>A third-party (neither the sender nor the recipient) intercepted >personal communication. Please clarify how the analogy is relevant. It >sounds like you're taliking about something completely unrelated.
My analogy was meant to clarify the ownership issue -- that BYU owns the network and should be able to monitor it to ensure it is not used in a way that is detrimental to the institution or other users. It wasn't about eavesdropping, it was about the rights of the system owner. So, in the analogy, you would monitor your phone to make sure no one hijacked it to do something you don't want them to do with your phone. >"Under federal case law, when an employer realizes the call is personal, he or >she must immediately stop monitoring the call. (Watkins v. L.M. >Berry & Co., 704 F.2d 577, 583 (11th Cir. 1983)) However, when employees are >told not to make personal calls from specified business phones, the employee >then takes the risk that calls on those phones >may be monitored." The second sentence illustrates that a business has the right to make a rule saying: "No personal phone calls." Then, if an employee makes a personal phone call on company equipment, on company time, they have forfeited their right to privacy. Alberto posted this link already: http://policy.byu.edu/view/index.php?p=32 That is BYU saying: "All users, by their use of CEC resources, expressly consent to such monitoring." Individual privacy is protected by not allowing people to use or see your information without your consent. By using the network you grant consent and thereby surrender your right to privacy on the network. The privacy of all other students is at stake if someone, through some mistake or misdeed, makes the BYU network vulnerable. If, by monitoring e-mail on the network, administrators are able to prevent that sort of breach of security, then the relatively minor lack of privacy for the individual has protected the privacy of many. Stuart Jansen wrote: >That doesn't address the problem that BYU feels a sense of ownership and a >right to modify the contents of a message. How would you feel if you found out >someone in the postal system was not only >reading your vacation postcards, >but also redirecting them to new destinations? >Perhaps even rewriting them? Wouldn't you feel violated even if there were no >expectation of privacy? Why shouldn't the BYU feel a sense of ownership? It owns the network; the person using the network has given them permission to monitor. The postal system is a federal institution, not a private one. It is a different case. However, I would hope the university would consider the nature of their power and wield it in a responsible manner. The university has a lot of private information about me in its databases and it is readily available to probably hundreds of university employees. They can see it, but by law they are to use it only in the appropriate way. Employees are trained on FERPA rules and things like that to help keep my information private. I imagine the network administrators have similar training and rules that will help protect my privacy. At least that is my hope. And if by monitoring your e-mail it keeps the rest of our information out of the hands of less altruistic hands, I'm comfortable with BYU monitoring e-mail. ~ Christijan -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info (unsubscribe here): http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
