U. Council hear revised proposal on e-privacy

Continuing a debate it began last month on the privacy of e-mail and other electronic information, University Council yesterday re-examined a proposal for a schoolwide electronic privacy policy, which includes a clause allowing access to student e-mail accounts as long as there "a good faith belief that such action serves a legitimate University purpose." At Council's monthly meeting in McClelland Hall, Physiology Professor Martin Pring, who chairs Council's Committee on Communications and headed the effort to create a policy, presented a revised version of the proposal first released last month. The University currently has no specific policy governing the privacy of electronic information. Yesterday, after discussing the revised proposal, the Council decided once again that the plan needs still more work and sent it back to the committee. Also yesterday, Rodin commented on the four-day-old sit-in being staged in her College Hall office by 13 students from United Students Against Sweatshops. Rodin said the students, who are demanding that Penn change its sweatshop monitoring organization for University-logo apparel, are becoming a disturbance. Rodin added that the University has been "very fair" in dealing with USAS. Electronic privacy was discussed at Council's January meeting. During the discussion, several student and faculty Council representatives voiced objections to sections of the proposed policy, criticizing the different levels of protection it would provide for students, staff members and faculty and the vague wording in various sections. Pring noted that several changes had been made to the proposal since last month's meeting, including an expanded provision for students to be notified when their e-mail accounts are accessed without their permission and the addition of a section outlining protections for people who fall under more than one category -- like work-study students who act as both students and staff members. To reduce objections raised by student leaders last month that the proposed policy gave students less protections than other groups, the revised proposal said students' electronic information should be accessed only under certain, unspecified circumstances. But under the revised proposal, the University would ultimately have the right to access all electronic information without consent. And many present at the Council meeting objected to the proposal, which they said did not offer specific guidelines to resolve privacy issues, and requested a policy that would give more specific guarantees of privacy. During the open forum, Penn Law School Professor Ed Rubin said he believed the proposal lacked "substantive rules or procedural mechanisms" to regulate electronic privacy, instead giving uncontrolled authority to specific administrators. "The concern I have is the way it is operationalized," he said, adding that an independent panel to judge each case before a faculty member's privacy is overridden might be a good way to implement a change. And Radiology Professor David Hackney, a Council member, said he wanted to know how the policy would be applied in cases that involve confidential information, such as the handling of patient information on computers in the offices of doctors. Hackney also voiced concerns about the lower standards used in the proposed policy for accessing information belonging to staff members and students than faculty members. Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing James O'Donnell noted that the proposed policy would be good to provide assurance and guidance in difficult situations for system administrators. "In the absence of a policy? those people will be placed ? in the awkward position of having a local responsible officer -- a manager, a supervisor, a chair, someone like that -- asking them to do something that is inappropriate," O'Donnell said. Council took no action on the proposed policy yesterday. Instead, the proposal will be reworked and presented again next month.