utotherescue | The San Francisco Chronicle has coverage of an issue that has been circulating on faculty email networks at UC Berkeley for a few days. The piece, "Cal professors fear UC bosses will snoop on them," is behind a paywall. The first sentence reads, "UC Berkeley faculty members are buzzing over news that University of California President Janet Napolitano ordered the installation of computer hardware capable of monitoring all e-mails going in and out of the UC system." UC's Chief Operating Officer says "that UC policy “forbids the university from using such data for nonsecurity purposes.” UC Berkeley's Senate chair replies, "What has upset a lot of the faculty was that the surveillance was put in place without consulting the faculty. In fact, the people installing the system were under strict instructions not to reveal it was taking place." On the blog's Facebook page, we've had some debate about how new this capability is, with some faculty from various universities saying they've always assumed their university email could be monitored at any time, and others saying this is a new level of intrusion.
Here are two communications from UC Berkeley faculty, one about how faculty there came to know about the program, and the other a timeline of events.
