Monday, February 1, 2016

University of California Secretly Monitors Faculty E-Mail

Inside HigherEd reports that the University of California installed a new software that monitors faculty e-mails and websites they visit but told only a handful of faculty about it— those people being on the Academic Senate-Administration Joint Committee on Campus Information Technology. One of the committee members went public with the information. A storm of protest has ensued.

The university system says it does not read people’s emails, and the system was installed after a serious cyberattack exposed the medical records of 4.5 million patients who use the UCLA medical system. On the other side, opponents say that if the university had good intentions, it should have notified users of the policy. And if the university’s intent was to discourage cyberattacks, it should have disclosed the monitoring system to deter hacking.


“Secret” doesn’t mix well with “e-mail” and “public university.” If there is a compelling need for this type of massive data capturing, make the case for it in public. An unfortunate consequence of this policy might be to discourage the use of university e-mail, driving job-related communication into private email accounts. 

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