The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

District: No student privacy on Wi-Fi

New internet policy affects privacy, connection speed

Charlene Jones | Staff writer
[email protected]

Internet activity on personal computers can now be tracked by student ID number due to a new log-in requirement for using wireless internet at City College, but school officials say it’s to benefit students and comply with the law.

On Oct. 1, the Los Rios Community College District rolled out controversial Internet hotspot access requirements—student ID numbers and passwords—for personal computers. According to Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Mick Holsclaw, the new practice was approved to bring better service and comply with the federal Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act.

CALEA was designed initially to give law enforcement access to telephone lines for surveillance until an FCC ruling applied the act to the Internet in 2005 in order to provide law enforcement greater and easier reach, according to the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

The FCC ruling came with major objections from public interest organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who compared the order to “a law requiring all new homes be built with a peephole for law enforcement agents to look through.”
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An American Council on Education lawsuit against CALEA application, though rejected in 2006, created certain exceptions for private networks. After requiring students to log in, City College’s Wi-Fi now qualifies as a private network, allowing the district to trace and monitor student internet access more easily, while making it more difficult for the federal government to do the same.

Currently, when users access the Web over the campus network, LRCCD does reserve the right to view it, according to Holsclaw, although he says that’s done only intermittently to manage the network, and ensure compliance with policies.

Dr. Elaine Ader, dean of the Information Technology Department explained the college doesn’t monitor, but must respond to outside businesses and agencies that are protecting copyrights and scrutinizing networks. When a business informs the college it observed a violation at a particular computer address, the college must notify the user that he or she is not in compliance.

How this will apply to personal laptops remains to be seen, as the district’s Information and Security Policy 8871 is broadly worded. “If faculty, staff or students bring personally-owned equipment into the District environment, they will be required to adhere to existing District and college policy.”

“These computer systems [including Wi-Fi access] are not private,” said district legal counsel Jan Sherry. “Students, faculty, staff and the public should use these systems with that knowledge.”

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