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Privacy (fwd)
Interesting...
Melissa Liles, Graduate Student
School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
melissa_liles@unc.edu | liles@RegWeb.unc.edu
Tel. 919/969-8328 | Fax. 919/962-6661
http://RegWeb.unc.edu | http://CarolinaClub.unc.edu
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 08:25:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Margaret Blanchard <mablanch@email.unc.edu>
To: jmcgrad <jmcgrad@listserv.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Privacy (fwd)
From: John R Bittner <jrbittne@email.unc.edu>
CRTNET NEWS
Communication Research and Theory Network
Reprinted from "Academe Today," the online service of the Chronicle
of Higher Education:
Wayne State U. Draws Fire for New Policy Limiting Computer Use and
Privacy Rights
By JULIANNE BASINGER
Wayne State University's president has banned the use of the
university's e-mail system and its Internet access for non-university
purposes, prompting outrage among faculty members, who met last week
and vowed to fight the new policy.
The policy, issued late last month by David Adamany, informs students
and faculty and staff members that the university reserves the right
to monitor their use of its computer systems to insure that the
equipment is employed in university-related work only.
"Other uses are prohibited," the policy states, adding that Wayne
State "is entitled to access and monitor its information-technology
resources without prior notice."
"Therefore, the university advises users that they have no privacy
interest or expectation of privacy in information stored on or
transmitted over the university's information-technology resources,
and that access and monitoring is a reasonable means of advancing
university purposes," the policy says. Violaters of the policy are
subject to disciplinary action.
Roger Nys, Wayne State's executive vice-president, said Friday that the
policy, like most "acceptable-use policies," was intended to protect the
university from legal trouble if students or staff members used the
Internet for illegal purposes. The policy is also meant to insure that
Wayne State's computers and taxpayers' money were not being wasted.
"People have said we're setting up a police state, and that's simply not
true," he said. "There are legitimate reasons why we need to have a policy
like this in place. In an environment where you have limited resources and
a desire to exert control, people will express displeasure with these
restrictions. That's part of life."
But the policy has made faculty members furious. Last Wednesday,
about 60 members of the Academic Senate, the university's
faculty-governance group, attended a meeting to discuss the matter,
said Seymour Wolfson, a computer-science professor who is the
Academic Senate's president.
At the meeting, a faculty committee presented a report that compared
the policy to those at Ohio State University and the University of
Texas System, which do not emphasize monitoring, Dr. Wolfson said.
The Senate voted unanimously to forward the report to the president
and other university officials and to protest the new policy.
"The problem is that the spirit of the policy put out by Wayne State
focuses on surveillance," Dr. Wolfson said. "You have no privacy, you have
no rights." "It's a very tyrannical approach to the use of the system,"
he added. "It's mean-spirited, and it's not really designed for what one
would think a research institution is designed to do, which includes
exploration of the Internet."
The new policy also is "unenforceable," Dr. Wolfson said. Students on
the campus found out about the policy on Thursday, when it was
printed in the campus newspaper, and many already have vowed to
ignore the new rules, he added. Some faculty members have expressed
fears that university administrators would use the policy to single
out individuals for attention, he said.
"I think they will use this like a tyrannical regime to target and
monitor people they want to fire," he said.
Mr. Nys said university officials would monitor individuals only when
complaints were made to administrators.
"We don't intend to just regularly monitor people's use of e-mail or
information-technology resources," he said. "Something has to trigger us
to go in and investigate." President Adamany, who in January said he
would retire as soon as a successor was chosen, has been at odds with the
Wayne State faculty before. In early 1996, he instituted a much-criticized
policy that requires every section of introductory-level courses to use a
common textbook and cover a prescribed set of topics in a fixed sequence.
In October 1996, the Academic Senate accused him of stonewalling an
investigation into scientific-misconduct charges that arose from a court
ruling on patents. The investigation eventually went forward, and two
faculty members implicated in the case were exonerated.
Most universities have acceptable-use policies stating that academic
needs must take precedence over other uses, but the policies vary in
their approach from permissive to restrictive. Many operate on an
honor system. And most universities allow their faculty senates to
review proposed policies before they are instituted, according to
legal experts who have drafted such policies.
Dr. Wolfson said Wayne State's faculty had asked for such review
privileges, but Dr. Adamany had turned them down.
Follow-Ups: