--- alt.internet.media-coverage #13555 (16 more) (1)--[1] From: mgoodlan@phoebe.cair.du.edu (Marianne Goodland) Newsgroups: alt.internet.media-coverage,alt.current-events.rimm-study,comp. + org.eff.talk [1] Re: Marty Rimm and Rumors from CMU Date: Mon Oct 02 12:54:55 PDT 1995 Organization: University of Denver Lines: 46 Distribution: inet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In article , D B McCullagh wrote: >Following are the rumors I've heard recently on campus from a >usually-reliable source. > >* The Committee of Investigation is considering over 200 charges >against Marty. CMU's trying to force the CoI into delaying issuing >its report until December, when students are gone and campus reaction >will be muted. This is a time-honored weasel tactic, which CMU did >with their Usenet-censorship policy this summer. > >* Even though Marvin Sirbu, Rimm's advisor, is the person who >originally suggested the .newsrc-equivalent snooping, he's not >being investigated. After all, he's head of the Information Networking >Institute, a major cash cow for CMU, and responsible for lots of >digicash grant money pouring in to CMU's coffers from deep-pocketed >corporations like Visa and Mellon Bank. Academic fraud notwithstanding, >they wouldn't dare censure such an established money conduit. > >* Marty had access to private and confidential administrative data >regarding network users. Authorization for access came from on >high. This access to private student enrollment and staff/faculty >employment records probably violated CMU's own policies, if not >federal law. These data apparently are the source of the mysterious >footnote 40 in Marty's paper. > "These demographics included age, sex, nationality, marital > status, > position (faculty, staff, student), and department." The Buckley Amendment (federal) forbids the release of any information to any party (like Rimm) unless it is information that can be obtained from public records or directories (name, address, age, phone #, date and place off birth, major fied of study, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, weight and height [if on an athletic team], degree and awards received and name of educational institution). For faculty and staff, again under federal law, the only information that can be released is that which is obtainable in public records or directories. Sounds like someone at CMU violated both federal laws by releasing information that does not fall under the above to Rimm. He doesn't have the right to have that information. Marianne Goodland University of Denver ### From declanm@netcom.com Sat Oct 7 13:09:18 1995 Return-Path: Received: from po6.andrew.cmu.edu by mail5.netcom.com (8.6.12/Netcom) id NAA02885; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 13:04:51 -0700 Received: (from postman@localhost) by po6.andrew.cmu.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) id QAA02000; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:04:23 -0400 Received: via switchmail for fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:04:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from po2.andrew.cmu.edu via qmail ID ; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:02:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from phoebe.cair.du.edu (phoebe.cair.du.edu [130.253.1.1]) by po2.andrew.cmu.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id QAA07295 for ; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:02:32 -0400 Received: (from mgoodlan@localhost) by phoebe.cair.du.edu (8.6.11/8.6.9) id OAA29121 for fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu; Sat, 7 Oct 1995 14:02:50 -0600 From: Marianne Goodland Message-Id: <199510072002.OAA29121@phoebe.cair.du.edu> Subject: Re: CMU Broke the Law, or Marty Lied To: fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 14:02:50 -0600 (MDT) In-Reply-To: <4kRhQHO00YUu4Bv5Uz@andrew.cmu.edu> from "Declan B. McCullagh" at Oct 7, 95 03:37:55 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1234 Status: RO X-Status: > > This is what I found on CMU's records-privacy policies and the > relevant laws. Keep in mind that a senior administrator at CMU gave > Marty access to information on campus network users including: > > "Age, sex, nationality, marital status, position (faculty, staff, > student), and department." (footnote 40) > > That information is NOT directory information at CMU, which means that > Carnegie Mellon broke the law by providing it to Marty. Or Marty lied > when he said he had access to it. > > > Note both CMU's own policies and federal law do not allow "age, sex, > nationality, and marital status" to be disclosed. > > I'd like to know what CMU was thinking when they gave Marty access to > this information. BTW, Marty saw my post and said I was in error. Of course, he failed to say where I made my mistake. He also said your analysis was "confused." Of course, no explanation given. I should have saved his post since I was so shocked to see him respond. Mostly, I just laughed. If he were here at the University of Denver, he would have been expelled long ago. Thanks for the info - it was as I suspected, a violation of Buckley and a lot of other legalese. Marianne Goodland University of Denver