Tuesday, April 9, 2002

Virginia Tech Police Seize and Search a Professor's Computer in Vandalism Case By JEFFREY R. YOUNG Some faculty members at Virginia Tech say they're worried about their privacy and their intellectual-property rights following an incident last week in which campus police officers seized a professor's computer to search it for an e-mail message about a vandalism incident. Martha McCaughey, an associate professor who is director of the women's-studies program, found two campus-police officers waiting outside her office door last Thursday afternoon. They entered and took her university-issued Apple Macintosh computer, she said. Ms. McCaughey said the officers would not let her make back-up copies of any files that she needed for her work. They returned the computer the next day. According to Larry Hincker, Virginia Tech's associate vice president for university relations, the police hope that data from the computer's hard drive will help them track the origin of an e-mail message that had been sent to several people on the campus, including Ms. McCaughey. The e-mail message was sent by a group that claimed responsibility for spray-painting anti-rape slogans at more than 15 locations on the campus. The campus police had contacted Ms. McCaughey earlier asking for the e-mail message, but she told them that she had already deleted it. Mr. Hincker said that because the computer is owned by the university, the institution had the right to search the hard drive without the professor's permission. "The university reserves the right to copy or examine files on university systems," Mr. Hincker said. He added that as legal precaution, university police had obtained a search warrant. Ms. McCaughey, however, said that no such warrant was presented to her. Several professors and students have objected to the search, arguing that it violated Ms. McCaughey's privacy and intellectual-property rights. "I find Virginia Tech police's sudden confiscation of Martha McCaughey's office hard drive to be whimsical, utterly intrusive, and truly disturbing," wrote Piyush Mathur, a graduate student at the university, in an e-mail message sent to a campus discussion list. "Going by the logic of those cops, the university can confiscate basically any documents stored in our offices (as we use office paper), confidential letters (on official letter pads) and e-mail messages (university software, again), and tap into our phone messages (on the phone machines) as well: without any specific formal legal mandate or explanation or prior notice or warrant." Laura Parisi, an assistant professor of women's studies, said that she worries that searches of professors' hard drives could lead authorities to take material found there out of context. "I do a lot of work on women's human-rights issues, and I look on a lot of Web sites for research on sex tourism," she said. "Someone could possibly interpret that as pornographic. ... I think that is troubling. [What] if I wasn't there to explain why this was important for my professional life?" Ms. McCaughey said that her office computer contains a number of documents that she considers private and confidential -- including some papers that her students have written about sensitive topics, such as their experiences with domestic abuse. While Ms. McCaughey said she recognizes that the university owns the computer itself, she said university officials should not have the right to search her data files without her consent. Mr. Hincker, the university spokesman, said the search was legal and in line with the university's policies on intellectual property. He said that the police had first asked for Ms. McCaughey's help in tracking down the message, and that she had refused. Ms. McCaughey, however, said she had told the police that she would cooperate after she returned from a trip and could back up files so they would not be accidentally erased. Debra Duncan, the campus-police chief, said her officers "did everything by the book." She would not comment on whether the search of the professor's computer had yielded the information the police were seeking. Mr. Hincker said the anti-rape slogans, which were painted on the night of a campus-sponsored "Take Back the Night" march opposing violence against women, had cost nearly $10,000 to remove. "Vandalism isn't an appropriate method of communication in anyone's book," he added. The university has encouraged professors to use computers in their work in recent years, and the women's-studies program offers several courses over the Internet. Ms. McCaughey said she is now concerned that discussions in online classrooms may be less private than those that take place in traditional ones. "If I was a student, I'd be sitting there thinking about whether I should be taking an online course," she said. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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