Your Acceptable use policy should state that k12 e-mail is not private
and that it can be monitored at any given time, but you should never
check or read anyone's e-mail unless advised.  It's a matter of cyber
ethics.

Paul Wood
IT Coordinator, RNESU


-----Original Message-----
From: School Information Technology Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tommy Walz
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 1:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: email monitoring

In a message dated 4/17/02 11:41:29 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< For those of you who provide email for your staff and students would
you

discuss your policy on reading email as the network administrator? Do
you

read individual's email only when there is reason to believe there is

illegial activity occuring or other similar problems. Do you randomly
read

email on a regular basis? What are your policies and practices dealing
with

email monitoring? >>

Oh, boy, talk about sticky matters!  Our policy is clear that there is
no
privacy on our network and we reserve the right to look at anything we
want.
We have looked at some downloads, but I don't think we have actually
looked
at anybody's mail.

We were advised that if we were to check people's mail, we would have to
do
it on a  regular basis; otherwise, you could be accused of singling out
an
individual unfairly. I think it was actually part of a presentation
Winton
Goodrich was sponsoring around the state.  I have no idea if that advice
is
valid, but we are not interested in being the mail police in Barre and
do not
want to be routinely reading other people's mail.  I would not hesitate
to
jump in if we felt clear violation of law or policy were taking place,
and
perhaps pay the penalty later.

It will be interesting to hear what others are doing.

Tommy Walz
Technology Coordinator
Barre Supervisory Union #61
Barre VT 05641
802-476-5011