Friday, November 22, 2013

Scandal at AUB: a cover-up in the making

I have reported before about the scandal at AUB: I was hoping that there would be enough courageous faculty to undertake the necessary steps in order to investigate and to bring the entire case to the campus community.  There were early suspicions early on that certain Americans on campus were allegedly involved, and that they were later involved in the attempt to suppress any news of the story.  Typically, the AUB president appointed a commission to investigate but it was clear that the mandate was based on a false premise: that violations of the privacy of faculty, students, and staff at AUB is a right and prerogative that the AUB president can exercise at will.  The story first was reported (I am referring to the unreleased official report on the matter which was leaked to me):  "that the Internal Audit (IA) Office had obtained copies of the contents of faculty and staff email accounts on portable hard drives, and that these accounts could be accessed by the IA staff outside the confines of the IT Data Center. "  But the president made it clear in his assignment to the committee does challenge his right to violate the privacy of the staff, faculty, and students on campus.  Here what the official statement said:  "Additionally, the Group will review the university’s current technical environment as it relates to the need to protect the privacy of data while conducting highly targeted confidential access to the university’s e-mail database and archives by authorized individuals granted such access by the President".  How on earth could the members of the committee of the faculty accept such a language in their assignment?  How could they agree that the president can conduct "highly targeted confidential access to the university's email database"?  And the committee did not even bother to investigate whether the president has cooperated with the US government in responding to requests for "access to the university's email database and archives".  They did not bother.  Based on the report (still not released) this was an official whitewash.  The report spoke of new rules and regulations and there was no mention of investigate or of disciplinary action.  The AUB lived up to its reputation: an arm of a Western colonial power that treats the natives at AUB as individual without rights and without privacy.