FC: Politech members reply to state of liberty on college campuses

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04734.html

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Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 08:11:34 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Peter Suber <peters () earlham edu>
Subject: Re: FC: Annalee Newitz on state of cyberliberties on U.S.
  campuses
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030508234738.018da300 () mail well com>

> I'd love to see somebody create a wiki where folks could post comments and 
> links to the computer use policies at their colleges/universities. 
> Students need this as a resource.
>
> --
> Annalee Newitz
> www.techsploitation.com


Declan,
        Educause maintains a good compendium of campus policies,
http://www.educause.edu/icpl/policies.asp?

        Peter


Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy
Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374
Email peters () earlham edu
Web http://www.earlham.edu/~peters

Editor, Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
Editor, FOS News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

[And Carl Kadie's Computers and Academic Freedom archive at EFF: 
http://www.eff.org/CAF/ --Declan]

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Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 09:34:48 -0700
Subject: Re: FC: Annalee Newitz on state of cyberliberties on U.S. campuses
To: declan () well com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

As a member of technical staff for a prominent university research
group, I will say this- network monitoring is absolutely necessary. It
isn't going to go away, and advising users of monitoring in the terms
of service is par for the course.

The unwritten rule is that the information that we glean from this
monitoring is kept to ourselves, much like client/attorney privilege,
but acted upon if a users actions are interfering with other research.

The sad thing is, that this is an unwritten rule, and it only exists
because sysadmins have a little moral fiber in their diet. We cannot
claim sysadmin/user privilege when we get a subpeona. It sure would be
nice if we could.

Please withhold my name and e-mail if you choose to put this on the
list.


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Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 11:33:55 -0400
To: declan () well com, Annalee Newitz <annalee () techsploitation com>
Subject: FC: Annalee Newitz on state of cyberliberties on U.S. campuses
In-Reply-To: <declan () well com> Friday, 9 May 2003 01:19:08 -0400
References: <5.2.1.1.0.20030508234738.018da300 () mail well com>
From: "Richard W. DeVaul" <rich () devaul org>

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>
>---
>
>Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 20:09:21 -0400
>From: Annalee Newitz <Annalee () techsploitation com>
>To: declan () well com
>Subject: electronic privacy on campus
>
>Hi Declan. Here's an article from CNN about the research I recently
>completed on cyberliberties at the top 50 universities in the United
>States. I have a small article about it in this month's issue of Wired
>magazine. To sum up: nearly every one of these universities has a policy
>stating that if students use the campus network, they will be monitored.
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/05/06/hln.wired.cyber.rights/
>
>And here's me talking about it on CNN Headline news:
>
>http://www.vmsdigital.com/MyFiles.aspx?Onum=4B0C1437-AC99-4891-8B29-274C317E70B8
>
>I'd love to see somebody create a wiki where folks could post comments and
>links to the computer use policies at their colleges/universities. Students
>need this as a resource.

I'll voluneer to set up and host the wiki and mailing lists if someone
will reigster or donate an appropriate domain.

I notice that the domain campusliberty.org is free....

        Rich

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[To avoid duplicating effort, it might be worth talking to FIRE, see 
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04682.html --Declan]

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Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 08:52:27 -0400
Subject: Re: FC: Annalee Newitz on state of cyberliberties on U.S. campuses
From: Scott Johnson <sjohns53 () columbus rr com>
To: declan () well com
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030508234738.018da300 () mail well com>

Declan,

I haven't seen too much about this story nationally, but it has received a 
lot of attention here in Columbus.

I can't believe there wasn't a "riot" over this..  :>

(pasted the complete article, due to silly "registration" requirements)

-----------------------------
The Ohio State University Lantern
Raid pulls plug on illegal network
By R.H. Aly

Four Ohio State students received a rude awakening Monday night when 
University Police barged into their residence hall rooms in search of 
evidence of an illegal file-sharing network.

"I thought they were coming in for a drug raid," said Josh Cavinee, a 
sophomore in aeronautical engineering.

"They came in, patted me down and made me sit in the corner," he said. 
"It's a good thing we didn't have drugs here."

A group consisting of a computer crime specialist, a detective and a 
university police officer went to each four residence hall rooms Monday 
night - armed with search warrants - looking for the evidence.

Patrick Muckerman, a freshman in computer engineering, said he was asleep 
when the police came in searching for a computer.

They had first searched Muckerman's roommate's computer before they woke 
Muckerman from his sleep to examine his computer. But instead of finding 
one in Muckerman's room, they found two.

One computer was used for the server program, Muckerman said. The server 
program allowed its users to propagate file searches. The other computer 
was used for school.

Along with the computer that was used for the server program, the police 
also confiscated a number of items from Cavinee's room in Houck Hall 
including a computer, video game manuals, Blockbuster cards, DVD and video 
games, a DVD player, a power cord and a computer microphone.

"They basically took anything that was touching my computer," said Eric 
Diamond, a freshman in electrical and computer engineering.

Neither Cavinee, Muckerman, Diamond or John Wieseman - a freshman in 
engineering - were arrested after the police confiscated equipment from 
their respective rooms.

At the moment, there is no certainty about the type of charges the students 
will face, said Ron Michalec, University Police Chief. The students could 
face charges from the U.S. District Court, the Franklin County Court of 
Common Pleas or both.

"We're not sure where it will go at this point," he said.

Police officials said they believe the four students were operating a 
program called Direct Connect Hub from which other students can make 
connections with other students to obtain copyrighted information. More 
than 3,000 on campus students participated in these activities.

According to University Police Detective Willis Amweg's affidavit, at one 
point, "it was estimated that this file-sharing activity alone consumed 
over 10 percent of the university's total network resources."

According to Amweg's affidavit, the student had broken two sections of the 
Ohio Revised Code.

The affidavit states "Section 291.04 ORC makes it a criminal offense for 
any person to knowingly gain access to any computer network beyond the 
scope of the express consent of the owner of the computer network."

The network owner, OSU, does not allow for students to use ResNet, part of 
its computer network, for illegal purposes such as downloading copyrighted 
material. Anyone who downloads copyrighted material deviates from the 
expressed consent of Ohio State.

However, some of the students involved in downloading did not realize the 
illegality of their actions.

One of those students was Wieseman's roommate.

"I knew it was probably illegal to download some of the copyrighted stuff, 
but non-copyrighted stuff was fair game," said Alex Moore, a freshman in 
computer science engineering.

Moore said he had downloaded Direct Connect, although he did not host a hub.

"I didn't think it was any different from KaZaA or any programs like that," 
said Eric Obrynba, a sophomore in Spanish.

KaZaA is a file-sharing program that is similar to Napster - except that it 
has no central server.

In the other Ohio Revised Code section police believe students have 
disobeyed, it is a "criminal offense for any person, having devised a 
scheme to defraud, to knowingly disseminate, transmit or cause to be 
transmitted by means of a wire or telecommunications device any picture, 
sound or image with purpose to execute or otherwise further the scheme to 
defraud."

...


--------------------------------
Scott Johnson
Creative Director + Media Architect
eleven3 mediadesign
sjohns53 () columbus rr com
614.323.6461

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