Faculty Senate: Onward Through the Fog

OK, here's how it's supposed to work.

There's this mythical beast of burden called the Faculty Council. It consists of, for the most part, a universities full time teaching faculty. So far so good.

There is another mythical concept called Governance. It's sorta like management but different. How different? Well, first.... No that's not....OK....It's sorta like....

OK I don't know how they are different. Except most Universities are divided into two parts: the Academic side and the Administrative side. The Academic side is further divided into Faculty and Administrators. Confused yet?

Now, somehow, the Faculty Council is supposed to be part of the Shared Governance of the university. This is called Faculty Governance.

Hiding Behind the Router: Not a Good Idea

I’ve recently hit a run of folks who seem to think that the router on their home computer is some sort of Romulan Cloaking Device, hiding the home network from evil forces (primarily law enforcement.) Tis a case of Alexander Popes’ “A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:”

Here’s the scenario. Routers (like the Linksys WAP-11) basically isolate all of the computers on the LAN side from the WAN (Internet side) by hiding the local IP addresses. It’s sort of like a phone system in which there is only one outside number but each company phone has its own extension. The router magically (sorta) keeps up with which outside call (website) is talking to which extension(computer).
So when someone tries to trace data packets to a specific computer, the router blocks access. It is trivial to find out the IP address of the router but it is impossible to find out the IP address of the actual computer that the data is going to.

So folks are blithely downloading, torrenting, lime wiring because they know that the router is hiding the final destination of all of the illegal material.
Wrong, ever so wrong. Well, they are not wrong that the outside world can’t see the final destination, but they are dead wrong that they are safe. The courts have adopted the old Mean Joe Green philosophy. "I just tackle the whole backfield, and throw 'em out one by one 'til I get to the quarterback.

In U.S. v. Carter, 2008 WL 623600 (U.S. District Court – District of Nevada 2008), the courts basically held the there only needed to be a “fair probability” that the illegal material was somewhere on the other side of the router and law enforcement could seize and search every computer connected to the router. And don’t bother hiding behind the wireless link either. U.S. v. Perez, 484 F.3d 735 (2007) shot that down.

An in-depth discussion of these cases can be found on Professor Brenner’s cyb3rcrim3 blog at http://cyb3rcrim3.blogspot.com/search?q=spoofing
So here come the rubs. Law enforcement swoops in, tackles the whole backfield and discovers illegal material on one or more computers.

Rub 1- Who did it? We just moved from “fair probability” to “beyond reasonable doubt”. Can the material actually be traced forensically to a specific person.

Rub 2- Did Law Enforcement lose exculpatory evidence. The First Responders Handbook recommends that computers be unplugged before any analysis of what’s going on in the process stack/RAM world be done. This loses all of the Application/Process/RAM etc information. Including if there was a remote login in progress ( or remote assistance), a Trojan running or a variety of Terminate and Stay Resident evils.

Wikipedia defines the SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense as a multi-person scenario in which each person could assert that someone else downloaded the illegal material. Forensically, I'm not real sure that there's enough information in the logs and other non volatile meta-data to solidly connect a user to a file without the volatile data too. I don't think this has been tested in court yet but I’m willing to bet it’s on its way.


Notice that I haven’t really said what the illegal material is. That’s not an oversight. The range of illegal material I’ve heard about ranges from minor copyright infringements to serious felonies. It’s sort of funny that type of material is seems to change the opinion of how safe the downloader feels. But that’s another BLOG.

Bean Counters v Constitution

First and foremost, I’m dead set against drunk driving. I don’t do it. I know from personal experience how devastating traffic accidents (of all types) can be. So right up front this BLOG does not advocate easing or relaxing the DWI laws.

That being said, I do have a problem with having some administrative rule overriding a constitutionally guaranteed right. Here the scenario. I’m driving my car and I get stopped by an officer that believes I am driving impaired (drunk). He asks me to perform a field sobriety check. I decline. My refusal is protected under the Constitution and has been so ruled by the courts.

Then he asks me to provide a breath sample. I again decline and again my refusal is protected under the Constitution and has been so ruled by the courts. To make this scenario even more ridiculous, let’s further assume that I agree to provide either a blood or urine sample. I just don’t have a lot of faith in the Breathalyzer.

Here’s where I part company with our government. The officer sends a notice to the driver’s license folks that I have refused (aka exercised my constitutional rights) to provide a breath sample and they in turn suspend my license administratively for a year or so. Huh? Yep, apparently driving is a privilege that state gives me and can be taken away because they want too. Also apparently the state gets to pick and choose how I have to incriminate myself.

The state says that, by having a driver’s license, I automatically consent (implied consent) to submitting to a breathalyzer. Phrased differently…I can only have the privilege of driving if I agree to give up some of my constitutional rights.

Most people react to my rant above by saying, “Don’t drink and drive then there won’t be a problem.” This brings me to Reverend Niemöller who said in a famous poem:

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Wonder if I could paraphrase this one.

First they declared driving a privilege and administratively removed it, and I did not speak out—because I did not drink and drive.

Then they declared gun ownership a privilege and administratively removed it, and I did not speak out—because I did not own a gun.

. . . . . .

Well you see where this is going. Our legal system is similar to a person in that, if you torture it long enough, it will say anything you want it to.

Ethics, Morality and Laws

There's a big mess when talking about ethics, morals, and law. Most authorities use the terms interchangable and they are not. At least they are not interchangeable here. (It's my blog.)

Let's start by defining and then ignoring one of the terms - morals. Morality has three common usages. The first is that morals are a code of conduct defined by philosophy, religion or individual conscience. The second is that morals are idealized code of conduct. We can work with either of these. And ignore them since they are pretty much beyond the scope of secular education. Or, more simply put, your morals come from your religion or philosophy and any attempt to change them is preaching, not teaching.

The third definition of morals is the problem. Many people use morals and ethics interchangable. This immediately generates a problem because it allows folks with agendas to declare unethical issues to be immoral. This muddies the waters considerably. For example, it is unethical for me (a professor) to award grades for profit. But is it a sin? In some moral systems it is; in others it isn't.

To avoid this problem, for the purposes of this article, morals will be considered to be separate from ethics and not subject to discussion. The debates over the morality of capital punishment, abortion, chewing gum in class and other issues cannot be solved because the moral authority lies far beyond anything changable.

To bring this point home, expand the discussion to include other cultures and religions.The reason Hindu's do not eat cows is not because it is illegal or unethical. It is because it is immoral. Hard to argue with that.

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So, having eliminated morality from the discussion, we now turn to ethics. There's a problem here too. Ethics is a branch of philosophy which includes moral issues. Since we aren't going to talk about morals, we aren't going to talk about that type of ethics either.

So what's left. Here's a definition that works well for me. Ethics are the rules and standards of conduct required by one's membership in a group. Think about it. Accountants, state employees, physicians, attorneys, and many other groups have Ethical Codes of Conduct. Even comic books have an ethical code. Do the medical codes on conduct apply to me? Nope, I'm not that kind of doctor. I don't belong to that group. How about the state employee ethics code. Yep, I've got to adher to that one.

Which brings us to the big difference between an ethical rule and a law. Law are rules and standards of conduct the society imposes on all of it's members under penalty of punishment. Break a law, go to jail. But what happens if I break an ethical rule? Jail? Nope, I get kicked out of the group.

Let's try some examples. What would happen to me if I didn't return phone calls? Not much. People get mad, things get messed up and I'd get yelled at. But I wouldn't get fired or kicked out of the "Professor Group". What could happen to an attorney if he didn't return phone calls. He could theoretically have her license taken away. Why? Because failing to communicate with a client is against the attorney code of ethics. Booted from the Island.

Would the attorney get arrested? Nope. What he did was unethical but not illegal.

Lets try another example. (I'm going to sneak morals back in here just for a second.) The State would like physicians to help with the lethal injections used for capital punishement. Is that moral? It really depends on the individual physician, her religious and/or philosophical beliefs. So, if the physican has no moral objection to capital punishment, is it legal for her to participate in an execution. Sure it is. Do physicians ever participate? Nope, because it has been declared unethical by the medical community that they belong to. For physicians, participation is legal, maybe moral but definitely unethical.

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OK, so where does that leave us. Well, we need to ask three separate questions about any of our actions or behaviors. Is it moral? Is it ethical? Is it legal? And it's entirely possible for something to be one, two or all three. Ask yourself the three questions for the following:

• Murder
• Cheating on taxes
• Driving 2 miles over the speed limit
• Listening to someone elses cell phone conversation when you can't help but hear it.
• Listening to someone elses cell phone conversation when you have to strain to hear it.
• Eating a Whopper Burger in India
• Slaughtering Midianites

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That last one brings us to our final point. Business, in fact Life itself, is global.We are required to interact with many cultures, governments and religions. We must realize that the voice on the other end of the phone or the author of the email may be operating under a much different set of morals, ethics and laws. We in the West can pretty much agree that it is illegal, immoral and unethical to pick up a rock and beat someone to death with it. But not everyone agrees with us.