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Universities Fight FCC on Wiretapping Regulations

7:15 am on May 8, 2006 | Category: Regulation, VoIP

The Federal Communications Commission has reduced its wiretapping demands on educational institutions, after facing a court challenge from U.S. universities.

The regulatory agency has recently been putting pressure on universities to integrate wiretapping technology with their on-campus data networks, in order to let law enforcement officials monitor the internet activities of students.

Court challenges have caused the FCC to scale back its demands, asking colleges and universities to enable the monitoring of all traffic entering or leaving the network, abandoning its request to keep tabs on all traffic inside the local computer system.

This change is not enough to satisfy universities, however, says Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council on Education. Although a 1994 law requires telephone companies to install government wiretapping technology, the extension of this requirement to computer data networks, especially on university campuses, could have severe implications for the future of privacy and freedom of speech.

â€œWhat we fear is a big, open-ended commitment,â€ Hartle explained. â€œIf we agree to meet them halfway, and agree to change the equipment at the gateway, we have already conceded the legal argumentsâ€ that the wiretapping laws do not apply to educational institutions.

Other concerns involve maintaining the internet as a free and unregulated medium as well as sparing universities (and ultimately students) the extra expense of installing complicated surveillance equipment.

The American Council on Education has been joined by the American Civil Liberties Union in this ongoing fight against iron-fisted government regulation, and is currently having some success arguing its case before the courts.

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