Document Managed by Network Operations

The Rutgers Acceptable Use Policy and Guidelines establishes an expectation of privacy on Rutgers systems. Staff are thus required to treat users' information as confidential.

Such expectations of privacy are limited on TD systems to only those files explicitly defined as users' information (see below).

Suspected violations of this privacy policy should be handled according to standard university disciplinary procedures applicable to the persons believed to have breached this policy.

Any conflicts between this policy and official University Policies and Procedures invalidate only the conflicting component in this policy.

Ownership of Information

All information on TD's systems is considered to be the property of TD with the exception of users' information as defined below. Other information on TD resources is subject only to such privacy policies as are defined by TD or the University and are not necessarily granted privacy equivalent to that given users' information.

Group based file-system permissions and application-based access controls are considered a representation and expression of an explicit privacy policy. User based file-system permissions and application ACLs as applied to information other than users' information are not considered as such a representation or expression.

Users are granted no individual expectation of privacy for information not classified as users' information.

Users' Information

The term users' information refers explicitly to the following categories of data on TD computing resources:

• information in 'home directories' specifically created for a single user by systems staff for personal use
• email files maintained by TD's mail servers outside 'home directories'
• any part of log information containing details about the content of users' information
• point in time copies of any of the above

Limitations on Privacy Expectation

It is not considered a violation of this policy to examine users' information under the following conditions:

• when the information is otherwise accessible to a unprivileged user of the system
• in the course of fulfilling a request for assistance from the user
• while removing, archiving, or categorizing information of a user who has lost access to that information do to the termination of their association with TD
• while making proper investigations of a violation to University, OIT, or TD policy
• when a user refuses to provide or is unable to provide on their own information requests pursuant to the New Jersey Open Access Law
• at the request of law enforcement representatives possessing a valid warrant, subpoena, or court order

Statistical Information Exclusion

Systems staff are permitted to gather and examine statistical information on or related to users' information for the purposes of investigating security problems, abuse, operational monitoring, etc. Examples of such statistical information include but are not limited to:

• Disk utilization
• CPU/memory utilization
• Process accounting
• Network connections
• File system structure (names, sizes, attributes)