6 ms·

Harvard College dean steps down (in wake of authorizing e-mail searches)

97 points by kmfrk 13y ago

dripton 13y ago
Glad to see that she's being forced to step down after such an egregious invasion of privacy. But that's just a school. The much more important case is whether anyone in the federal government gets punished when they do the same thing without a warrant. So far, it doesn't look like it.
- stfu 13y ago
  Ironically in both cases it was not about "finding the criminal" but about finding out who leaked a story to the press. Seems like transparency is not really popular these days.
  - jordanthoms 13y ago
    Didn't you hear? We have "the most transparent government in history"!
    - kevinpet 13y ago
      I'm no fan of Obama, but simplistic political name calling doesn't seem to add much to the conversation.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - harold 13y ago
        http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...
- rayiner 13y ago
  The Dean of Harvard is stepping down not because there is anything illegal about her searching through the e-mails of faculty (your employer has every right to search your work e-mail), but because it was in bad taste in an academic institution which made the Dean ineffective as a figurehead. Similarly, there is nothing definitively illegal about the federal government asking Google to voluntarily hand over your e-mails. It is at best in bad taste.
  - aioprisan 13y ago
    Harvard College, not all schools at Harvard. And simply handing over emails is illegal without a warrant. The issue here was with blanket access to all emails (read: all students) without probable cause.
    - wnight 13y ago
      It should be, but is not illegal for the government to ask for private data, or lean on companies to provide it, (see the NSA Warrantless Wiretapping affair, specifically Qwest - the only telco that refused the illegal orders.) You can be essentially compelled to break the law - and you gain no immunity for being forced. Damned if you don't, convicted if you do.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      In most situations it is probably not illegal to hand over your emails without a warrant; it depends entirely on the terms of your access to your email service.
      - declan 13y ago
        This is another area where your intuition might say A but in reality the law is !A. Under federal law an email provider may not "knowingly divulge" the contents of email "to any governmental entity" without a court order or emergency situation involving "serious physical injury." Violations are punishable by "imprisonment for not more than 1 year" and civil liability. It's true that there's an exception to the law. That says providers may share the contents of customers' communications only "with the lawful consent" of the user. A federal appeals court in 2003 narrowed that, saying consent exists only when the "party knew about and consented to the interception." And the FTC has said that it's unlawful for a company not "to adequately disclose" it's sharing information. Translation: if Comcast buried a we-will-disclose-all-your-email-to-the-FBI in the fine print of its terms of service, its executives risk felony charges (and mass defections). In the real world, Comcast doesn't do that -- and it is illegal to hand over your emails without a warrant.
- driverdan 13y ago
  What makes you think the government is required to get a warrant to read your email? Anything older than 180 days is considered fair game.
  - declan 13y ago
    Not after the 6th Circuit's decision in Warshak, at least for major email providers. Non-email stored data such as Dropbox or Google Drive files, on the other hand...
- tss20147 13y ago
  Egregious invasion of privacy? The dean authorized a search of the subject lines of emails sent by a specific set of employees using an email system provided by their employer. A system which based upon law and I'm willing to guess the acceptable use policy faculty agree to, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using. This was done in order to determine if student information, which the university has an obligation to protect, was leaked along with other information regarding the disciplinary action. Doesn't sound like an invasion of privacy at all and certainly not egregious.
josh2600 13y ago
I find it Ironic that the dean at Harvard has the fortitude to step down when he's caught red-handed violating the civil and constitutional rights of his employees (and yes I recognize that working for someone is not the same as being a citizen of a country), yet our elected leaders, when caught authorizing far more heinous eavesdropping, do nothing, not even so much as apologizing. Whereas an institution MIGHT be able to justify such egregious violations of privacy, a government can have no such moral quandaries because of the exacting detail of our laws; and yet, here we are. Steal a little and they call you a thief. Steal a lot and they call you King.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Searches of e-mails are not clearly unconstitutional under our laws.
  - slg 13y ago
    Furthermore the constitution protects you from the government. It doesn't protect you from a private entity like Harvard.
  - josh2600 13y ago
    While this is true, I find it to only be true under the guise of tortured logic (emails left on my server are hardly the same as abandoned mail). That being said, I wasn't trying to draw a direct comparison, and I realize that an employment contract has nothing to do with the constitution. My point was that someone lost their job while holding themselves to the standards of an employment contract which one would assume would be more lenient than our constitution (and in my reading it is but that's a topic for another day). In short, I agree with your point but I think it's tangential to mine.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Why would an academic employment contract be more lenient than the Constitution? The Constitution is a floor, not a bar to reach for. It's a mistake to read modern libertarian (little "l") ideas into the Constitution. While there has been a change through history in which of the federal versus state governments has exercised the police power, the Constitution has always served as a check on an otherwise expansive power. It's easy to forget that all the founders' talk of "limited government" was aimed at the states, not citizens, and referred to the federal government specifically, not the federal, state, and local governments together. The states were conceived of as inheriting the nearly unlimited powers of the British Parliament. The innovation of the U.S. was not to dramatically limit the state, but to put a powerful state under majoritarian control, with a limited set of protections from abuse. The circle back on topic: there is nothing within the worldview of the Constitution that is inconsistent with a certain activities being allowed of the government that are outside the powers of an individual. You can argue about which entity is the right one to exercise it, but the government is supposed to have more expansive powers than any person.
jtchang 13y ago
I'm confused. Isn't it perfectly legal for the institution to search your e-mail records? I know when you work at a company generally the company can monitor everything you do (including e-mail).
- radicaldreamer 13y ago
  Just because you didn't do anything illegal doesn't mean you deserve to keep your post as a leader of an institution after you've lost a large part of the organization's trust.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    Exactly, even more in an institution in which 'trust' and 'honesty' should be the basis of behaviour ('Veritas', you can read that on the coat of arms of Harvard...). If you are going to act behind someone's back without telling him, you had better go to the police rather than perform this kind of 'paralegal investigation'.
- declan 13y ago
  Institutions have the ability to adopt more privacy protective policies, effectively relinquishing rights that they would otherwise have by virtue of owning the system.
gamechangr 13y ago
Good to see the University making her step down
mdwelsh 13y ago
As a former professor at Harvard, this is a welcome move. However, I don't think it goes far enough, and it should have happened much sooner. One thing I will say: The fact that the administration felt the need to snoop on employee e-mail to "track down" a press leak underscores how backwards and insecure Harvard can feel at times. It's just shocking that anyone thought that this was a good idea, and that they continued to defend the practice once it came to light. Very sad.
- larrys 13y ago
  "underscores how backwards and insecure Harvard can feel at times" You do realize of course that most people in the world would give a testicle, a breast (or two) to be affiliated with that University, right?

97 points by kmfrk 13y ago

Glad to see that she's being forced to step down after such an egregious invasion of privacy. But that's just a school. The much more important case is whether anyone in the federal government gets punished when they do the same thing without a warrant. So far, it doesn't look like it.

stfu 13y ago
Ironically in both cases it was not about "finding the criminal" but about finding out who leaked a story to the press. Seems like transparency is not really popular these days.
- jordanthoms 13y ago
  Didn't you hear? We have "the most transparent government in history"!
  - kevinpet 13y ago
    I'm no fan of Obama, but simplistic political name calling doesn't seem to add much to the conversation.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - harold 13y ago
      http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOp...
rayiner 13y ago
The Dean of Harvard is stepping down not because there is anything illegal about her searching through the e-mails of faculty (your employer has every right to search your work e-mail), but because it was in bad taste in an academic institution which made the Dean ineffective as a figurehead. Similarly, there is nothing definitively illegal about the federal government asking Google to voluntarily hand over your e-mails. It is at best in bad taste.
- aioprisan 13y ago
  Harvard College, not all schools at Harvard. And simply handing over emails is illegal without a warrant. The issue here was with blanket access to all emails (read: all students) without probable cause.
  - wnight 13y ago
    It should be, but is not illegal for the government to ask for private data, or lean on companies to provide it, (see the NSA Warrantless Wiretapping affair, specifically Qwest - the only telco that refused the illegal orders.) You can be essentially compelled to break the law - and you gain no immunity for being forced. Damned if you don't, convicted if you do.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    In most situations it is probably not illegal to hand over your emails without a warrant; it depends entirely on the terms of your access to your email service.
    - declan 13y ago
      This is another area where your intuition might say A but in reality the law is !A. Under federal law an email provider may not "knowingly divulge" the contents of email "to any governmental entity" without a court order or emergency situation involving "serious physical injury." Violations are punishable by "imprisonment for not more than 1 year" and civil liability. It's true that there's an exception to the law. That says providers may share the contents of customers' communications only "with the lawful consent" of the user. A federal appeals court in 2003 narrowed that, saying consent exists only when the "party knew about and consented to the interception." And the FTC has said that it's unlawful for a company not "to adequately disclose" it's sharing information. Translation: if Comcast buried a we-will-disclose-all-your-email-to-the-FBI in the fine print of its terms of service, its executives risk felony charges (and mass defections). In the real world, Comcast doesn't do that -- and it is illegal to hand over your emails without a warrant.
driverdan 13y ago
What makes you think the government is required to get a warrant to read your email? Anything older than 180 days is considered fair game.
- declan 13y ago
  Not after the 6th Circuit's decision in Warshak, at least for major email providers. Non-email stored data such as Dropbox or Google Drive files, on the other hand...
tss20147 13y ago
Egregious invasion of privacy? The dean authorized a search of the subject lines of emails sent by a specific set of employees using an email system provided by their employer. A system which based upon law and I'm willing to guess the acceptable use policy faculty agree to, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using. This was done in order to determine if student information, which the university has an obligation to protect, was leaked along with other information regarding the disciplinary action. Doesn't sound like an invasion of privacy at all and certainly not egregious.

josh2600 13y ago

I find it Ironic that the dean at Harvard has the fortitude to step down when he's caught red-handed violating the civil and constitutional rights of his employees (and yes I recognize that working for someone is not the same as being a citizen of a country), yet our elected leaders, when caught authorizing far more heinous eavesdropping, do nothing, not even so much as apologizing. Whereas an institution MIGHT be able to justify such egregious violations of privacy, a government can have no such moral quandaries because of the exacting detail of our laws; and yet, here we are. Steal a little and they call you a thief. Steal a lot and they call you King.

rayiner 13y ago
Searches of e-mails are not clearly unconstitutional under our laws.
- slg 13y ago
  Furthermore the constitution protects you from the government. It doesn't protect you from a private entity like Harvard.
- josh2600 13y ago
  While this is true, I find it to only be true under the guise of tortured logic (emails left on my server are hardly the same as abandoned mail). That being said, I wasn't trying to draw a direct comparison, and I realize that an employment contract has nothing to do with the constitution. My point was that someone lost their job while holding themselves to the standards of an employment contract which one would assume would be more lenient than our constitution (and in my reading it is but that's a topic for another day). In short, I agree with your point but I think it's tangential to mine.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Why would an academic employment contract be more lenient than the Constitution? The Constitution is a floor, not a bar to reach for. It's a mistake to read modern libertarian (little "l") ideas into the Constitution. While there has been a change through history in which of the federal versus state governments has exercised the police power, the Constitution has always served as a check on an otherwise expansive power. It's easy to forget that all the founders' talk of "limited government" was aimed at the states, not citizens, and referred to the federal government specifically, not the federal, state, and local governments together. The states were conceived of as inheriting the nearly unlimited powers of the British Parliament. The innovation of the U.S. was not to dramatically limit the state, but to put a powerful state under majoritarian control, with a limited set of protections from abuse. The circle back on topic: there is nothing within the worldview of the Constitution that is inconsistent with a certain activities being allowed of the government that are outside the powers of an individual. You can argue about which entity is the right one to exercise it, but the government is supposed to have more expansive powers than any person.

jtchang 13y ago

I'm confused. Isn't it perfectly legal for the institution to search your e-mail records? I know when you work at a company generally the company can monitor everything you do (including e-mail).

radicaldreamer 13y ago
Just because you didn't do anything illegal doesn't mean you deserve to keep your post as a leader of an institution after you've lost a large part of the organization's trust.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Exactly, even more in an institution in which 'trust' and 'honesty' should be the basis of behaviour ('Veritas', you can read that on the coat of arms of Harvard...). If you are going to act behind someone's back without telling him, you had better go to the police rather than perform this kind of 'paralegal investigation'.
declan 13y ago
Institutions have the ability to adopt more privacy protective policies, effectively relinquishing rights that they would otherwise have by virtue of owning the system.

gamechangr 13y ago

Good to see the University making her step down

mdwelsh 13y ago

As a former professor at Harvard, this is a welcome move. However, I don't think it goes far enough, and it should have happened much sooner. One thing I will say: The fact that the administration felt the need to snoop on employee e-mail to "track down" a press leak underscores how backwards and insecure Harvard can feel at times. It's just shocking that anyone thought that this was a good idea, and that they continued to defend the practice once it came to light. Very sad.

larrys 13y ago
"underscores how backwards and insecure Harvard can feel at times" You do realize of course that most people in the world would give a testicle, a breast (or two) to be affiliated with that University, right?