Higher Ed coalition fights wiretapping rules: new FCC regulations give the feds access to internet, phone services.

A COALITION OF 14 EDUCATION GROUPS LED by the American Council on Education filed suit in January against the Federal Communications Commission to block new surveillance rules from taking effect. Behind the concern is the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that requires telecommunications companies to enable wiretaps by law enforcement agencies. Last fall, the FCC amended CALEA to include broadband access and internet phone services--the kind found at colleges and universities.

The Bush administration contends the new capabilities will help fight terrorism, yet others worry about privacy violations--not to mention the expense of complying with the rules.

"If CALEA requires the replacement of a substantial portion of network equipment, the cost to the entire higher education community could total billions of dollars," the brief reads. Citing the careful long-range planning that goes into technology expenditures, ACE--along with the Association of American Universities, the American Association of Community Colleges, and others--maintains that the compliance target of spring 2007 would require funding to be diverted from other programs, resulting in possible course eliminations and tuition increases.

While economics are at the forefront of the controversy, the suit also speaks to concerns about growing government intrusions on privacy and free speech. Many believe the government's actions cast a pall over constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the National Security Agency, also in January, to stop illegal domestic surveillance. The ACLU was joined by educators who claim the program intercepts vast quantities of international telephone and internet communications by innocent Americans without court approval.

One of the participants in the suit told University Business that colleges and universities should be deeply concerned about the effect of the government's actions on academic freedom. "Professors and students can get caught up in the net of warrantless intercepts of phone and e-mail communications, and this could compromise confidential interviews they may be conducting on sensitive matters," notes Larry Diamond, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "The problem is potentially very serious for political science research but could also affect research in a wide range of other disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, and religious studies. Keep in mind that the people we are in touch with or whose interviews we are internally communicating about need not be terrorists. If they have been in touch with people who have been in touch with people who are suspected of being terrorists, then, according to what has been reported about this warrantless surveillance program, these innocent people, by two or three degrees of separation, may still be monitored, and so may the researchers who are in communication with them or who are writing back to their professors about them."

Left unchecked, he says, "I think it is likely that over time the power of the government to monitor what we do will expand, and academic freedom will likely shrink in proportion to it."