

Harvard College dean steps down (in wake of authorizing e-mail searches) - kmfrk
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/05/28/evelynn-hammonds-step-down-harvard-college-dean/WRRTRAKHRIGj7ANBSiAxbL/story.html

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dripton
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.

~~~
rayiner
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.

~~~
jholman
My apologies for changing the subject, but do you have any evidence at all
that Google has ever "voluntarily hand[ed] over [anyone's] e-mails", or was
that just a random slur?

Google's stated policy is to fight government requisition of data, but
ultimately to comply with the law. That is to say, Google claims to be as
anti-government-surveillance as it is possible for a corporation to be. I am
aware of no evidence whatsoever that this claim is false. Admittedly, I also
have no strong evidence that it's true[0].

Note that I'm not quibbling with the literal truth of your statement, since
your statement deals only in hypotheticals. But it'd be pretty crass of me to
say something like "I've never seen <insert name here> rape a child without
offering the kid some heroin to ease the pain", even though it's _technically_
true for every name including yours.

Also note that I'm not entirely sunshine-and-roses positive about Google's
record on privacy. I think it's not as bad as the fear-mongers state, but not
without any concerns whatsoever. Google management, it seems to me, pretends
to believe that when users say "we want privacy" they always-and-only mean "we
want privacy from the government and criminals". Which is... disingenuous. But
I think that Google _appears_ to be a relatively pro-privacy [1] organization,
especially with regard to the particular slur you raised, and I've never seen
a credible argument that this appearance is false.

[0] I do see some evidence that Google is truly anti-surveillance. However,
all the evidence I have is also consistent with the theory that Google is
willing to spend a lot of money to convince its employees that it's anti-
surveillance... if Google were an NSA shell corp, maybe this is how it would
behave.

[1] By "relatively pro-privacy", I mean I have to think pretty hard to think
of organizations MORE pro-privacy, although eventually I remembered that
mozilla exists.

~~~
declan
Random slur.

Google fought a DOJ subpoena for search terms in court (while Yahoo, AOL, and
Microsoft did not), which I wrote about here: [http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-What-
does-the-Google-subpoena-mean/...](http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-What-does-the-
Google-subpoena-mean/2100-1029_3-6029042.html)

It also nationalized Warshak by requiring a search warrant for the contents of
archived email (anyone think Verizon/AT&T/etc. have been doing that?). More
importantly, Google is currently challenging a secret NSL it received from the
FBI in federal court in San Francisco, making it the first large Internet
company to do so. It also became the first large Internet company to divulge
summary statistics about receiving NSLs.

Twitter and Amazon.com have similarly good records. And Facebook fought a
subpoena from the state of Virginia.

~~~
vidarh
> Random slur.

He didn't make any claims about Google at all other than implying they might
be _recipients_ of requests, so how in the world was that a slur against
Google?

~~~
flyinRyan
In the eyes of fanboys, anything that isn't praise is a slur.

------
josh2600
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
Searches of e-mails are not clearly unconstitutional under our laws.

~~~
josh2600
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
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.

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mdwelsh
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
"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?

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jtchang
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
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
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'.

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gamechangr
Good to see the University making her step down

