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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 8A
PAGE 8A MONDAY, OCTOBER 20,1997
EVENTS • ENTERTAINMENT • ISSUES • MUSIC • ART
Story by Portia Sisco · Illustration by Kris Hargis
Let the sender BEWARE
Computer Center employees don't read students' e-mail, and law enforcement officials have to get a warrant to access the files, but the laws concerning e-mail and the Internet are few and unclear.
Students can put away their secret decoder rings. Big Brother is not reading their e-mail.
"E-mail files that are stored on our computer systems are not read by our staff," said Jerry Niebaum, assistant vice chancellor for information services. Computer center staff and administrators do not release e-mail files — not even to the family of the account owner, he said.
That doesn't make Wendy Green, Kansas City, Kan., sophomore, feel any safer. She said she didn't think that her e-mail was secure.
"I wouldn't write personal letters over e-mail," she said.
But Niebaum assures students that e-mail at the University of Kansas is secure.
Only the owner of the account has access to the e-mail files stored on University servers, Niebaum said.
And even if a complaint is filed about the content of an e-mail message or personal web page and computer, center staff members investigate the case, they don't look at the student's files, he said.
"We have other ways rather than content," Niebaum said. "We would rather not have people know what steps we do take, but I can tell you that they do not involve the monitoring of e-mail messages — even accidentally."
The University has security measures, which include special software that monitors computer usage and records every log-on to the system.
But Internet violations aren't that common. Only about 10 accounts are suspended every year because of violations, Niebaum said. Internet access can be suspended for violations of computer center policies, which include sending threatening e-mail and sharing a computer account.
Threats in e-mail messages also violate University policy and are illegal.
"A threat of personal harm is a criminal offense, and we have very little of that," Niebaum said. "It's more often, I think, 'You're a jerk' in stronger terms."
Although the police are not granted access to e-mail files, law enforcement agencies can obtain a search warrant to read them.
To access e-mail files, the government proceeds as if there was a constitutional requirement to obtain a warrant to search e-mail files.
"There are cases where we might be subpoenaed for information, but we do not provide access to such files to law enforcement." Niebaum said. "We would probably refer it to our attorneys or legal counsel, and they would determine whether access would be given."
In most jurisdictions, law enforcement officials probably would get a search warrant if they wanted to access the e-mail accounts of a person sending
offending mail, said Kim Dayton,
professor of law.
Niebaum said that students shouldn't worry about outside sources reading their e-mail.
Hackers have attempted to break into the KU computer systems, but they've been caught, he said.
The University of Kansas was the first Internet provider in Kansas to prosecute using the computer crime law. Kansas Statute 21-3755
"The person was found guilty and sentenced to time in prison," Niebaum said.
He wouldn't release the name of the student and employee of the computer center involved in the incident, but Niebaum said that it had occurred 10 years ago. The student left the state after serving time in jail, he said.
Despite hackers' attempts, mail and communications files have not been violated. Niebaum said.
"To the best of my knowledge, we have never had a single incident of someone tapping into a communications system," Niebaum said. "I'm told it's theoretically possible, but we've never had a single incident of it happening."
But the bottom line in the struggle between e-mail and the law is jurisdiction. Information transmitted via e-mail or posted on a personal web page might still violate laws or statutes in other states. Whether a student could be charged with a violation of another state's law for information transmitted by e-mail or on a web page has not been resolved in the courts.
"It's hard to imagine a situation within the four corners of the United States where this could happen, but it could," Dayton said. "Who really has jurisdiction in cyberspace? No one really knows the answer."
While the University takes security measures to protect the privacy of student e-mail, the right to privacy of e-mail has not been established in the courts.
"There are statutes that preclude basically electronic eavesdropping and protect the contents of electronic transmissions," Dayton said. "The Constitution also provides protection, although whether or not the Constitution protects email transmissions is sort of an open question."
However, this does not mean the right to privacy of e-mail messages is guaranteed.
"I think it's likely that the court would say there is not a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mail because you know when you send it that it can be intercepted at several points along the way," Dayton said. "You're basically turning it over voluntarily or involuntarily to a third party — maybe not expecting that it could be read but with the knowledge that it can be."
News of the WEIRD
Extreme Political Protest: At a Eugene, Ore., city council meeting, an unidentified man who had been sitting in the audience walked up to controversial Mayor Jim Torrey, leaned over and vomited on his shoulder. He then walked out and was not pursued. One council member, who was watching the man during the meeting, said the act clearly had been premeditated.
■ Philip Wright, 18, was given a suspended sentence by a magistrate in Newquay, Cornwall, England, on charges that he assaulted his mother and father. Wright started punching when the parents once again suggested that his long-standing obsession with models Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzegova was getting out of hand in view of the fact that he recently had changed his name legally to Philip Herzegova-Schiffer.
The Price of Sex: In Hong Kong, former journalist Kwong Yui-hong, 58, was sentenced to two years in jail for stealing from his employer in order to finance a bad deal he had made in a moment
of passion in 1986. The deal called for an investment of about $25,000 with a woman, but in his efforts to finance repayment during the years, the debt grew to about $180,000, all attributable to that one-night stand. And during the Autumn Jackson extortion trial in New York in July, Bill Cosby testified that he had given Jackson and her mother about $100,000 in support through the years, also based on a one-night tryst.
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
Police in Duluth, Minn. arrested Randall Dean Adams, 27, in the early morning inside a basement after a neighbor had
called 911. As an officer trained his flashlight on Adams' face and asked what he was doing, Adams allegedly said, without missing a beat, that he had been hired for a remodeling job and that he had come to look things over.
Speaking to reporters at the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Hospital, where he was recuperating after being shot in the leg by a stray bullet during a police robber shootout. 16-year-old Mohd Zulkhairi Khalid said it was both a shock and a rush to be hit. Although he had seen such things on television, he told "The Star" newspaper that he felt thrilled to experience for himself the excruciating pain.
In February, a federal judge in Rock Island, Ill., ruled in favor of defendant Martin Herman, who had been charged with sexual harassment because he sometimes belched, spit, urinated,
**Scripps-Howard News Service profiled former lawyer James Kelley of Washington, D.C. He is one of a small group at his local church who are enthusiastic Episcopalians but who do not believe in God. Said Kelley, "We all love the incense, the stained glass windows, the organ music, the vestments and all of that. It's drama. It's aesthetics. It's the ritual. That's neat stuff. I don't want to give all that up just because I don't believe in God."
scratched his genitals, and was flatulent in the presence of female co-workers at the Mercer County highway department office. After hearing several witnesses, the judge concluded that Herman is just a rude person who behaves that way in front of many people, male and female.
In January, Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda of India told a meeting of government employees in Bangalore that, in contrast with his image of laziness, he is actually a workaholic. The various photographs of him dozing off during official meetings are not accurate, he said. "Most of the time I am in deep thought about various welfare programs for the people."