Mashable | Harvard Secretly Searched Campus Emails in Internal Investigation


Precedent setting and a good case study in the limitations of privacy in employee emails.

In fact, the statement continued, “no ones emails were opened and the contents of no one’s emails were searched by human or machine,” and the search was limited to “a partial log of the metadata – the name of the sender and the time the emails were sent.” 

via Harvard Secretly Searched Campus Emails in Internal Investigation | Mashable

Harvard University administrators secretly searched deans’ email accounts, hunting for media leak | Boston.com

“News of the incident could nonetheless anger Harvard faculty members, whose privacy in electronic records is protected under a Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy.

“Resident deans are not professors, but they teach. At issue is how much privacy they should expect.”

It further said that Smith – a computer scientist with expertise on privacy issues — “would agree entirely with taking steps that found the right balance between our needs to respect the privacy of our employees and to protect the privacy of our students.”

Updated 2 – Collection of Recent Links: CISPA


The most recent U.S. proposed law everyone is worried about is CISPA. Here are some links to brush up on what its all about.

NEW: Congress Passes CISPA from ReadWriteWeb
NEW: The CISPA Amendments We Really Need from ReadWriteWeb

Library and Information Services Perspective
What is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act and is it Different than SOPA? from Information Space
ALA Asks Librarians to to Oppose Cypersecurity Bill from The Digital Shift

From the White House
Obama May Back Down from CISPA Veto from PCMag.com SecurityWatch
White House Blasts CISPA, Promises Veto from ReadWriteWeb
President Obama Threatens to Veto CISPA Cybersecurity Bill from Mashable

The Supporters
Facebook Explains Why It’s Supporting Congress’ CISPA Cybersecurity Bill from TechCrunch
In CISPA Fight, Privacy Advocates Stand Alone, Unlike SOPA Debate from Internet Privacy and Security
CISPA Pushed by Spy & Tech Companies for Profit from Digital Journal

What is CISPA?
The Non-Geek’s Guide To CISPA, The Cybersecurity Bill The Internet Is Freaking Out Over from Gawker/Business Insider
CISPA: SOPA’s Evil Twin Infographic article from Mashable, infographic from Lumen Consulting
What is CISPA? from Gizmodo

GTA Technology Topics, Tips & Tricks: U.S. SOPA & Protect IP Acts – Censorship of the Internet


I’ve rebranded this email series to include “Topics”, to be more inclusive of the scope of technology information I am discussing.
 
Did you know a group of organizations have declared today, November 16, 2011, as American Censorship Day?
 
For those of you interested in censorship and copyright infringement you may want to follow what is going on in the United States with the SOPA Act (Stop Online Piracy Act). The infographic below explains it better than I could. Also this video on the Protect IP Act.
 
 

SOPA blog post from Gizmodo

I grabbed this SOPA infographic from a WebProNews post.