by Katy Knapp
Daily Lobo
The ball is in Facebook.com's court now.
Moira Gerety, director of Information Technologies Services at UNM, said the University's legal counsel has been talking to the Facebook's lawyers for about a week to get the site back online on campus.
This came after CIRT blocked access to the Facebook in mid-August when Dean of Students Randy Boeglin expressed concern over UNM's network being bogged down by a bulk of unsolicited e-mail, said Jeff Gassaway, security administrator for CIRT.
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Gassaway said Facebook has been told to make the site more secure by encrypting user passwords and by making a warning to students to not use their UNM Net ID password more noticeable on the site.
He said Facebook has no security authentication on its site.
"The primary concern for us is that even if you are told that you shouldn't use this password before you register, because in its current form you're told after, people have the tendency to use the same password for both systems," he said.
Talks between UNM and Facebook are over, Gerety said, and the University is waiting for the site to meet those security requirements.
Chris Hughes, spokesman for Facebook, said talks between the lawyers have been positive.
"We're cautiously optimistic things will work out and students will be able to use Facebook on campus soon," he said.
Gassaway said there are privacy issues and security issues involved.
Not only can someone get into their WebCT account and find out private information, he said, but someone could also access areas on the UNM network that shouldn't be available to outside users.
He said a lot of people use the same password for everything and hackers can take the password from the Facebook and use it to access personal accounts, including online banking and UNM's network.
"If you are in the dorms and anyone else is listening on the wire, someone else can grab that password," he said. "Not only can they log into your Facebook site and publish personal information about you, but they can get into our UNM site, which can pose a major security threat for us."
Gerety said there are no legal issues around blocking a site from UNM's network.
"UNM has an obligation to protect the integrity and security of the systems for which it is responsible," she said.
Students signing on to Facebook from home will see a message from site administrators telling students they are working with UNM's administration and IT department to get the site back online. There are also links to the e-mail of the IT department and UNM President Louis Caldera. However, the link to the IT department was an address for the University of Minnesota, not UNM.
"That address doesn't even exist, so we don't know how many people e-mailed it," Gassaway said.
He didn't know how many e-mails the President's Office has received, he said.
Students had expressed concern because they weren't consulted before the blocking of the site. Gerety said the IT council had solicited student input in an open forum in May to look at what students want CIRT to improve. Only one student showed up at the forum, she said.
Gerety said historically it has been difficult getting students to participate in similar focus groups. She said another forum is being planned, but she doesn't know when it will take place.
CIRT has not restricted sites that allow students to navigate around the Facebook block, Gassaway said.
"This is a university, so we're not trying to censor the Internet," he said. "What we do has nothing to do with content."
