Internet Monitoring at UK Universities

Anon | 29.08.2009 08:24 | Sheffield

UK Universities are monitoring/recording all websites visited by all students and staff through a 'proxy' portal.

All the northern universites have combined to create' JANET' - a proxy through which everyone has to register their internet connection - including personal lap tops in order to access the interent. Wireless is not available- only plug in- for this purpose.

When I challenged those responsible as to the reasons I was informed- " well you can't run a buisness through it".

When I pried what 'it' was, I was told 'the internet through our proxy' -when I pointed out that they were assuming ownership of the internet I was met with blank stares. The only other information forthcoming was that 3 people are emoloyed at my uni to 'use very sophisticated software' to monitor and record traffic, and yes there was a relationship with the police.

Anon

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

I'm sure this happens with every ISP

29.08.2009 08:47

I think you will find that every ISP monitors your traffic to some extent. You could get your own separate internet connection, though that may not be possible if you are in halls of residence or can't afford it. Alternatively, use some kind of encryption like Tor or a VPN to outside (unless of course these are also blocked).

The whole thing is an arms race, there will always be a way around it for the tech-savvy user. They probably know this and just want to stop the average user from sharing torrents all day long or allowing their virus-infected machine to become a spam zombie.

anon

JANET has been around for years

29.08.2009 09:35

It was the original university network!

J oint
A cademic
NET work

Der........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET

Bob

What happens

29.08.2009 09:37

I retired recently from being involved in IT in a University.

The reason for the proxy is to reduce traffice over non JANET links (JANET has existed for over 20 years and all universities in the UK are members of it.). Traffice over non JANET links is paid for on useage so doing this reduces costs.

As to monitoring, a combination of RIPA and the DPA mean that the informaiton can only be looked at if there is a complaint. Fishing trips to see what people are up to is not allowed even if it is for appparently innocuous reasons such as for example, who is using what bilingual pages on a university's site where there is a bilingual policy.

I hope this sets you mind at rest to some regard.

Best regards,

Landale

Landale

Nothing to fear?

29.08.2009 10:23

Not able to conduct 'fishing exercises'? :

"Officials seek access to phone and email data 1,381 times a day" (

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/10/email-phone-intercept-requests-police)

The police don't need to, when they already regularly monitor 1 in 78 people in the UK.

Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison England.

Krop

all sounds rarther Orwellian, like this

29.08.2009 10:44

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

George

omg

29.08.2009 17:06

> -when I pointed out that they were assuming ownership of the internet I was met with blank stares

I'm not surprised they stared blankly at you. I'd be adding a WTF as well. This is the most stupid thing i've heard since someone told me they have deleted the internet

They are NOT assuming the ownership of the internet. Its a big network! The internet is made of lots of servers, routers, wire, optics, etc etc. All owned by different people and companies. You can't tell people what to do with their equipment because it isnt yours!!

They are assuming ownership of the internet connection which they have paid for!
If you don't like it - by your own contact and do with it what you will

jeezzzzzzzzzz....... The state of education system

Max

Wake up - you're 10 years too late

29.08.2009 18:48

As has been pointed out already, JANET is simply the name of the UK University Network which now forms part of the Internet (as AS786, for the geeks).

The monitoring that does indeed occur everywhere is a LEGAL REQUIREMENT. That is the bit that's fucked up. The whole area of network monitoring is a legal quagmire, full of contradictions and plainly-illogical dictats. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000
for details on one of the most fascistic pieces of legislation which passed seemingly unnoticed in the UK.

All you really need to know is that you are being monitored by someone, somewhere when you do anything on the Internet. There are, of course, ways to avoid being monitored and to increase your privacy but nothing is 100%.

Even hopping on to an open wireless network in a busy city center (which is an extremely good way to remain anonymous) is not going to stop a determined agency from tracking you. Apart from technical issues like your MAC address and any cookies spat out by your browser, you'll almost certainly be on CCTV - especially if you live in the UK.

Luckily, the government agencies in the UK are generally as crap and inefficient as everything else so the chances of them pulling off a successful trace is pretty small unless you did something really, high-profile and embarrassing.

veg
Homepage: http://fatsquirrel.org/bologs/veghead/

Its actually quite good!

30.08.2009 09:34

When cambridge plod did forensics on anti-HLS emails, the emails from cam uni all had the same meaningless IP number in the headers.

And surfing data on campagn websites and wikipedia have alot of the meaningless janet IP number. Making it hard for anyone on the outside to track your surfing habits.

I've not heard of a sysadmin reporting students to the cops.