Mar 24, 2008 : CDN School Protests Google Tools Use

📅 March 24, 2008 - The adoption of Google's (google.com) software as a service model by a Canadian university's administration has sparked criticism among faculty and students over the system's lack of privacy. 


Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, implemented the hosted software 18 months ago, after its previous system kept crashing on a daily basis. With a new installation projected to cost more than $1 million and months to implement, the school administration opted on Google's free, cutting-edge hosted software to serve its 8,000 students and faculty.

And while Michael Pawlowski, Lakehead's VP of administration and finance, says it was the right decision at the time, saving the university millions in operating costs, he and many of the faculty have their qualms about the system's inability to maintain privacy. Google requested that the school to not transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.

The US Patriot Act, a bill passed shortly after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, grants authorities the means to secretly view personal data held by US organizations. Under this legislation, US intelligence can scan documents, single-out key words and generate profiles of the authors, resulting in a definitive loss of academic freedom for Lakehead's faculty and students.

This greatly conflicts with Canada's privacy laws, which require organizations to guard private information and notify individuals when their data has been distributed. Additionally, the advertising-based Google tools automatically dig up information from personal information to generate a profile for advertisers.

Professors say the Google deal violated their collective agreement that guarantees parties the right to private communications. Many teachers are calling for an in-house system that does not allow third parties to view their emails.

Meanwhile, other organizations such as Toronto-based health institute, SickKids Foundation, are banning Google tools to avoid the possibility to US intelligence officials scouring their information.

Security experts say that many organizations are only now realizing the dangers of adopting Web-based tools hosted by a US company. However, Google says it has strived in the past to protecting customers' private information, citing a court case it fought in 2006 against attempts by the US Justice Department to subpoena customer search records.

Google said it will not disclose how often government agencies demand access to its customers' information or whether content on its new Web-based collaborative tools has been the subject of any reviews under the Patriot Act.

Earlier this month, The House of Representatives passed a surveillance bill that does not grant retroactive immunity for telecom providers alleged to have helped in the National Security Agency's unauthorized wiretapping program.