[uug] Wiretapping at BYU

[Alberto Treviño]

On Wednesday 24 February 2010 03:39:24 pm Andrew McNabb wrote:
> I know that BYU has some legal rights to monitor its network, but what
> are the limits?  They aren't supposed to read everyone's emails, are
> they?  David gave me the email address of his boss <trevoro at byu.edu> and
> I plan on emailing him to ask some of these questions.

I'm taking IT 566 this semester, Digital Forensics.  We discussed this issue 
in class yesterday, and I'm certainly not an expert, nor a lawyer.  However, 
there is something called a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy written in the 
law.  It is not very clear, but basically you can expect privacy in that 
police are not going to stop you and strip search you in the middle of a 
public place (with our without a warrant) but that if you get caught by the 
same police officer committing a crime, he has the right to arrest you.  (Go 
Google the thing for a much better explanation.)

As BYU is not public (like a park or the street), it has the legal right to 
create any rules it wants as long as they don't go against the law.  (So BYU 
can't say murder is OK within the BYU campus but can restrict smoking.)  As 
such, BYU owns its own network and can monitor its traffic and take actions 
on their monitoring.

During my class, however, the teacher shared something transcendent: "If you 
honestly think that you have any privacy on the Internet, you are living in 
a different planet.  Everyone monitors their network for defensive purposes, 
and any traffic will easily pass through several snort systems."

As to the limits, they should be published somewhere.  I'll see if I can 
find it.

-- 
Alberto Treviño
BYU Testing Center
Brigham Young University