Privacy has been a prickly topic at Harvard ever since it was revealed last year that the university had searched the email accounts of some junior faculty members, prompting a major self-examination and promises by the administration to do better.
But this week, that sore spot was poked again. The university acknowledged that as part of a study on attendance at lectures, it had used hidden cameras to photograph classes without telling the professors or the students.
While students and faculty members said that the secret photography was not as serious as looking through people’s email, it struck many of them as out of bounds — or, at least, a little creepy. And it set off more argument about the limits of privacy expectations.
“I wouldn’t call it spying,” as some people have, said Jerry R. Green, a professor of economics and former university provost. “But I don’t think it’s a good thing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/secret-cameras-rekindle-privacy-debate-at-harvard.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:10AM
Which most large corporations acknowledge doing routinely, for various purposes ranging from monitoring employees to prevent illegal activity/sexual harassment/moonlighting/job hopping/transfer of internal documents, to performing "Big Data" studies on interactions between employees in different groups within the company.