After thinking more about the case of the public school that was caught watching students on their webcams, I started to consider the right universities have to monitor all traffic on their Internet connection. This is a topic that affects us, since we have all at some point used Lehigh's Internet, whether it be in your dorm, library, classroom, etc. If you are connected to a universities' Internet or using their computers, you better believe they are watching every move you make. Anything you say, buy, websites you visit, downloads, and so on, is tracked and can be used against you at any given time. Personally, I know several people who have been caught illegally downloading music by Lehigh University and have been contacted via email, advising them to stop all activity related or legal action would be taken. Clearly, monitoring activity on the Internet is an area that Lehigh takes seriously, and holds no margin for error. Once caught do something inappropriate on the Internet by a university once, it is likely that you will be on their radar for a while. Some people believe that universities taking action and monitoring Internet traffic is an invasion of privacy, but the fact of the matter is they have every right to do so in accordance with the Patriot Act. The bottom line is, if you do not want to the university keeping track of your online activity, then do not use their Internet.
How do you feel about your personal online conversations, maybe purchases you make online, or any of your online actions not being private?
When I think about issues like this in broad terms relating to everyone I tend to think this form of monitoring is ok, because like we discussed in class, if youre not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide and it's supposedly for the "protection of the greater good". Yet, I guess I'm a hypocrite because when I think about myself being monitored over Lehigh's internet, I think it's creepy and definitely an invasion of my privacy. Even though everything I do on the internet is very trivial and unentertaining, it's weird to think someone else who I dont know can monitor it all. But even though I don't particularly care for this practice, at the same time what can I do about it? So I guess I just let it be as it is, and except that this is now how things now operate...and hope something good really is coming out of all this monitoring.
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