arstechnica.com — "While the appeals court ultimately ruled against the student and in favor of the warrantless search in that particular case, the judges made it clear that students in general are entitled reasonable expectations of privacy when connecting their personal computers to university networks. But the caveats are indeed important."
Apr 11, 2007 View in Crawl 4
ahill7Apr 11, 2007
Whenever you connect your computer or network device to our campus network, you have to read through and agree to at least two or three pages of legal mumbo jumbo and then use your university ID to digitally sign the agreement. There are a few clauses that would seem counter to protecting students, and more about being big brother. I'm sure this is a growing trend, especially if universities continue to be bombarded with RIAA and MPAA letters and DMCA complaints.
spyd3rwebApr 12, 2007
so why isnt the system admin under investigation for unauthorized computer access?
dirtyharryApr 12, 2007
FTA: The judges argued that Savoy was not acting the part of law enforcement, but was instead concerned first and foremost with the immediate security of the campus e-mail system. "Under these circumstances," said the ruling, "a search warrant was not necessary because Savoy was acting purely within the scope of his role as a system administrator. Under the university's policies, to which Heckenkamp (the student) assented when he connected his computer to the university's network, Savoy was authorized to 'rectif[y] emergency situations that threaten the integrity of the campus computer or communication systems[,] provided that the use of accessed files is limited solely to maintaining or safeguarding the system.That's why.
urusaiApr 12, 2007
Nothing to see here, your rights (such as they are) remain intact with this ruling. In fact, the ruling was quite generous to acknowledge a general expectation of privacy. In this case, however, the student did the equivalent of standing naked in front of his window jerking off, thereby waiving his privacy.
izomiacApr 12, 2007
Although I understand the judge's reasoning, I can't help but be disturbed by this. After all, the network admin and the student are private citizens. The university is a business or non-profit organization, or something of that sort. Under normal situations it is illegal for private citizens to search other citizen's stuff for any reason. It's also normally illegal for law enforcement officers who don't have a warrant. So apparently a university can grant privileges to random people above and beyond what the police are allowed to do. A bit disturbing if you ask me. Especially since they could create any type of job they wanted to. (Note, if there was a clause in his housing agreement or anything I assume that the university would have used that as a defense, so the way I see it is that they violated his rights by an illegal search of his personal property and the judge is cool with that because they were able to catch an oh-so scary hacker.)
grawkApr 12, 2007
Everyone knows that when you plan on hacking university computers, you go to the general student body pc labs to do it. Don't use any computer that can be tied directly to you. (Although that didn't help me, because I was the only person who could reasonably have done it, so they used other leverage they had to get me to admit it).
emsmith2Apr 12, 2007
Not to mention that the kid consented to the searches by saying 'sure, have a copy of my incriminating hard drive.' Why do people who have something to hide voluntarily give themselves up, and then scream 4th Amendment?
grawkApr 12, 2007
Because his access was authorized, of course.
ulicbelouveApr 12, 2007
I've also dealt with this. "Voluntarily" might not mean much. The universities (I was in the UW system as well) love to flex a strongarm. Who knows if he was threatened with suspension, removal from dorm, etc. University cops LOVE to be overly agressive, because they couldn't cut it as a real cop. (remember that UCLA tazering?)I'm going more the "coerced without legal action" route than the "voluntarily" route.