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Canadian Privacy, US Laws, And Google
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-03-25
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The temple-pounding pain comes with the fact that Google, as a US-based company, has to subject itself to the Patriot Act. It means there is no true privacy online when communicating, short of encrypting everything.
That has Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in a fix. The Globe and Mail said Canadian privacy laws and the Patriot Act don't play nicely together, and professors are not happy:
At Lakehead, the deal with Google sparked a backlash. "The [university] did this on the cheap. By getting this free from Google, they gave away our rights," said Tom Puk, past president of Lakehead's faculty association, which filed a grievance against Lakehead administration that's still in arbitration.
Professors say the Google deal broke terms of their collective agreement that guarantees members the right to private communications. Mr. Puk says teachers want an in-house system that doesn't let third parties see their e-mails.
Lakehead should be further concerned with the revelations that the National Security Agency apparently has Internet traffic tapped at switching points with major carriers in the US. An ongoing lawsuit between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and AT&T seeks more information on what details may be passing into government hands on a regular basis.
Pehaps Lakehead should be worried about that alleged espionage more than the idea of the feds heading to Google to read their professors' email. It seems to be much more immediate.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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