Keeping Tabs

Every time a first-year uses a card key to open a door, a central computer records the student's identity, and the time and location of the entry.

The information flashes on a screen in the Harvard University Police Headquarters and is stored in a computer database.

Soon electronic access control will be expanded to the residential houses and the University will have a limited capability of monitoring all undergraduates.

In George Orwell's 1984, the government knew when people came, when they left and where they went. Surveillance gave the government complete control.

Most people would agree that Harvard is not an Orwellian government. The card key system can hardly trace an undergraduate's every move. Still, civil libertarians are raising questions about how the College is intending to use the system records.

Elizabeth S. Nathans, dean of first-year students, says worries about Big Brother are misplaced. Harvard designed the electronic access control to protect students, not to track them down, says Nathans.

"I think you have to avoid a sort of mindset of conspiracy of the University against the students. That's not what we're doing," Nathans says. "I think you have to assume intelligence and good will on the part of people who designed the system as a security system and not a spy system."

But Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 says the Administrative Board may use card key information to corroborate evidence in disciplinary hearings. That has student critics worried.

Nathans and other administrators stress trust. The College only wants to protect students. But rights activists are worried that the administration will abuse this trust and infringe upon the privacy of students.

Each week card keys are used 67,000 times to open the doors to first-year dormitories.

When the card key is fed into the reader, the transaction is relayed to a central computer. If the card number is valid at the time and location of entry, the system opens the door. The records are stored for about a month before new entries are recorded and old ones deleted. The information may be accessed by the College any time before it is deleted.

Police used the card key information early this fall when students in Grays Hall reported what they believed was someone attempting to break into their dorm room.

The police officers investigating the incident called the headquarters and determined that Alex H. Cho '96 of Wigglesworth had last entered the dorm.

After waking up all of Cho's roommates at 4 a.m. by shining a flashlight in their faces, police found Cho sleeping in Grays' first-floor common area, book in hand.

Cho told the officers he had no knowledge of the incident. Cho says the officers were "real casual" and believed him.

"I see the danger of relying too heavily on the card key information, but again, it's a tradeoff for increased security," Cho says. "I don't want to seem like it doesn't disturb me at all because in an abstract sense, it does seem quite Big Brotherish. But in a practical sense, it's just another measure that's taken to protect us."

Robert W. Yalen '95, assistant director for student affairs at the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH), says he is concerned that the University does not have set rules governing the use of the information.

Last November, CLUH submitted a proposal to Jewett asking the University to set a specific card key policy.

The proposal asks the University not to release the card key information to "any individual, agency or organization, on or off campus, except in cases where required by law or the student gives his or her approval."

The CLUH proposal requests that students be notified when information about themselves is released and told to whom it was released. Additionally, CLUH would like to see students given the right to access information about themselves on demand.

Although no official discussions will take place until February, Jewett says he endorses these proposals.

The main point of contention between CLUH and Jewett is whether the Administrative Board should be given access to the information. Jewett says the information may be used in the future.

But Yalen and CLUH maintain that the Ad Board should not use the information in disciplinary hearings because of its circumstantial nature.

Yalen says the records acquired through electronic access control should be restricted to the College because the information can inaccurately incriminate a student.

The information cannot determine how long students stay in the building because the system does not record when students exit the dorms. Students also open doors for each other, and the information may be recorded from borrowed, lost or misplaced keys, says Yalen.

"The Ad Board should not be able to access the card key information because the information is very prejudicial and circumstantial," Yalen says.

Under law, government agencies can access card key information through a subpoena. Although no law restricts the College from accessing card key information, CLUH is asking the College to voluntarily refrain from using it.

"We make allowances in our report for any legal requirements. We are just talking within the College," Yalen says.

But Jewett says the information may be used to corroborate evidence. Students' concerns are overblown because Ad Board officials realize the limited nature of the card key information, Jewett says.

"I think everyone recognizes the limited validity of the data," he says.

But Yalen says the Ad Board should not be allowed to access unreliable information.

"We felt that it would be hard for someone not to make unwarranted assumptions based on this information if it were used before the Ad Board," Yalen says.

"Just as lie detector tests can't be used in the court of law, because of the uncertainty, we felt that similarly there was too much uncertainty in this information for them to use it," he says.

Some changes are in store which may appease some students concerned with the issue of privacy. Currently whenever a card is used, the time, place and card holder's identity appears on a computer screen in the police department.

The information is used not to determine who is entering the building, but to notify police officers to close the door of an open entryway, says Lichten.

"People really have to think that there aren't that many break-ins," says Lichten. "A great advantage of this system is that it tells us that someone left the door open. That's where the great enhancement of security is."

Soon only an alarm that indicates an open door will appear on the screen and the name of the person entering the dorm will be removed, says Lichten, who is in charge of the system.

"It's just a matter of computer programming," Lichten says. "But the decision has been made to definitely not show the card holder's identity."

Nathans says the administration reacted in part to the issue of surveillance. "We were concerned about some things that we discovered about things that appeared on screens," Nathans says.

"We have asked that those things be immediately removed," she says. "We have no wish to keep track of students."

Lichten says the change was made as much for practical reasons. The alarm that will appear on the screen to indicate an open door will simplify work for the guard who watches the computer.

"We realized for a guard monitoring the system, 67,000 transactions a week was a lot of visual stuff to watch," Lichten says. "It just seemed that what we were just looking for was the alarms."

Although the time, location, and identity of the student will not appear on the screen, the information will still be recorded in the database.

Nathans says the student's card use will still be recorded so that officials may use the information to help apprehend unauthorized entry.

Once the computer is reprogrammed so that the names are no longer listed on the police's computer, officers will not be able to directly access the information.

But CLUH argues that although the identity of the card holder no longer appears on the screen, electronic access control still has the potential to infringe on the privacy of students.

"Our original concern was not that people would abuse the information as it was recorded, but that once it was recorded, it would then be abused," says Yalen.

CLUH says it will support electronic access control when the administration formulates a policy to keep the records private. "I think there are a lot of benefits to card keys, both in terms of security and of flexibility for the University to control access," Yalen says.

"As long as we make sure that the rights of the students are protected, I think they are a good idea," Yalen says.

Students interviewed say they do not mind if the police have access to the card key information for security reasons. But most were also in agreement that the Ad Board should not have access to the information.

Charlene Morisseau '95, who used the system in Pennypacker Hall, says she believes the information from the cards should only be used in an emergency situation.

"I would have a problem with the system if it were used for non-security reasons, for instance by the Ad Board," she says.

Administrators believe that students, who were raised listening to Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" and watching reruns of "The Prisoner," are a little paranoid if they believe that Big Brother is watching them.

"I think the issue of surveillance is not a very serious one," Jewett says. "I think the potential misuse of the data is not a serious issue."

"But we will also try to have a set of guidelines that will try to resolve some of the concerns," Jewett adds.

Nathans, who worked at Duke University before coming to Harvard, says the issue of surveillance was never raised there.

"Several years ago, Duke installed the system. It was a system that worked very well and did help tremendously with the security problems on the campus," Nathans says.

Lichten says that students should be concerned with the issue of security, not the question of surveillance. "I think in general people's concern about this is on the wrong subject," Lichten says. "The concerns should be to make residents as safe as they can be. Students and the administration should be focusing on that together."