As long as Hossein Naraghi conducts research at Iowa State, he will be monitored by the government-issued system known as Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS.

Naraghi, who is from Tehran, Iran, said he doesn’t understand why international students are the only ones tracked and he doesn’t feel good about the way international students are being treated by the U.S. government.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “I’m here to study and research. I’m here to do that, nothing else.”

Naraghi, graduate student in civil and construction engineering, is among 2,579 ISU international students being tracked by the U.S. government.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government passed the USA Patriot Act, an act designed to give the government power to protest against terrorism. The act gives the FBI the right to “… make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism…”

Aside from the U.S. government tracking system for international students, ISU officials said there are not any other kinds of tracking systems currently in place at the university.

Michael Bowman, assistant director of academic information technologies, said Iowa State monitors network traffic on the ISU computer network.

According to the Residence System Internet Output Policy, a policy has been adopted to limit the outbound Internet traffic from personal computers connected to the campus network.

The policy states that “the limit is designed to affect only those individuals running personal computers generating very high Internet output levels without impacting anyone making normal academic use of the Internet from their personal computers.”

Although network traffic is monitored, the content of the traffic isn’t, Bowman said.

“We do not look at individual usage; we are managing the network traffic,” he said.

Bowman said Iowa State would need a request from the courts to actually monitor the content of the network traffic. Iowa State doesn’t log what an individual does, analyze what the content of individual network traffic is or flag an individual on the network, he said.

Iowa State’s library system is also not monitored.

“The only thing we keep track of is what people check in and out,” said Fred Gulden, Parks Library information technology officer. “We also keep track of fines students have.

“[The library] doesn’t even keep track of what you have checked out,” Gulden said.

He said the old computer mainframe that ran the library database before a new one was installed kept track of checked-out books, but that system has been retired.

“There is no way to generate a list of the books that you checked out,” he said.

The College of Design is one place on campus where students’ identification numbers are checked against a database. Additionally, electronic door locks are attached to studios and darkrooms within the Design Center. When a student swipes his or her ISU card, the identification number is checked to make sure the student is allowed to enter the room.

Michael Miller, information technology office system specialist for the College of Design, said the identification system is set up for student convenience. The locks give students access to the darkroom and studios 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said.

“The lock itself is a program that can tell what IDs can go in and out of the room,” he said.

Students’ names are not loaded directly into the door’s memory, Miller said. No one in the college uses the database in the door to keep track of attendance.

“It’s more of an access thing than an big brother thing,” he said.

Miller said it isn’t a simple task to find out who has been in and out of the rooms and the only time he looks to see who has been in and out is when there has been an error, such as when someone props a door open.

ISU Police Capt. Gene Deisinger said the ISU Police Department has the ability to gather information about students, but the process is not done on a regular basis.

Deisinger said surveillance cameras on campus are set up for the public safety and are monitored by the ISU Police department or other departments on campus.