Even though an e-mail is sent with an intention of privacy, messages sent through the university server can be viewed without permission.

There is no law – federal or state – which stops the owners of e-mail servers from reading the messages sent through it, including servers run by Iowa State, said Paul Tanaka, director of Student Legal Services and attorney at law.

“If it’s our system, we can oversee it,” Tanaka said.

Iowa State owns the servers used for Project Vincent and WebMail, as well as a number of departmental servers primarily used by faculty members.

Mike Bowman, assistant director for Academic Information Technologies, is in charge of the ISU servers, and manages Academic Information Technologies’ employees. Bowman said only certain employees have access to the server, but he’s not really sure how many.

“I’ll say it’s at the lower end,” Bowman said. “Closer to 10 than 100.”

Bowman said while it would be legal for his employees to read student and faculty e-mails, his office policy states that staff is not allowed to look at them.

He also said, though, if his staff members were reading them, he probably would have no way of knowing about it.

“It’s not a technical question, it’s an ethical question,” Bowman said.

However, Bowman said under some circumstances student and faculty e-mail messages are allowed to be read by people outside of his office.

“For instance, if we get a court order, we always comply,” Bowman said

Tanaka agreed. He said usually once or twice each year the university receives a court order to allow someone to read student or faculty e-mail messages without permission from the author. The order usually comes in the form of a search warrant or subpoena.

At that point, Tanaka said, the issue is handed to Warren Madden, vice president for Business and Finance.

Madden has the final say on whether a student’s e-mail is read by the university. He said under “extraordinary circumstances” he would also give authorization for appropriate people to read the content of an e-mail in order to find evidence of a violation of the ISU Student Conduct Code.

Madden and Tanaka said such a case has not occurred yet.

However, they say the university has saved e-mails in the past without actually reading them, in order to preserve possible evidence for future issues.

The e-mail privacy issue is no different than any other issue concerning university property, Madden said.

For instance, the university does not need permission to search the contents of any desk, locker or file cabinet on campus, which has been done regularly in the past.

Colin Burnett, senior in computer engineering, said staff members having access to e-mail accounts is not a major issue.

“If you don’t do anything illegal, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Burnett said.

However, many other students feel the university should let them know their e-mail might be read.

“It seems like an invasion of privacy,” said Scott Sevcik, senior in aerospace engineering.

“I don’t have anything to hide but the fact that they can look through e-mails and don’t make it known is disconcerting.”