--- Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 09:59:30 -0800 To: declanat_private From: Douglas Thomas <douglastat_private> Subject: Query, potential politech post In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20030205112657.01994ec0at_private> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed I am not sure if this is politech-worthy, but I shall ask regardless. My program has just installed an particularly odious device called an Omnilock (http://www.omnilock.com be sure to check the creepy eye logo on the home page) on all of our classroom doors within our building. They are now "keyed" to individual faculty IDs and the locks, conveniently enough, provide an "audit trail" of the last 5,000 users. These audit trails are fed into a Windows DB, called the OmniLock Faciltiies Manager. Now, here is my quandary. I have been charged with writing a privacy policy about how the information collected from the Omnilock audit trails may be collected, stored, accessed and used. The faculty is in agreement that such information should not be collected, stored, accessed or used in any way shape or form. So, how does one write such a policy that doesn't make the poor tech support people's (who are trapped in the middle of this) lives hell, yet at the same time makes it impossible to use these locks for surveillance (which I assume was the rationale for the shift since keys have all the required qualities to simply limit access). More to the point, how do I write this such that it has language which is both legally binding and would be actionable if violated? Is there a simple way to set up an anonymous system to delegate authorization codes which would allow the lock to know the person is "authorized," but not necessarily who the person is? Does anyone have experience with the way these locks work? I thought I'd ask, as this is an opportunity to actually intervene in the deployment of a surveillance system and I'd love to get feedback from as many people as possible. Best regards, Doug ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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