In Violation of the College’s Privacy Policy

Nachman has raised another important issue over at his blog. Is this in violation of the College’s Privacy Policy?

Information stored on an individual’s account is presumed to be private unless the account holder has made the information available to others. If, for example, the account holder allows public access to files via file sharing, it is presumed that the account holder has waived his or her privacy rights to those files.

Systems operators, supervisors, and other College officials may access information resources to locate business information, maintain the system and network, comply with legal requirements, or administer this or other Dartmouth policies.

[. . .]

Some programs and networked services gather information about the people who use them. If such information could directly or indirectly identify a person using the program, then each user should be warned and given a chance to leave the program or service before data collection begins, a procedure referred to as a “privacy warning.” To avoid issuing excessive numbers of warning messages, an exception is made for host operating systems and some networked utilities used by Computing Services that collect identifying information as part of their normal operation. A list of these exempted programs and services and the data that they collect is available from Computing Services and is provided in the Appendix.

The Appendix has this to say:

On occasion, Blackboard system administrators need to simulate users’ login to Blackboard for troubleshooting purposes. By contacting Blackboard Support, users agree to allow Blackboard system administrators to simulate users’ access to Blackboard in order to provide adequate support. This process involves utilizing a user’s Dartmouth ID number (DID).

Other than when contacted for support by Blackboard users, and in accordance with Dartmouth’s Information Technology Policy, Blackboard system administrators will not use a person’s DID without explicit permission of the person.

Blackboard system administrators do not use, or have access to, users’ Dartmouth Name Directory (DND) passwords. Furthermore, Blackboard system administrators never request a user’s DND password. It is advised that users should be extremely diligent in the protection of their DND password.

This information and access privileges are not shared with anyone other than the Blackboard system administrators group.

The question, then, is whether professors would be included under the title “system administrators group.”