Dear Cypherpunks- A friend mailed the following questions, which I have edited. Please Cc: any replies to me for now as I'm getting back on cypherpunks after the digest was shut down. Note: A.S.U. is Arizona State University, in Tempe (next to Phoenix).
I want to ask you something. What sorts of illegal things could a person do with an email account? What's happening is that A.S.U. has just adopted a policy which allows them to...well, this is way it says: "The routine management and administration communication systems or computers may include the monitoring of any or all activity on these systems on a regular basis" blah blah blah "Any message is permanent and may be read by persons other than the intended reader." I'm sure this has always been the case, and that they are just coming out with it. They also say that "We no longer take requests for the Public Records Act." Do you know what that means?
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You know, some landlord out here just got arrested for installing video cameras in his tennant's apartments... it seems like a similar situation to this - what the University does. The reasons they give are, you know, they just want to make sure no one is running a business, doing anything illegal (A.S.U.P.D....heh!), or "inapproporate" like sending nasty messages to people, or mail bombs or something. But it doesn't seem like they would need to sneak into your mail to find out if your bugging people. The other thing, is that they say that they can go into your mail without telling you first, and that we should trust that they wont abuse this...
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Something else, I just found out that it's "inappropriate" to use the A.S.U. system for social correspondence! It's listed uner abuses along with computer fraud and pirating. (!)
Quite a few people answered (thank you all) my earlier question by saying that doing your own encryption is the best solution. True in a way, but I know there are "student rights" groups that specifically work to intimidate college computer administrations into modifying these sorts of policies, also setting up standard privacy policies, etc. Is there some other mailing list or newsgroup where I would find them? -- forwarded by Steve <sw@tiac.net> - - - - - - - - - - why did the chicken cross the infobahn? finger for more info.