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Advances in technology
have posed challenges to current legal and societal guidelines. Is this post-9/11
overkill or too much government control?
kwc Colleges protest
calls they upgrade their online systems By Sam Dillon and Steve Labaton, NYT
Technology, Sunday, October 23, 2005 “The federal government, vastly extending
the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online
communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer
networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail
and other online communications. The action, which
the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals,
has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which
argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to
apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders
before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil
liberties issues. The order, issued by the Federal Communications
Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap
law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial
Internet access providers. It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like
Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access
networks. The F.C.C. says it is
considering whether to exempt educational institutions from some of the law's
provisions, but it has not granted an extension for compliance. Lawyers for the
American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of universities
and colleges, are preparing to appeal the order before the United States Court
of Appeals for the District o f Columbia Circuit, Terry W. Hartle, a senior
vice president of the council, said Friday. The Center for
Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties group, has enlisted
plaintiffs for a separate legal challenge, focusing on objections to government control over how
organizations, including hundreds of private technology companies, design
Internet systems,
James X. Dempsey, the center's executive director, said Friday. The universities do not question the
government's right to use wiretaps to monitor terrorism or criminal suspects on
college campuses,
Mr. Hartle said, only
the order's rapid timetable for compliance and extraordinary cost. Technology experts
retained by the schools estimated that it could cost universities at least $7
billion just to buy the Internet switches and routers necessary for compliance.
That figure does not include installation or the costs of hiring and training
staff to oversee the sophisticated circuitry around the clock, as the law requires,
the experts said. "This is the mother of all unfunded
mandates,"
Mr. Hartle said. Even the lowest estimates of compliance
costs would, on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities
by some $450, at a time when rising education costs are already a sore point
with parents and members of Congress, Mr. Hartle said. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html |
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