[IP] Re: MIT monitoring campus network traffic

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Mark I. Berman" <Mark.Berman@mcla.edu>
Date: April 21, 2009 9:49:46 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: MIT monitoring campus network traffic

Dave et al.,

It sounds to me like MIT is doing the normally responsible things to  
keep
a network running. I supposed you could argue about the lack of a  
specific
policy, but I think a good reading of other extant policies at MIT would
show that what they are doing is already covered by more general  
policies.
Personally I'm a believer in policies that are short and broad. I find
Professor Abelson's statement that he "found it troubling that these  
logs
were being collected without public knowledge" to be bit disingenuous.
Surely he knows that pretty much ALL network activity is logged  
somewhere,
if only (and usually only) to aid in debugging problems. In my opinion
there are plenty of places to be legitimately concerned about  
information
privacy without worrying about a college's well intentioned efforts to
maintain a functional network. How about the fact that when I wrote my
check to the state of Massachusetts to pay my taxes, they required me to
put my social security number on the memo line!

- Mark
--
Mark Berman, Chief Information Officer
MCLA - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
375 Church Street, North Adams, MA. 01247
413-662-5062

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