University Professor Chastised For Using Tor

Irongeek_ADC writes with a first-person account from the The Chronicle of Higher Education by a university professor who was asked to stop using Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Paul Cesarini's door asking why he was using the anonymizing network. They requested that he stop and also that he not teach his students about it. The visitors said it was likely against university policy (a policy they probably were not aware that Cesarini had helped to draft). The professor seems genuinely to appreciate the problems that a campus IT department faces; but in the end he took a stand for academic freedom.

Bravo

[QuantumG (50515)]

Good to see some university professors still have integrity.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

I wish I had "tenure" at my day to day job.

Re:Bravo

[by Anonymous Coward]

He is an assistant professor. He is unlikely to have tenure.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector. That severely constrains my interest in executing it since my health care bills would be $300 a month easily for blood pressure and cholesterol medicine alone.

I applaud his efforts. And I chose not to work in academia so it's my responsibility that he has privileges that I do not.

Re:Bravo

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

Your job is to go to work and perform some task for the company that hired you. HIS job is to know about things like Tor, think about what they mean, and educate his students. See the difference? Knowing about Tor is part of his job.

Re:Bravo

[flithm (756019)]

Even executing my "academic freedom" would result in instant unemployment in the private sector.

This is not necessarily true. I've actually put myself into a position where I was SURE I'd be fired for refusing to go along with a company policy that I felt to be morally (and ethically) wrong. When you have righteousness on your side you'd be amazed at what can actually happen. (I wasn't fired, and I didn't follow policy).

I'm not saying you're lying or anything, because I don't know your situation. But I do know how scary it is to put yourself out there like that, and I know that it's a lot easier to say "Ohh pfft, he's in academia so he can get away with that... I could never do that." But really that's nothing more than an excuse.

There's plenty of situations where someone in the private sector could get away with a lot more than someone in academia, and vice versa. Making an insinuation that somehow life is easier in academia is not only wrong, but it's also a little insulting to what he decided to put himself through.

I'm not suggesting that you start using Tor even if it's against company policy (that would be something entirely different than what he did), but executing your basic rights as an individual will not result in instant unemployment.

Stand up for what you believe in! If it gets your fired, you're working in the wrong place. If you worked somewhere that wasn't going to immediately fire you for doing something you feel to be just, then maybe your blood pressure wouldn't be so high!

Re:Bravo

[miskatonic alumnus (668722)]

Right on. Why should I have to pay for a police force, judges, politicians, schools, military, highways, or anything else the public uses? I can educate my own kids, do some gardening, walk to town, and take care of myself.

Re:Bravo

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Not sure how you got that out of what I said.

What I was saying is that I face large bills if I lose my insurance so I do not feel free to "fight the man".

Answering your question however:

1) Every american should be able to pay the negotiated rate for items. If all blue cross pays the hospital is $1,375 for a gall bladder operation- why should an uninsured person have to pay $18,325 for the same exact operation? If you can show that the hospital is charging anyone a certain price, you should be able to pay that same price for the same service.

2) Every american should have basic (and I do mean *BASIC*) health care covered socially. This includes random things like broken legs and car wreck injuries and not things like chemo therapy (and I say that as a cancer survivor). The larger the pool, the lower the costs. Right now, cherry picking is getting so extreme that you can't get insurance unless you are well. If I were grand high poohbah, I would set this at $1,000 * the minimum wage with a 20% co-pay but 0% on annual physicals. Everything over $1,000 would be your cost. If you used no benefits except the free physicals, I'd give you back 5% ($350) as a tax credit.

Why I say this is that we are competing against countries where this is true and it puts our companies at a competative disadvantage.

Re:Bravo

[KerberosKing (801657)]

The thing is, tenure is earned by outstanding scholarship over years of teaching and research. It is a long-standing tradition of university life. Further, it is crucial that we as a society have high-profile people that can question and critique the status-quo of governments, companies and other powerful groups without great fear of reprisals. Such protections are needed, else the relatively low pay and long hours of professors would hardly seem worth it when contrasted with executives and their exorbitant pay.

Re:Bravo

[javelinco (652113)]

FYI (from TFA): My reason for downloading and installing the Tor plug-in was actually simple: I'd read about it for some time, was planning to discuss it in two courses I teach, and figured I should have some experience using it before I described it to my students. The courses in question both deal with controlling technology, diffusing it throughout society, and freedom and censorship online. When I cover online censorship in countries with no free press, I focus on how those countries rely on hardware, software, and phalanxes of people to make sure citizens can reach only government-approved media. Crackdowns on independent journalists, bloggers, and related dissidents all too often result in their being beaten, incarcerated, or worse. Technologies like Tor represent a beacon of freedom to people in those countries, and I would be doing my students a disservice if I didn't mention it.

Re:Bravo

[QuantumG (50515)]

I think maybe there's something you're overlooking: a university is not a business. I know that folks in the US might be shocked to hear me say this.. after all, universities are run as if they are businesses, and typically in a more cutthroat fashion than regular businesses, but how many businesses do you know, outside the aviation industry, that receive regular funding from the government? The university network belongs to the people and, although that doesn't give people the right to do whatever they want on the network, it does mean that university IT has a responsibility to ensure civil liberties are not trampled. If they don't like that, then they shouldn't have taken government funding.

Government funding

[sjbe (173966)]

how many businesses do you know, outside the aviation industry, that receive regular funding from the government?

Oil, farming, auto (roads), space (NASA), rail (AMTRAK), the defense industry, telecom, utilities, ... Do I need to go on? The government subsidizes most industries to some extent and some (defense and farming among others) to a very large extent. Sometimes it's grants, sometimes it's in the form of tax relief, sometimes its as a customer but the government funds a huge variety of industries.

Re:Bravo

[neomunk (913773)]

Child porn like everybody else?

Fuck you.

I have had tor installed for many moons now, and have a severe reaction to child porn (or any type of sexual abuse, especially of children) due to the fact that an overwhelming majority of women I've gotten close enough to to talk about such things have been molested at some point in their life.

How about people who use it just because the country they are in has an abusive civil rights regime, or because they don't trust their ISP to keep their browsing habits secret? (Maybe they REALLY like the old cartoon Gem and are embarrassed about it) Maybe, just maybe, the person thinks that they are under surveillance for legal activities (like planning anti-war demonstrations).

Forget all that, the only thing you need know about it is that it's none of your fucking business what these people are doing. The old "they wouldn't care if they aren't doing anything wrong" bit is so played out, so proven stupid, and so indicative of 'fucktardation' that if you hadn't sent a damn shiver down my spine by calling me a supporter of child porn I'd have completely ignored you.

I couldn't though. Idiots are only dangerous when allowed to say such misinformed and ignorant things and are not called on it.

P.S.

Fuck you once more for implying that I'm some type of child molester (even a passive one) you freedom hating punk.

Re:Bravo

[neomunk (913773)]

Are you shitting me? So by that logic everyone in Florida who's paid any taxes, or even anyone who's bought anything IN Florida and paid state sales tax on it was funding ole' cyber-fondle Foley's (attempted?, completed?) trysts with underage boys?

Or even better, everyone in the U.S. who has in any way paid for any road construction, well they've supported every criminal who tried to get away by car.

C'mon now, who's next in line for trying to tell me that the desire of privacy is indicative of criminal behavior.

ill prepared?

[mhokie (988228)]

"The visitors said it was likely against university policy"

Could they not be bothered with actually checking the policy since they were there to enforce it?

Re:ill prepared?

[Selanit (192811)]

"The visitors said it was likely against university policy" Could they not be bothered with actually checking the policy since they were there to enforce it?

In fact, they brought a printout of the policy to the meeting with the professor. The reason they weren't sure is that when the policy was written, Tor didn't exist yet. It might violate the policy, but they hadn't faced this kind of thing before, so they weren't certain.

Re:ill prepared?

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Well, we can't say for sure now, because it's not like TFA included a copy of the relevant policy (although, if someone wanted to, they could probably figure out where the guy in the article works, and find the policy from there), but he admits that it's vaguely written, and was written back before Tor existed. So there are two immediate issues:

1) The policy may be so vague, as written, so as to make it unclear whether Tor is legitimate or not. For instance, it could simply have a blanket prohibition of doing things that are detrimental to the network, but not specify exactly what's prohibited and allowed. This is fairly common in most AUPs that I've read, particularly academic ones; rather than attempting to specifically outline what you can't do, they basically say "anything that's bad, don't do it." (Usually in a more verbose fashion, but that's the general idea.) Sometimes they're clear about who decides what is 'bad,' other times less so. It all depends on how bright a person wrote the policy.

2) The policy, as written, may actually prohibit Tor, but the faculty member, who said he was part of the committee that wrote the policy, believes that owing to the age of the policy and his knowledge of the writers intentions, that it was never intended to prohibit something like Tor. Thus, his usage, while technically in violation, he believes is OK because -- to put it bluntly -- he knows what behaviors the policy was supposed to prohibit better than the sysadmin does. (This seems like it could be a dangerous position for him to take, but I guess if you've got tenure, you might as well use it.)

question

[Peter La Casse (3992)]

Widespread use of Tor could be a huge headache for network-security administrators, particularly in higher education. My university alone has more than 21,000 students. Imagine what would happen if even a tenth of them and a similar percentage of faculty and staff members started using Tor regularly. With all the spam scams, phishing scams, identity theft, and related criminal enterprises going on around the world many of which involve remotely hijacking university-owned computers we could approach technological anarchy on the campus.

How does Tor enable those things, and how would more people using Tor make those things worse than they already are?

Re:question

[xenocide2 (231786)]

I think the bigger problem is that they still figured out it was him!

half reasonable request

[by Anonymous Coward]

Asking the professor not to use Tor on the university-owned network is reasonable.
Attempting to censure what he can say to his students is clearly not reasonable.

From Someone Who Has Been There

[nuintari (47926)]

I attended said university, I know Paul very well. I still run into him in town occasionally, and I will be sure to shake his hand for this.

I could say a lot of BAD things about *university* ITS, but I'd probably get me in far more trouble than it is worth to say them out loud. I am not there anymore, they don't effect me. I will just be happy that Paul is still the fine individual I have always looked up to.

Re:Bowling Green State University

[thesupermikey (220055)]

it might also be noted the BGSU, along with other state universities in ohio force graduate students on assistantships to sign forms saying that they are not members, or have not supported terrorist groups.

Since these are stored in university archives, and not checked, new graduate studies are (more or less) required by the state to sign loyalty oaths.

Re:the ivory tower

[wernst (536414)]

I'm not sure what the story is here, the right to use tor on someone elses network? Does he have that right? It's not his network. I've used tor at home, but completely understand I cant use it at work, and if during my university days, had it existed (maybe it did but whatever), and was told I couldnt use it, I'd just deal with that.

What are you talking about?

The use of tor on "someone else's network" is implicit, because you are connecting to someone on the other side of the network as a whole.

You say you use tor at home, but that's not "your" network either. I think your ISP would say that you are connecting to *their* network. I think the Hosting Provider of the web server you're connecting to would say it is *their* network. I think AT&T, (or whoever owns the backbone your data is traveling across) would say it is *their* network too.

If any of these network owners told you to stop using tor at home, what would you say to that? I'm guessing it would be pretty close to what this professor said to the IT goons trying to intimidate him into stopping.

The only time it's "your" network is when you have two of your own computers on your own LAN, and a tor router between them.

Re:But...

[baptiste (256004)]

It's not overblown at all. Just like the earlier article about the RIAA sending cease and desist just because you were in a swarm, not actually up or downloading. This professor was doing something completely legal and as asked by law enforcement to stop - it is inferred because they could not monitor his activities. This has a chilling effect. Notice that it wasn't just an IT person requesting he stop - he showed up with two detectives - who probably instigated the entire thing.

Common sense would dictate that the detectives, doing their jobs and trying to investigate an online scam, ask the professor some questions to determine if he was involved. But instead they asked him to stop doing something legal, tried to get him to NOT share something with his students, and used some vague provisions of an IT policy to back it up. This is a direct attack on academic freedom - 'Thou shalt not tell your students about this' and even worse, telling him not to use Tor himself - obviously because they couldn't track what he was doing.

Overblown? Hardly - we are losing our rights bit by bit by bit and people who think something like this is 'overblown' are part of the reason. By the time you all realize you've lost most of your rights it'll be too late.

Re:When you know so little about TOR...

[Kiaser Wilhelm II (902309)]

What if I replace the word TOR with the word "internet". Do you see why your post doesn't make sense?

Bit torrent gets throttled because it is a bandwidth hog, not because its often used for copyright infringement. If that was the issue, it would be blocked totally in the places where it is throttled instead.

What exactly is your point? Shit gets abused all the time.