Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Princeton Admissions Dean Removed for Accessing Yale Admissions Info Stephen LeMenager, the Princeton admissions dean who was caught gathering information about student applications through Yale's web site, was removed today. LeMenager claimed to be "testing Yale's website for vulnerabilities," he used the site to access information about students applying to both Yale and Princeton. Though LeMenager clearly behaved unethically, it seems obvious that Yale's admissions office was at least as unethical in their behavior of securing admissions information with only a birthday and social security information. This issue illustrates the problem with using the social security number as the de facto private password and user id: the more it is used as a unique id, the less secret it is and the more prone to abuse, as in this case. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: National] 7:16:43 PM

Woody Allen. "His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." [Quotes of the Day] 2:02:55 PM

Court Upholds School Policy on Drug Tests in New Jersey A New Jersey appeals court ruled yesterday that a Hunterdon County high school can randomly conduct drug tests on students who participate in teams and clubs or who park their cars in the school parking lot. [via Privacy Digest] 1:59:27 PM

"Homeland Insecurity" The Atlantic | September 2002 A top expert says America's approach to protecting itself will only make matters worse. Forget "foolproof" technology--we need systems designed to fail smartly. This article generally focuses on the value of technological security measures, but the overall illustration of "security measures gone awry" is useful in the context of Homeland Security law enforcement measures and privacy. [via Privacy Digest] 1:55:07 PM

School Desegregation Policy Is Challenged The outcome of a case now before a federal judge could determine the fate of hundreds of school diversity policies nationwide. By Tamar Lewin. [New York Times: National] 1:40:43 PM

ACLU building support against TIPS Think the Bush administration's citizen informant program is a huge invasion of privacy? The ACLU has a website for you. By Julia Scheeres. [Wired News] 1:27:00 PM

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of this liberty;...

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