Several Canadian universities have outsourced email and transmission services to American companies such as Google and Microsoft
With the recent revelations about US intelligence services monitoring communiciations, new questions are being raised about privacy and security.
Many staff and students are concerned about protection of their private information on these US-based “cloud” servers that the American intelligence agencies have been mining
Major Canadian universities such as Dalhousie in Nova Scotia, and the University of Alberta say switching to the US servers will save millions of dollars as they don’t have to buy and maintain banks of servers. They say the US companies also offer many cutting-edge features.
The issue is being raised as the large and prestigious University of Toronto considers switching its faculty email and other online tools to the Microsoft Office 365, which is offered free of charge to universities.
The concern is that conversations and opinions which might be considered in some circles as “controversial”, along with important research data and results, might become available to US spy agencies like the NSA (National Security Agency). This could expose people to potential scrutiny during travel and also potentially compromise Canadian research, and industry competitiveness.
Andrew Clement is a professor in the U of T’s faculty of information and has studied the NSA (National and internet traffic for years. Speaking to the Globe and Mail newspaper he says, “ As a non-U.S. person, there are no legal protections in the U.S. against access to Canadians’ data.”
The U of T recently moved 135,000 student accounts to the Microsoft cloud (claiming a one million dollar saving) and is now debating the move of faculty and staff emails, calendaring, and file sharing.
In British Columbia, privacy laws prevent personal information on public institutions from being held outside the country. The University of British Columbia is now building its own cloud servers and plans to share it with other schools in BC and possibly more widely.
There is still quite a large division of opinion.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers is publicly opposed along with the large U of T Students Union. However at the University of Ottawa where the switch to Google-hosted mail is an option, some 40-thousand students signed in, and less than have 3,000 opted out.
(with files from the Globe & Mail)
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.