Wednesday, March 20th, 2019
thecollegeview.com
. Est. 1999 .
Data protection questions raised as list of students’ emails and modules made available AN OVERSIGHT in DCU’s Loop portal may have inadvertently revealed the names of students who did not vote during recent student elections. The alleged lapse also allowed the email addresses and module information of up to 18,000 students to be visible to all other students. A ‘Participants’ page within the Student Union (SU) section of Loop displayed names and profiles for all students with access to student voting resources. The list showed a “last accessed” timestamp which identified 4,499 students who visited the SU module on Loop, where online student voting occurs, between 10am Tuesday March 5 and 3pm Thursday March 7 last. A further 11,007 students who have not visited the page since elections began (and thus may not have voted) are identified. 2,607 students were recorded accessing the page in the days after voting closed. According to results issued by the DCUSU Returning Officer, 4,134 students cast votes in this year’s SU presidential election. Joan O’Connell, a member of DCU’s Data Protection Unit, told The College View on Thursday last that the matter was under investigation and declined to comment further. In a separate statement several hours later, a spokesperson for the university’s communication team stated: “The University can confirm there was no breach of general data protection regulations in relation to the student Loop platform in the recent student elections. “DCU is fully committed to ensuring that all staff, registered students, agents, contractors and its own data processors comply fully with data protection legislation regarding the processing and confidentiality of any personal data held by the University and the privacy rights of individuals under the legislation.” On Friday the ‘Participants’ page of
the SU Loop page was disabled, replaced with the message: “Sorry, but you do not currently have permissions to do that (View participants).” However, up to 17,000 email addresses remained visible via the ‘Participants’ page of the Library E-Tutorial for Students (LETS) module in Loop. A section of Loop’s Edit Profile page allows control over who can view a student’s email address. However, The College View can confirm that when this setting was toggled to “Allow only other course members to see my email address,” email addresses remained visible to non-course members via the SU voting and LETS modules. The College View has identified other potential issues within the university’s e-learning platform. Moodle, the open-source software which powers DCU’s Loop portal, issued detailed GDPR compliance recommendations ahead of tight EU data protection measures introduced last year, including the use of its new Data Privacy and Policy plugins. However, the “Policies and agreements” plugin on student profile pages viewed by The College View on Loop is currently empty, displaying the message: “For any questions about the policies please contact the privacy officer.” According to Moodle’s GDPR FAQ: “Installing the developed plugins alone will not be enough to meet the GDPR requirements. Correct configuration and implementation of the required processes and procedures is also required.” Online voting for student elections was first introduced at DCU in 2015. An eVoting system was also considered and contracted in 2011 “but ran into data protection issues” and was abandoned according to a poster which described the launch of the present system. The document includes “totaly [sic] anonymity for voter” among a list of benefits of the current implementation. The DCU communications team informed The College View that learning management systems are designed us-
Features
Sports
Richard Herlihy Contributor @thecollegeview
Finding love: the cunning craft of matchmaking Page 18
DCU Swimming win thirteen golds at intervarsities Page 21
Over 10,000 climate activists in Dublin alone, which were mostly children, took part in the global student strike over how climate change is being addressed.
Credit: Cáit Caden
ing the principles of social constructivism, “which enables student - student collaboration in addition to student to
lecturer interaction. This involves sharing of profile information which under the ‘lawful processing of data’ princi-
ple of GDPR is covered by ‘service of contract’ with the university.”
Brendan Fernando Kelly Palenque Deputy News Editor @BrendanFKP
were asked if they thought DCU Students’ Union should adopt a stance in solidarity with Palestine and if the union should campaign for the decriminalisation of the possession of drugs for personal consumption. Chairperson for the Students for Sustainable Drug Policy society Declan Moore said: “I’ve spoken to Podge [Sheehan] a couple of times since the incident and we’re still quite in the dark about what’s going on.” Podge Sheehan is the Democracy & Development Officer for the Office of Student Life at DCU and announced the student union election
results. The College View reached out to Sheehan for comment but was unable to get a reply before publication. He previously told The College View that “I have no information on that at the minute, but as soon as I do I’ll be disseminating that”. Stephanie O’Toole, the chairperson for Student’s for Justice in Palestine society, hopes to see this issue resolved as quickly as possible. “Last Thursday was the time we all had been building for and for us not to have our ‘moment’ on the steps in the U was disheartening,” she said. Read more on page 7...
TEU investigates referenda results
THE Teaching Enchantment Unit (TEU) has began an investigation into the referenda polls closing an hour earlier than they were intended to. Referenda results were supposed to be announced along with the student union election results on March 7th. However, students were unable to vote on Loop for the last hour of the referenda. Two referenda were held. Students
The College View would like to issue a sincere apology and retraction to Emma Tunnicliffe, who was misquoted in the article ‘Show me the minutes’ in The College View last issue. Our reporter misquoted Tunnicliffe who was speaking at the recent Class Rep Council about unavailable executive minutes and not CRC minutes as stated in the article. We would also like to apologise to Chairperson of CRC, Helen Wade and Secretary of CRC, Mary Walsh who were unfairly represented in the article. Walsh has worked hard to provide minutes at the CRCs, and we acknowledge the hard work and dedication by both Wade and Walsh put into running the CRCs. We would like to sincerely apologise to all parties impacted by the article and retract the story. Thank you.