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The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Paul Street at Oct 27, 2005

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I'm sure many of this blog's readers know about the pressing issue of rising college tuition costs in America. It's a big problem. Long story short: many millions of young Americans and working class Americans especially are being priced out of the higher education market in a time when a post-high school degree is more essential than ever to attaining basic economic security, including little things like health insurance (made available primarily through employment before age 65 in the U.S.), in the post-industrial and increasingly post-union United States....ctd. As has been widely reported, the U.S. military draws many of its recruits from working-class youth who hope to defray rising college expenses with federal assistance proferred in return for "service" abroad. As an adjunct and recently full time (visting) professor teaching relatively non-elite students during the last 15 or so years, one collateral consequence I've commonly noticed is an ever-rising number of students who struggle to combine schoolwork with part-time and often-enough full-time employment and related commuting commitments. Many of these students are caught up in a maddening time squeeze enforced to no small extent by the requirement that they work while enrolled in college. And of course there's little time for extra-course work or reading in areas like English or philosophy or history (my field) because its all about graduating ASAP to a good-paying job (not typically available to English, philosophy, and history majors) that will let them pay off huge students loans required to meet the practically extortionary costs of college. The culprits behind skyrocketing tuition include top-heavy administrative costs, the standard health-care cost squeeze, declining public support for higher education and related state and federal tax cuts. Some of the faculty salaries ($100,000 and up for years of mediocre teaching and dull publications) I know about are really out-of-line, but generally I don't observe that being an academic is much of a "path to wealth": the pay sucks relative to the effort for most of the professoriart. Which is part, by the way, of ahy there are relatively few Republicans in the liberal arts and social sciences. But how about this as an added mix to the pot of escalating educational expense --- the federal government's requirement that universities and colleges overhaul and upgrade their Internet computer networks to facilitate Big Brother's ability to MONITOR E-MAIL AND OTHER ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS? According to a chilling article in last Sunday's New York Times, this requirement (coming from George Orwell Bush's FCC at the request of the "Justice" Department) will, "on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities by some $450, at a time when rising education costs are already a sore point with parents and members of Congress." Further: "at New York University, ...the order would require the installation of thousands of new devices in more than 100 buildings around Manhattan, be they small switches in a wiring closet or large aggregation routers that pull data together from many sites and send it over the Internet, said Doug Carlson, the university's executive director of communications and computing services." "'Back of the envelope, this would cost us many millions of dollars,' Mr. Carlson said." The University of Illinois projects costs of $13 million. All so the proto-fascist state can increase its capacity for thought control in the name of the war against "criminals, terrorists, and spies." Universities and others are preparing a legal response. Here's the full Times article: Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems By SAM DILLON and STEPHEN LABATON NYT 10/23/2005 The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications. The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues. The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers. It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks. So far, however, universities have been most vocal in their opposition. The 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires telephone carriers to engineer their switching systems at their own cost so that federal agents can obtain easy surveillance access. Recognizing the growth of Internet-based telephone and other communications, the order requires that organizations like universities providing Internet access also comply with the law by spring 2007. The Justice Department requested the order last year, saying that new technologies like telephone service over the Internet were endangering law enforcement's ability to conduct wiretaps "in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies." Justice Department officials, who declined to comment for this article, said in their written comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission that the new requirements were necessary to keep the 1994 law "viable in the face of the monumental shift of the telecommunications industry" and to enable law enforcement to "accomplish its mission in the face of rapidly advancing technology." The F.C.C. says it is considering whether to exempt educational institutions from some of the law's provisions, but it has not granted an extension for compliance. Lawyers for the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of universities and colleges, are preparing to appeal the order before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president of the council, said Friday. The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties group, has enlisted plaintiffs for a separate legal challenge, focusing on objections to government control over how organizations, including hundreds of private technology companies, design Internet systems, James X. Dempsey, the center's executive director, said Friday. The universities do not question the government's right to use wiretaps to monitor terrorism or criminal suspects on college campuses, Mr. Hartle said, only the order's rapid timetable for compliance and extraordinary cost. Technology experts retained by the schools estimated that it could cost universities at least $7 billion just to buy the Internet switches and routers necessary for compliance. That figure does not include installation or the costs of hiring and training staff to oversee the sophisticated circuitry around the clock, as the law requires, the experts said. "This is the mother of all unfunded mandates," Mr. Hartle said. Even the lowest estimates of compliance costs would, on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities by some $450, at a time when rising education costs are already a sore point with parents and members of Congress, Mr. Hartle said. At New York University, for instance, the order would require the installation of thousands of new devices in more than 100 buildings around Manhattan, be they small switches in a wiring closet or large aggregation routers that pull data together from many sites and send it over the Internet, said Doug Carlson, the university's executive director of communications and computing services. "Back of the envelope, this would cost us many millions of dollars," Mr. Carlson said. F.C.C. officials declined to comment publicly, citing their continuing review of possible exemptions to the order. Some government officials said they did not view compliance as overly costly for colleges because the order did not require surveillance of networks that permit students and faculty to communicate only among themselves, like intranet services. They also said the schools would be required to make their networks accessible to law enforcement only at the point where those networks connect to the outside world. Educause, a nonprofit association of universities and other groups that has hired lawyers to prepare its own legal challenge, informed its members of the order in a Sept. 29 letter signed by Mark A. Luker, an Educause vice president. Mr. Luker advised universities to begin planning how to comply with the order, which university officials described as an extraordinary technological challenge. Unlike telephone service, which sends a steady electronic voice stream over a wire, the transmission of e-mail and other information on the Internet sends out data packets that are disassembled on one end of a conversation and reassembled on the other. Universities provide hundreds of potential Internet access sites, including lounges and other areas that offer wireless service and Internet jacks in libraries, dorms, classrooms and laboratories, often dispersed through scores of buildings. If law enforcement officials obtain a court order to monitor the Internet communications of someone at a university, the current approach is to work quietly with campus officials to single out specific sites and install the equipment needed to carry out the surveillance. This low-tech approach has worked well in the past, officials at several campuses said. But the federal law would apply a high-tech approach, enabling law enforcement to monitor communications at campuses from remote locations at the turn of a switch. It would require universities to re-engineer their networks so that every Net access point would send all communications not directly onto the Internet, but first to a network operations center where the data packets could be stitched together into a single package for delivery to law enforcement, university officials said. Albert Gidari Jr., a Seattle lawyer at the firm Perkins Coie who is representing Educause, said he and other representatives of universities had been negotiating with lawyers and technology officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies since the spring about issues including what technical requirements universities would need to meet to comply with the law. "This is a fight over whether a Buick is good enough, or do you need a Lexus?" Mr. Gidari said. "The F.B.I. is the lead agency, and they are insisting on the Lexus." Law enforcement has only infrequently requested to monitor Internet communications anywhere, much less on university campuses or libraries, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology. In 2003, only 12 of the 1,442 state and federal wiretap orders were issued for computer communications, and the F.B.I. never argued that it had difficulty executing any of those 12 wiretaps, the center said. "We keep asking the F.B.I., What is the problem you're trying to solve?" Mr. Dempsey said. "And they have never showed any problem with any university or any for-profit Internet access provider. The F.B.I. must demonstrate precisely why it wants to impose such an enormously disruptive and expensive burden." Larry D. Conrad, the chief information officer at Florida State University, where more than 140 buildings are equipped for Internet access, said there were easy ways to set up Internet wiretaps. "But the wild-eyed fear I have," Mr. Conrad said, "is that the government will rule that this all has to be automatic, anytime, which would mean I'd have to re-architect our entire campus network." He continued, "It seems like overkill to make all these institutions spend this huge amount of money for a just-in-case kind of scenario." The University of Illinois says it is worried about the order because it is in the second year of a $20 million upgrade of its campus network. Peter Siegel, the university's chief information officer, estimated that the new rules would require the university to buy 2,100 new devices, at a cost of an additional $13 million, to replace equipment that is brand new. "It's like you buy a new car, and then

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Person

my email

By Hampton, Krystal at Oct 13, 2006 15:44 PM

krystalhampton2@msn.com

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Person

how about setting up a mandatory savings plan for children?

By Hampton, Krystal at Oct 13, 2006 15:41 PM

i too have been thinking about rising costs, who's to blame, and how can we combat rising costs so that college students can get the degree that they want(and be useful) without making them pay 2 legs or more once they walk across the stage. since i'm a college student in my final year and going though some financial issues this issue hits me personally. about a year ago i was thinking of a way to help college students rather than point fingers. actually getting down and dirty in thought to think up a plan to where college kids can go to school and not have to think twice about money. at first i thought, "hey why not make college free?" but then after thinking about it and discussing it with my friends turn out every single state's taxes would rise to astronomical heights if college were ever made free. it was a start though, since we recieve other forms of education due to interractions with people and media and that's free....so i started thinking of another one and this one turned out to be really good (to me). why not make a college savings plan to help out with tuition costs, loans, and books. like social security (mandatorily deducted from paychecks but not so much. lowest cost $10-if you make 200,000 a year or more) started from the birth of the child to college,grad, or phd. $50 to start up the plan, but this money would be used to help low income families save up more money for their children. also and opt-out clause which would be if the child (now 18) has other forms of aid that will help them in college costs and doesen't need the plan anymore. then the monies are spit between those who put money into that particular plan and that money would be used to help them (and the economy). problem being with this idea is that people are afraid of "mandatory." the only way costs will go down, or not matter, is if it is mandatory. TD waterhouse, Merryl Lynch, and other investment companies tried to advertise the need to save for college now, but with college costs still on the rise and more of my buddies stressing and upset about tuition and finding loans each semester...i don't think those particular companies are really getting the word out..if any. But even if...lets say the word is out, people are aware that college costs are on the rise, the majority of families are beginning to feel their funds getting tighter, and average tuition costs are 30,000 private and 10,000 public are are increasing..do you really think families will (on their own accord) open up a savings account and regularly put money into that savings plan for their child's higher education without using the money occasionally for whatever? would teenagers (on their own accord) open up a savings account and regularly put money into that account, without withdrawing enormus amount of money from it for whatever? to the everyday working family and teen that would seem like a difficult task. how many families and people do you know that have mutual funds,IRA's, or savings accounts that deposit money into them regularly? i have a savings acount, but used that to pay bills, eat, shop etc. so for the payments of the savings plan to be mandatory would greatly ensure that teenagers would have all the money they need to pay for college and not worrying like me about going into debt. so i need supporters to just spead the word and let this talk about helping college students snowball.

 

give me an email if you want to help.

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Person

how about setting up a mandatory savings plan for children?

By Hampton, Krystal at Oct 13, 2006 15:41 PM

i too have been thinking about rising costs, who's to blame, and how can we combat rising costs so that college students can get the degree that they want(and be useful) without making them pay 2 legs or more once they walk across the stage. since i'm a college student in my final year and going though some financial issues this issue hits me personally. about a year ago i was thinking of a way to help college students rather than point fingers. actually getting down and dirty in thought to think up a plan to where college kids can go to school and not have to think twice about money. at first i thought, "hey why not make college free?" but then after thinking about it and discussing it with my friends turn out every single state's taxes would rise to astronomical heights if college were ever made free. it was a start though, since we recieve other forms of education due to interractions with people and media and that's free....so i started thinking of another one and this one turned out to be really good (to me). why not make a college savings plan to help out with tuition costs, loans, and books. like social security (mandatorily deducted from paychecks but not so much. lowest cost $10-if you make 200,000 a year or more) started from the birth of the child to college,grad, or phd. $50 to start up the plan, but this money would be used to help low income families save up more money for their children. also and opt-out clause which would be if the child (now 18) has other forms of aid that will help them in college costs and doesen't need the plan anymore. then the monies are spit between those who put money into that particular plan and that money would be used to help them (and the economy). problem being with this idea is that people are afraid of "mandatory." the only way costs will go down, or not matter, is if it is mandatory. TD waterhouse, Merryl Lynch, and other investment companies tried to advertise the need to save for college now, but with college costs still on the rise and more of my buddies stressing and upset about tuition and finding loans each semester...i don't think those particular companies are really getting the word out..if any. But even if...lets say the word is out, people are aware that college costs are on the rise, the majority of families are beginning to feel their funds getting tighter, and average tuition costs are 30,000 private and 10,000 public are are increasing..do you really think families will (on their own accord) open up a savings account and regularly put money into that savings plan for their child's higher education without using the money occasionally for whatever? would teenagers (on their own accord) open up a savings account and regularly put money into that account, without withdrawing enormus amount of money from it for whatever? to the everyday working family and teen that would seem like a difficult task. how many families and people do you know that have mutual funds,IRA's, or savings accounts that deposit money into them regularly? i have a savings acount, but used that to pay bills, eat, shop etc. so for the payments of the savings plan to be mandatory would greatly ensure that teenagers would have all the money they need to pay for college and not worrying like me about going into debt. so i need supporters to just spead the word and let this talk about helping college students snowball.

 

give me an email if you want to help.

Reply this comment

Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Cacioppo, Jonas at Nov 02, 2005 05:37 AM
A note on that NYT story and how it framed the issue: The scope and depth of the issue was confined to the program's cost and, to a lesser degree, its effectiveness. Said so explicitly, colleges and universities "are not raising civil liberties" objections because, in addition to the requirement of a court order, such an overhaul would be ill affordable. And the article just scratches the surface. Questions, seemingly obvious ones, like *why* colleges and other such institutions of 'higher education' to be targets of federal surveillance, go unanswered or even addressed.

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Person

By Gammon101, Bwong at Nov 02, 2005 05:28 AM
"But the best is your "this sounds like you guys" shtick: because someone bad once said something good, everyone who believes in that sentiment must be as bad as the person who said it? That's fallacious logic so twisted I don't even know the name for it." The Nazi ate food. To prove that he is not like the Nazi Yakov must eat sh&t. Ta da!

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Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Gammon101, Bwong at Oct 29, 2005 02:38 AM
"The following planks of the NAZI Party, adopted in Munich on February 24, 1920: "We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living..." Yarkov since you're not a Nazi(so you think) you must be for high unemployment(remember that was Germany 1920), abusing the senior, starving the kids, abolishing public education, restoring child labour, promoting junk food, busting small businesses in favour of big corporations and tell gifted children to poor parents to get a job(since you're pro child labour). If you are compaigning for office do you think you stand a chance with such a platform? Maybe most Americans are Nazis. Politicans say anything to get elected and Hitler was a smart politicians. It was 1920 Germany.I think most election platforms echoed similar themes.

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Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Bok, Yakov at Oct 29, 2005 01:57 AM
Further, the following description of the Nazi economic system by Leonard Peikoff in his book The Ominous Parallels: "Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property - so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property."

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Bok, Yakov at Oct 29, 2005 01:32 AM
This sounds much like you people. The following planks of the NAZI Party, adopted in Munich on February 24, 1920: "We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious (citizen) the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents... The government must undertake the improvement of public health by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor - by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good."

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Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Antiamerican800, Bernardo at Oct 29, 2005 01:11 AM
This just shows that much of leftism is dependent on a tacit assumption of superiority that allows the leftist to make concillatory gestures towards multiculturalism. But should that class position ever be seriously threatened as for example by imperialist Japan their true motivations and personal agendas come to the surface. Otherwise it's very boring hearing about snotty parents griping about their spoiled brats as if it's anyone else's concern.

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Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Bok, Yakov at Oct 29, 2005 00:54 AM
If the use of "proto-fascist" was peripheral and a throw-away, why use it all? The chicken little cry of fascism is central to nearly all threads started on this board. It dilutes the true horror of fascism. The left conviently forgets as well that socialism is at the root of fascism, hence the name "national socialists."

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Person

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Kreuzberg_anto, Moderne at Oct 29, 2005 00:04 AM
The brouhaha about the use of the word "fascism" reminds me of John Pilger's introduction to the 2003 edition of Towards a New Cold War, in which he recounts asking Chomsky for his take on such observations (that the US is increasingly showing strong fascist traits and the parallels drawn between that and the rise of Nazi Germany). Chomsky's response was that he noticed one major difference: in Germany during the rise of fascism there was much opposition and dissent from intellectuals. Food for thought.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Street, Paul at Oct 28, 2005 22:51 PM
Keir, this strikes me as a truism on the left. Our core issues and focus are fundamentally systemic, relating to the entire corporate political economy and its various related hieararchies. This reaches across the question of which plutocratic administration and party happen to be in power between the masters' little once-every-four-year "winner-take-all" election extavaganzas. Nineteenth-century U.S. radicals were on to something when they called the ballot box "the coffin of class consciousness" and we will have nobody to blame but ourselves if we think empire, inequality, and repression don't need to be aggressively resisted just because a Hilary or a Biden or an Obama or [fill in the blank] happens to sit in the White House. Of course, the Democrats have deeply enabled the proto-fascist (absolutely) Bushcons. How different are they really, at the end of the day? How many Congressional Dems appeared at the big 9/24 antiwar demo? Cynthia McKinney plus three or four others? Freaking Gary Hart (remember him?) did an op-ed a while back in which he said the History is going to be very harsh on the Democrats' abject failure to function as an oppposition party in these perilous times.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Street, Paul at Oct 28, 2005 02:01 AM
And on top of everything that's been said in response to yakov's issue with my use of the word proto-fascist, yakov has zeroed in on a basically peripheral and throw-away comment and has diverted discussion from the issues raised. Those issues were rising college tuition and domestic thought control. This is his standard m.o., the essence of what his comments are usually about: missing the forest for the trees. It's probably on purpose. There's a useful and richly annotated discussion of the terms proto-fascism and fascism in Henry Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004). See the chapter titled "Under the Shadow of Authoritarianism" (or something like that).

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Cranch, James at Oct 27, 2005 18:58 PM
Yakov, a fascist state need not be a dictatorship (and vice versa). Why don't you ever read anything before replying to it?

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Bok, Yakov at Oct 27, 2005 18:52 PM
America is not now, nor ever going to be on a slow road to fascism. The belief in such is probably due to not understanding the structure of the U.S. government. The parlimentary system (which the Green party calls for) give the power to prime minister to dissolve the legislature. This is how Hitler came to power. In the U.S., no such power exists. Additionally, legislators are elected to two and six year terms. The executive is independently elected every four years. Again, in the parlimentary system, this does not happen, allowing for fascism to come to power. If you don't like what the legislators are doing, e.g. becoming "fascist," all you have to do is go to the voting booth. Unfortunately, people don't do that, choosing to bitch instead, and then make absurd, populist, devisive comments about fascism that ultimately water down the true horror of that type of government. So I repeat, stop the propaganda.

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Cranch, James at Oct 27, 2005 17:35 PM
In more detail, "proto-fascist" does not mean "fascist". It means something about being on a slow road to fascism. As Walter Wolfgang recently complained, there are some disturbing similarities between the way that the USA and UK are being run, and the way that Germany was run in the ascent of fascism in the thirties.

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Cranch, James at Oct 27, 2005 17:15 PM
Stop with the propaganda. Just stop
That seems a bit unreasonable, given that everyone here has been decent enough to encourage you to continue your propaganda. Incidentally, if you take the time to read Paul's article, you'll observe that it only uses the word "proto-fascist", which hardly seems to suggest any strong similarity in the way that you accuse him of.

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Bok, Yakov at Oct 27, 2005 17:02 PM
Paul, if you're now teaching history, you should know what fascism is. You're well aware that OUR government looks absolutely nothing like fascist Germany, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Syria, Iraq, et al. Stop with the propaganda. Just stop. Otherwise, you're doing a disservice to your students, your college or university, and to education in general.

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Re: The Surveillance Tax: A Potential New Factor in the Rising Costs of College Tuition

By Gas, Mister at Oct 27, 2005 06:35 AM
I'm glad someone's writing about this. My wife's a Polish citizen and she was surprised to learn that college costs money. In Poland it's covered by the government. With that and the price of health care, she's starting to realize that America isn't the dream it's made out to be.

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