[Air-l] turnitin issue [and privacy+security of students]

[burkx006 at umn.edu]

On Mar 9 2007, Richard Stevens wrote:

>Why would the gov't be interested in electronic forms of student 
>papers? Well, considering that Homeland Security has in the past 
>stated a focus on incoming exchange student programs (thereby 
>granting student visas) as a high-level security threat for allowing 
>potential terrorists to enter the country, I'd say this desired 
>access is not beyond the realm of interest to our government.

Although I think this is a good point, everything we know about Turnitin 
indicates that they are storing a hash of the paper, rather than the full 
paper itself. I can see that the feds might well be interested in the 
topics of certain student papers, but I am not at all certain that the 
content can be reconstructed from what could be subpeoned or NSL'd. DLB

-- 
Dan L. Burk
Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55455
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