Re: electronic privacy

["Paul Camp" <pjcamp@coastal.edu>]

> Unless the U.S. Congress alters some of the provisions of the recent
> Telecommunications Act, employers need to monitor the information
> transmitted through their systems to protect themselves from litigation
> (civil & criminal) resulting from the acts of their employees.  If I sent
> you a dirty message or picture, the new law says my internet service
> provider and yours are responsible for the illegal material transmitted
> through their computers.  
>
> > 2) Are these rules similar to the rules of *your* system?
>
> On our system, the policy is _not_ to monitor employees', but to reserve the
> right to monitor students' transmissions.  We do not have an active
> monitoring program in place, but do have an automated monitor which shuts a
> user down if they do some predefined inappropriate things, like communicate
> with known cybersmut sources or use certain phrases.  We do not advertise to
> anyone on campus exactly how this monitoring is done.

> Tom Russ

And such a policy can still get you in trouble. Prodigy recently lost 
a lawsuit on the grounds that since they had accepted the 
responsibility of censoring traffic on their system (as a play to 
advertise themselves as the family-oriented online service) they had 
a responsibility to prevent libellous traffic as well. In for a 
penny, in for a pound as far as the judge was concerned. May be an 
issue for an academic institution to consider since that propells 
them into some very murky waters indeed.

Paul J. Camp                   "The Beauty of the Universe
Assistant Professor of Physics  consists not only of unity
Coastal Carolina University     in variety but also of 
Conway, SC   29526              variety in unity.
pjcamp@csd1.coastal.edu             --Umberto Eco
(803)349-2227                         The Name of the Rose
fax: (803)349-2926