Re: Reactions to reported NSA PRISM program

[Emery Rudolph <erudolph () UMD EDU>]

Kevin,

In general, the majority of the conversation on the campus community (remember - it's summer) has been more a sense of 
resignation than anger. Most of the reaction I have seen has been very soft with a lot of "of course they are 
monitoring, no surprise". Of course, I am referring to reaction from those in the IT community, not the academic side, 
but based on my prior interactions with them, I would imagine a more strident reaction from them as they tend to have a 
more

Very Best Regards,

Emery Rudolph, MS
Manager
IT-ETI-PS Enterprise UNIX Services
University of Maryland
(301) 405-9379
http://www.umd.edu

[University of Maryland]

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin 
Halgren
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2013 1:44 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Reactions to reported NSA PRISM program

While I appreciate the discussions, I really interested what, if any, response you hear from the broader campus 
community on the matter.  Sometimes with things like this I expect a riot, particularly from faculty or students and 
instead just get a "meh."

Do the educated masses even care?

My suggested response in the event anyone asks my CIO about this is as follows:
"We view this as a legal issue, not a technology or service provider issue.  There is nothing to indicate that anything 
unlawful has occurred even if all these allegations are true, nor could an internal system protect our users 
communications against lawful interception any more than Google or Microsoft.  We may not like what current law allows 
and can protest against it, but in the end we are obliged to obey these laws."
Kevin
On 6/7/2013 8:02 AM, Kevin Halgren wrote:
For those of you already using Google or Microsoft cloud e-mail solutions, I'll be curious to hear the reactions on 
your campuses to this news.

I believe the tech companies are telling the truth when they say they don't provide direct backdoor access into their 
systems and that the PRISM presentation may overstate the cooperation and capabilities of the system, however that 
doesn't preclude the government from abusing existing systems and capabilities e.g. those under CALEA lawful intercept 
capabilities.

Kevin

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