Live data from Hacker News

Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

nytimes.com

1–10 of 34 posts

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#3
post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

Yep. If you have any mail on your companies email server it's fair game.

Hence why the need to keep work and personal life seperate is important and keep bitching out people on work emails (or any emails for that matter..) is super important.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#5
post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

The existence of email at universities predates the use of email by other organizations -- thus, there are a different set of norms expected by faculty.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#6
The question, in my mind, isn't about whether or not it was OK for Harvard to search their mail server, but rather why they would need to do it.

First of all, does Harvard attempt to punish the person who leaked the controversy to the media? And if nearly half of the 279 students were suspected to be cheating and were going to be asked to withdraw, would they really expect the issue to remain hush-hush?

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#7
This seems really silly to me. In large institutions it is very common for this to happen, and the email accounts and all the content in them belongs to Harvard. This is the case with pretty much any employer. A clever faculty member looking to leak to the press should a) not use their Harvard email address or b) better yet, pick up the phone to provide the tip.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#8
post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

Did you read the article? Harvard (apparently) violated their own policy for faculty email, which, among other things, states that "The faculty member is entitled to prior written notice that his or her records will be reviewed, unless circumstances make prior notification impossible, in which case the faculty member will be notified at the earliest possible opportunity." It's not a standard corporate email policy.

Re: Harvard Search of E-mail Stuns Its Faculty Members

#9
post #2

Read the terms of your employment... This is common practice in any organization. Work email is the property of the company or organization.

I find attitudes like this fascinating. If they were within their legal right to do this, that explains why the resident deans are complaining instead of suing.

When did the fact something is permitted become reason to shut down or marginalize discussion on if it should happen and/or be permitted?

Post reply on HN