I appreciate how many of you read my article, commented on it in various online venues, and linked to it so that others might read it. Please keep in mind my goal in writing this piece was not to denigrate our Information Technology Services office in any way. As I mentioned in the article, I worked there for years, and I still know and respect the folks that work there. Heck, our Director of ITS even had me over for Thanksgiving dinner a while back. Our ITS office, if I may attempt to personify it as a single entity for a moment, works tirelessly to make sure our network infrastructure remains stable, dependable, and active. Without the often thankless efforts of this office, we wouldn’t be able to send a single piece of email. We wouldn’t be able to rely on a vast, yet standard set of software tools that are officially supported on campus. We we wouldn’t even be able to get our paychecks. 

My point in writing this piece was not really about Tor, either. It could have just as easily been about Bit Torrent, YouTube, or any other application or service that could potentially be problematic for our university on a variety of levels. Rather, my point in writing this had more to do with my own need to explore, discuss, and attempt to balance the often competing needs of faculty and administrative IT, within the context of this ever-increasing pace of technological change swirling around us at all times.

The incident that served as the catalyst for the article — plainclothes detectives and IT security staff visiting a faculty member, unannounced — is certainly not unique to me, nor was the request to avoid teaching specific content areas in class. What is perhaps unique about it is that is occurred within the times we are living in now: pervasive broadband times, consumer / creator times, Web 2.0 times. This tenuous balance between faculty and IT needs is only going to be amplified in the coming years, as more faculty try to explore more technologies that may or may not be officially sanctioned by their respective IT departments. This isn’t a black or white, right or wrong issue, yet it is still an issue that needs to be debated in a heathy, open manner.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out some of the more interesting comments, questions, and in some cases misconceptions I have either personally received or read in various forums online:

• One of the first and most repeated statements I have read about me is that I’m a Computer Science professor. I’m not. I’m faculty in our Visual Communication & Technology Education department, which is not only entirely separate from our Computer Science department, it is also in a completely different college here (Technology, as opposed to Arts & Sciences) and in most universities.
• I’m not a scientist, and make no claims to be one. I am a technologist.
• I do not have tenure, and thus did not attempt to use tenure as a “free pass” to get my own way. I am, however, tenure-track.
• Neither I nor my wife typically consider me to be a “brave freedom fighter” who was “sticking it to The Man”. I’m not even sure who The Man is, really, unless it’s the Director of our ITS office I mentioned before, who had me over for dinner. He’s a real decent guy, and was a great boss while I worked there.
• I did not lose my job, at least as far as I know.
• I realize the following sentence could be read two different ways: “Someone looking up potentially sensitive information might prefer to use [Tor] — like a person who is worried about potential exposure to a sexually transmitted disease and shares a computer with roommates.” My editor and I went back and forth on this sentence for quite some time. Thank you, Slashdotters, for pointing that out. 

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If anyone else has some specific questions or comments about my article, I would love to hear them. ~Paul

[Post them below in the comments section and Paul will respond -- Just click on COMMENTS to get started.]

The issue centered on ITS’s concern with Paul using Tor, or The Onion Router, which masks online activity from others (including ITS). Being that it is one of ITS’s charges to be aware of activity on the university network, they obviously felt the need to look into Paul’s usage and express their concerns. Here are some snippets from the article (reprinted with permission):

“My reason for downloading and installing the Tor plug-in was actually simple: I’d read about it for some time, was planning to discuss it in two courses I teach, and figured I should have some experience using it before I described it to my students. The courses in question both deal with controlling technology, diffusing it throughout society, and freedom and censorship online.

…Their (ITS) job is to protect the network that allows me to do my job: to teach classes that are mostly or entirely online, and to conduct research. If they weren’t here as the first or even only line of defense against the unscrupulous elements of our technological society, my university would cease to function. It’s as simple as that.

…A moment later, I heard another knock on my door. One of the detectives had come back to ask if I would reconsider my position. I told him that while I would think about giving up Tor, I honestly felt that this was a clear case of academic freedom, and I could not bow to external pressure. I reminded him that Tor is a perfectly legal, open-source program that serves a wide variety of legitimate needs around the world.”

• As a faculty member, have you had to defend your academic freedom? If so, how?

• Where does one balance the institutional needs (rules) with student needs and professional ethics?