well, are we sure it is only 'hash' of the papers? have turnitin made that clear? any way, Dan, the Feds may not even need to reconstruct the full papers. they can just execute search strings on arbitray terms and then just put the author names into the "No Fly List". but even if we leave this aside there's another issue of concern. let's say a young muslim student [in Canada] is given an assignment to write a paper on Contemporary US policy in the Middle East. so if s/he knows that his/her paper would be required to be sumbitted to the turnitin database and can be searched at will by US authorities. would s/he be freely expressing his/her opinion against the US government and their policy if s/he knows that s/he may be travelling to US in near future? This may seem far-fetched, but can any of you [or turnitin] assure us [the students] that the rights of the authors of submitted papers are NOT being trampled?? I thank Richard Stevens for bringing forward some of the scenarios that may happen and probably IS already happening. I remember reading some times ago of a student in US who wrote a graduate thesis on the location/vulnerability of network/power grids and other critical infrastructures and mapping them on topographic maps. all the data were gleaned from publicly available sources. yet the feds heard of this thesis and basically restricted it's publication and even denied the author access to his own thesis paper. I know this is not related to turnitin, but this is one example that is of concern to me at least. miraj khaled ============ Graduate Student Simon Fraser University --- air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote: Message: 15 Date: 09 Mar 2007 12:09:47 -0600 From: burkx006@umn.edu Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue [and privacy+security of students] To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org On Mar 9 2007, Richard Stevens wrote:
Why would the gov't be interested in electronic forms of student papers? Well, considering that Homeland Security has in the past stated a focus on incoming exchange student programs (thereby granting student visas) as a high-level security threat for allowing potential terrorists to enter the country, I'd say this desired access is not beyond the realm of interest to our government.
Although I think this is a good point, everything we know about Turnitin indicates that they are storing a hash of the paper, rather than the full paper itself. I can see that the feds might well be interested in the topics of certain student papers, but I am not at all certain that the content can be reconstructed from what could be subpeoned or NSL'd. DLB -- Dan L. Burk Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 ********************************** voice: 612-626-8726 fax: 612-625-2011 bits: burkx006@umn.edu
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Message: 8 Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 11:08:31 -0600 From: Richard Stevens <stevensr@smu.edu> Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue [and privacy+security of students] To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org
Why would the gov't be interested in electronic forms of student papers? Well, considering that Homeland Security has in the past stated a focus on incoming exchange student programs (thereby granting student visas) as a high-level security threat for allowing potential terrorists to enter the country, I'd say this desired access is not beyond the realm of interest to our government.
The relative ease of student visas granted to young men and women from abroad has been one fo the chief arguments for increasing the surveillance of library use, allowing government access to school records, etc.
What a student writes in a university classroom should (in my humble opinion) be seen as a product of an experimental period in one's life. Probably never before are afterwards will a student be exposed to the opportunity for intellectual exchange and informational resources.
And I'd hate to think that one of my middle east students would be impugned by our government because a paper on nontraditional approaches to the problem of terrorism (for example) violated the contemporary political sensitivities of whomever happened to in power.
Not taking up this branch of the argument, just acknowledging that it does exist.
-Rick
I am as concerned about electronic privacy as anyone -- and far more concerned than most -- but I am having a difficult time seeing why the government would want to access a hash of a student paper, or what might be the privacy interests that would be violated if they did.
There is plenty of other stored student data (health records, library usage, brower logs) to spend time worrying about.
DLB
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