hosted by the University to forcing every student to use an email account hosted by Google, with the same .university.ca domain.

It saved the University money and provided better service because the old mail system was crap.

What's the beef?

Re:My old Uni did this.

[rabbit994]

Because in most cases, Google is mining all those accounts for data and showing ads. In some cases, students may be involved with research that includes confidential data. Google does not provide guarantees that they won't mine/archive or protect that data in accordance with laws/regulations surrounding that data.

That's generally been beef I've seen with Google.

Re:My old Uni did this.

[ajuda]

I logged in for the first time in years to say this:

If you are dealing with confidential data, you should not be emailing it in plain text. EVER.

Even if your server isn't mining the data, someone on the other end (or someone in between) could too.

Would you feel comfortable having your social security number being sent over yahoo/hotmail/random university email?

Re:My old Uni did this.

[miserere nobis]

It's not about being forced to use a specific email account. It is about handing the entire store of all academic, personal, and often confidential-by-law communications to a for-profit corporation whose business is data mining. We should be moving away from giving ownership of all our data to others, and universities should be at the head of that charge, not pushing people in the opposite direction. They should be seeking to protect the identities and private information of faculty, staff, and enrolled students, as well as sometimes sensitive and unpublished research data, as much as possible, not handing it over to third parties whose interests conflict with that goal. Where do Google's interests lie? Where do they stand to gain? From lowering the levels of information security and privacy and protection, not increasing it. This is at odds with what universities should be attempting to accomplish. Do, and should, your communications with the disciplinary board or billing office or your grades, or university medical center test results, or your personal communications about all the stupid stuff you do while a college student rightfully belong to an advertising company?

This really smells bad

[perles]

I have my Gmail account for years and loved, but a couple of weeks ago I lost some important e-mails stored in the Gmail (and several folks had same issues due to the upgrade to 10GB recently done). I have contacted Google team but got no help at all. Since then I lost my trust in Google and I am planning to open another e-mail with another e-mail provider to keep as another option. Another problem is the privacy issues raised some months ago here and other tech website. Also, researchers don't use gmail account as a contact e-mail i scientific papers. Too bad for the institution who does that. I would recommnend that every lab keeps their own server for e-mails and website hosting.

Re:We went with google

[smooth wombat]

and our 2 gigabyte quotas.

You couldn't manage with 2 gigs? WTF are you doing? Let me guess, you're one of those who saves the email with the attachment rather than saving the attachment and deleting the email.

I tell people where I work, you have your email quota (set by another agency) and you get 1 pst file of 2 gigs. If you can't manage your email with that amount space, you're doing something wrong.

When they follow my suggestion, it's amazing how much space they suddenly have.

And before those of you start whining about how space is cheap, it costs about 1 penny per email per person per day to maintain. That's storage space, manpower to manage the space, backups and electricity to keep everything running. Multiply out the potentially millions of emails in an organization by that cost and you'll see why deleting emails and saving the attachment is the correct path.

Re:It's a free service?

[miserere nobis]

Zero dollars is not the same as free.

A few points

[jklovanc]

1. Google in in a contract with the university that sets out exactly what Google can and can not do with the data. If they break that contract they will be sued and lose. It is not in a companies interest to leave themselves open to litigation and large judgments.
2. The "school official" phrase has a few implications;
  a. Subpoenas can go to the school instead of Google
  b. Teachers are required to post all correspondence on Gmail for retention purposes.
  c. IT is only required to support Gmail
Many universities are trying to cut IT budgets and one of the best ways is to outsource email. One of the biggest failings in the critics is that they offer no alternative. It is very easy to be an obstructionist and much more difficult to solve the issue. No matter what provider was chosen there would always be a few people who object to it and/or the process that came to the solution. For example one of the criticisms is that the comment period was too short at a couple of months and people did not have sufficient time to comment. If that period was extended to say six months there would be people criticizing that such a simple decision should not take so long and the university was wasting time and money. It is impossible to please everyone.

The "lack of consultation" issue is yet another example of what is called the "outhouse principle". It goes like this; When a huge complex project is proposed, say a power plant, where non experts do not have enough knowledge to understand the detail the approval process goes quite quickly as almost all comments are "yes" or "no". When a smaller project, such as an outhouse, is proposed everyone can understand how one is built and want to comment on every little detail of construction; what shape hole in the door(round, moon, star?), dimensions of the door, which way the door swings, how much ventilation room under the door, etc. The approval process for a simple project can be longer than a complex project.
There is no reason for everyone on campus to debate this issue until everyone is satisfied. It is a decision by the IT department who made it based on their experience and requirements. Does everyone comment when the chemistry department changes their chemical supplier? Does everyone comment when administration changes their paper supplier? Just because people think they should be able to have a say in matters they think the know about does not mean they really should.