Re: Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Day <jeanjour () comcast net>
Date: February 11, 2010 8:07:17 AM EST
To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail

One thing that occurred to me about this issue given the terms of service:

If I send an email to someone with a gmail account, does Google have the rights to the information in that email?  I 
haven't agreed to their terms of service.  And strictly speaking I haven't posted mail with gmail.

On the other hand, should the person I sent the email to then reply to my email, leaving the full text of my message as 
part of his reply (a very common practice), they *are* posting mail under the terms of service and does Google now own 
the content of my mail?

Take care,
John

At 7:50 -0500 2010/02/11, David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Gene Spafford <spaf () cerias purdue edu>
> Date: February 11, 2010 1:04:55 AM EST
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: For IP: Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail
>
> I was part of a committee that studied the issue here at Purdue. For the time being, there weren't large-scale wins 
> identified to doing this, but there were many questionable issues about FERPA, HIPAA, pre-patent disclosure info, 
> export restricted information, and so on being hosted off-campus -- and perhaps outside the country. (Think about the 
> "Aurora" incidents with Google in China.)
>
> What really left a question mark for us was the issue of the future. Google offers their service to campuses at no 
> charge for now, and offers it with particular and useful terms of service.  However, we have no way of knowing if the 
> same terms will be used indefinitely. Once we move our email off campus, the local infrastructure will wither -- 
> equipment, personnel, software, and policies for dealing with the special issues (spam, forensics, etc).   If, 4 or 5 
> years from now, there is a change in terms -- for example, a large charge in fees, or claiming they will use all 
> email for behavioral tracking -- we would be at a real loss to take back the capability (and all the archived email). 
>   There could be a very short time interval to act and it seems unlikely that we could manage to ramp up the 
> facilities on short notice.
>
> This is a similar situation as with some of the other issues of going to "clouds" or outsourcing to "free" services 
> -- lack of control and atrophy of in-house capability.  The analysis of the costs shows a near-term savings, but it 
> fails to take into account that there is no control of future, unending costs *and* there is an implicit lock-in 
> because the barrier to movement gets bigger as time goes on.   Ironically, its a lot like purchasing an OS or 
> large-scale app that seems cheap up front.  However, the service contracts keep getting more and more expensive, but 
> because so much has been invested in the peripherals and software to date and it would be so difficult to 
> rearchitect, the contracts keep getting renewned. 
> That isn't to suggest that Google (or one of the other services doing this) intends to raise prices or plans to 
> change their terms of service.  But they aren't running charities for the good of higher ed...they will need to 
> provide a profit for their activities at some point, and there is very little in the way of restrictive law in this 
> arena.
>
> Donn Parker's 6 attributes of security include "control" and it is key to understanding risks for cloud computing or 
> outsourcing as well as this case.   If you don't maintain positive control over the important aspects, you don't know 
> what may happen out of view in time or space.
>
>
>
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