Ehsan Nourbakhsh’s Blog

Reading a news article on Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) being forced to take down University Toolkit for violation of GPL license, I started to think how deep our privacy is being violated. As Brian Kerb of Washington post describes in his article, the University Toolkit is essentially a monitoring software, just identifying people with highest amount of network traffic with the file name, port address and traffic volume.

Beyond the irony of a copyright enforcing institution having to take down a software because of copyright violation, the software itself really annoys me. Imagine such observation shows some illegal activity going on the university network. Can this observation be used in a court of law? If not, why should such observation be done then. If yes, is it not a violation of “reasonable expectation of privacy”? If tapping someone’s internet activity is considered legal without a court order, same would hold for phone wire tapping. I am sure there is a problem in here, a huge problem!

• Washingtonpost: Brian Krebs: MPAA University ‘Toolkit’ Raises Privacy Concerns
• Wikipedia: The Internet, computers, and privacy in relation to the Fourth Amendment
• Electronic Frontier Foundation on Privacy

You understand you have been reading agreements too much, when your answer  to an e-mail from your “roommate-to-be” begins with:

I answer what you had asked in the same numbering order. But please note that I answer to the best of my knowledge and just to help you with estimates. Hence it is your own responsibility to verify anything, in case such answer is the basis for your decisions.

I was about to add “The responder holds himself not responsible in any way for any damage or misunderstanding caused by the answers provided”. But then felt this is too hostile for a new roommate!