cshen.ca

As reported by Forbes, a part of the USA PATRIOT Act have just been struck down.

A federal judge struck down parts of the revised USA Patriot Act on Thursday, saying investigators must have a court’s approval before they can order Internet providers to turn over records without telling customers.

This is good news, if only a small small step. It does show that at least someone is still concerned about the privacy of individual citizens, and that the executive branch will not be allowed free reign in domestic and international surveillance.

Which brings us to the question, how does it affect Canadians? Well it doesn’t yet, since there is still a lot of powers for any 3 letter agency to spy on international communication, but any change for the better should be welcomed, considering that Canada rips so much of its policies off the States.

…and if you do, I’ll sue you, and I’ll win.

That’s what I’ll be telling any professors I might have who require the use of Turnitin.com, and I encourage you to do the same.

Turnitin.com is a plagiarism detection service used by many universities around the world, including in British Columbia: the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Northern British Columbia. In case you didn’t notice, that’s all the universities in the province.

I am not disputing the importance of academic honesty, in fact I agree wholeheartedly that plagiarism is a behaviour which cannot be allowed (honest students suffer from it after all). However using a service like Turnitin is not the proper method of enforcing said academic honesty. The service is built upon (and indeed thrives upon) immorality, hypocrisy, and likely illegality.