How's That Defined-Contribution Plan Option Coming Along?

Just something to think about!

Off Cycle Regents Meeting

Did you know that there is an off-cycle Regents meeting tomorrow? Usually, it's the Committee on Investments that meets off cycle. But this time it's the Committee on Health Services which apparently has to approve a big buck appointment and review the duties of its members.

As usual, yours truly will try to make an audio recording available when he can. But it won't be tomorrow. As we endlessly note, the Regents don't archive their sessions beyond one year and the only way we can do it is the record them in real time.

You can find the agenda at http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/meetings/agendas/feb3.html

It's got to be serious when the NY Times notices

We have previously posted about the UC spyware matter which so far has largely roiled the Berkeley campus although it involves the entire system. But now the New York Times has taken up the issue:

...The Berkeley dispute stands out because of the place and personalities involved. U.C. Berkeley is not only a leading producer of computer science talent, but also a champion of the free speech movement, so any surveillance is regarded as particularly jarring. For her part, Ms. Napolitano, who joined the California university system in 2013, is no stranger to computer security policy, having served four years as the nation’s Homeland Security chief. The faculty group of 11 professors critical of the monitoring program said the university system enacted the program largely in private, with little transparency about what data is being collected. The monitoring could compromise and constrain academic freedom to research topics that some find objectionable, among other repercussions, they said. In a formal meeting with the University of California’s chief information officer in December, the professors asked for the program to be halted. On Jan. 19, Ms. Napolitano’s staff responded in a five-page reply declining to do so; the letter was emailed last Friday to the entire Berkeley faculty and others. The University of California defended the security initiative as a measured step under the circumstances, and added that “for cybersecurity purposes, a risk to what appears to be an isolated system at only one location may in some circumstances create risk across locations or units.” The university said Ms. Napolitano was not available for an interview. Steve Montiel, press secretary for the president’s office, said he was not aware of any complaints from other campuses about the monitoring program...

Full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/technology/at-uc-berkeley-a-new-digital-privacy-protest.html

And talking about out-of-state newspapers noticing privacy issues at UC, here is the Washington Post:

Four students and alumni from the University of California-Berkeley have sued Google in federal court, alleging that the company — which runs the university’s email accounts — illegally intercepted and scanned emails for advertising purposes without students’ knowledge or consent. Google’s Gmail service is a core feature of Google Apps for Education, which is provided for free to thousands of K-12 schools and universities and is used by more than 30 million students and teachers nationwide, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges that Google misled Berkeley and other institutions into believing that school email accounts would not be subject to scanning for commercial purposes. The schools, in turn, assured their students and staff of their privacy. But, the complaint alleges, Google was scanning and analyzing emails to serve targeted advertisements to students until April 30, 2014, when the company announced via a blog post that it had “permanently removed all ads scanning” in its email service for schools, “which means that Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes.”...
Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/01/uc-berkeley-students-sue-google-alleging-their-emails-were-illegally-scanned/

Leisure Time Activities

So tell me about the pension.

UCOP is running two "webinars" about the proposed Tier 3 pension. But they run in mid-week -and thus mid-work - times with no archived recordings available. Apparently, the webinars are for folks with lots of leisure time on their hands. Unfortunately, yours truly is not among the leisure class and could not record the one held yesterday. Nor will he be able to record the one scheduled on Feb. 10, again because of teaching-related activities and other daytime obligations. (Undoubtedly, the Regents will be told in March that everyone was "consulted.")

If you happen to be a person of leisure, however, The Feb. 10 webinar runs from 1-2:30 pm. Directions are at http://link.ucop.edu/2016/01/25/uc-community-invited-to-discuss-task-force-retirement-benefits-recommendations-for-future-employees/

The Berkeley student paper has an account of yesterday's webinar at
http://www.dailycal.org/2016/02/01/uc-office-president-fields-questions-contentious-retirement-benefit-plan/

Don't be alarmed

Message received by email today:

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BruinAlert:Police Training Activity.

UCPD will be conducting training involving blank ammunition from 2:00 pm until 4:30 pm today in the Pauley Pavillion club.  You may encounter sounds of gunfire in the vicinity of Pauley Pavillion during this time.
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More on the Spyware

Not to worry

We posted earlier about a spyware program apparently installed by UC as a cyber security measure that has raised concerns.* The original source came from the San Francisco Chronicle. Now Inside Higher Ed has a more detailed version of the story:

U of Big Brother?

"Secret monitoring is ongoing."

Those ominous words captured the attention of many faculty members at the University of California at Berkeley's College of Natural Resources when they received an email message from a colleague on Thursday telling them that a new system to monitor computer networks had been secretly installed on all University of California campuses months ago, without letting any but a few people know about it.

"The intrusive device is capable of capturing and analyzing all network traffic to and from the Berkeley campus, and has enough local storage to save over 30 days of *all* this data ('full packet capture'). This can be presumed to include your email, all the websites you visit, all the data you receive from off campus or data you send off campus," said the email from Ethan Ligon, associate professor of agricultural and resource economics. He is one of six members of the Academic Senate-Administration Joint Committee on Campus Information Technology.

Ligon went on to say that UC system officials asked the members of the committee to keep this information to themselves...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/01/u-california-faculty-members-object-new-email-monitoring 

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2016/01/uc-email-spyware-disclosed.html

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Meanwhile, not to worry: (To see the video, first click on the link and then click on the little YouTube emblem.)

Too Bad

Yours truly noticed this headline in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Fatal wrong-way driver crashes prompt state action: Caltrans improving off-ramp signs...

Too bad we didn't have such signs up when the Committee of Two hammered out its pension deal for UC. Just a thought. But it's what you might expect when shared governors is substituted for shared governance.

We had hoped that there would be a recording placed online of the UCLA Academic Senate meeting on the pension issue and, in fact, urged that there be such a recording since the meeting was held during teaching hours. So far at least, no recording has been posted.