2 ms·
How do you have an assumption of privacy when you are the one mailing out the letter to some third party?
by jsprogrammer 12y ago
How do you have an assumption of privacy when you are the one mailing out the letter to some third party?
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoIt's _to_ the third party, not to the public. Particularly if it's to a named person and for a specific reason. That's just my instinctive take on this. I haven't researched this issue at all before - though I did read this, http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/html/WYSIWYGfiles/file/Guidelines%20on%20Permission%20to%20Reprint%20pamphlet.pdf http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/html/WYSIWYGfiles/file/G..., recently which suggests not publishing any private letters without consent and that letters from "government officials" (which teachers would be here it seems?) need permission from the relevant department. However that's a particular publishers guidelines and doesn't go in to the legal requirements that, inter alia, lead to those guidelines.
- jsprogrammer 12y agoAre undergraduate recommendation letters really sent to a specific person? And only that person reads it? I doubt it. I briefly browsed the organization's website, but I didn't find any verbatim copies of the documents they describe obtaining, so I can't confirm/deny this suspicion. I think it's known that the letters can be read by anyone at the University and Federal Law has stated for the last 40 years that students have a right to view these communications. Not only has this right been codified for at least a generation, every student does have the right to know what a school is recording and communicating about them. There's no (valid) assumption of privacy anywhere to be found here.