[FC-discuss] Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail

[Greg Grossmeier]

<quoting name="Alec Story" date="2010-02-10" time="00:50:31 -0500">
> Cornell switched this past year, from a user perspective, it's been great
> having tons of storage and a useful web interface, as well as still having
> IMAP and POP

"useful" web interface is up for debate regarding gmail: where the EF are 
my threads? Do you know where in the thread I am replying right now, and 
to whom? Only because I quote correctly. </rant>

But seriously, I don't know of any modern university IT department who 
also doesn't have "tons of storage" along with IMAP and POP access.


> but I haven't been able to find anything on the freedom
> aspects of things besides general privacy agreement stuff that probably
> doesn't hold water.

How about the fact that Google is not an educational institution so FERPA 
might be iffy when it comes to students privacy. From the ed.gov page on 
FERPA: "The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an 
applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education." -- 
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

Yep, Google is exempt.

Same issue with Google Health. From their own mouth:
"Unlike a doctor or health plan, Google Health is not regulated by the 
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal 
law that establishes data confidentiality standards for patient health 
information." -- http://www.google.com/intl/en-US/health/hipaa.html

Basically, you are losing A LOT of privacy rights (from a university 
student perspective) by using Google for email. For average joe web user, 
every webmail service has pretty much the same (bad) privacy concerns 
(exempt from this statement are the free speech centric hosting/email 
providers that delete logs daily).

Greg

-- 
|       Greg Grossmeier |
| http://grossmeier.net |