[LINK] Turnbull wants all aussies to have email address

[Glen Turner]

Ivan Trundle wrote:
> Apart from the obvious question of 'Why?' that should be posed to Mr  
> Turnbull (and the 'How' when it comes to getting all Australians to  
> read e-mail, too), the privacy and identity issue is important.
> 
> An example:
> 
> I have one child at a school with a policy of  
> <firstname.lastname>@<school>.
> 
> Not good - not just in terms of privacy and confidentiality, but  
> because of the point that Craig makes (and I wouldn't be surprised if  
> the Family Law Courts might have something to say about it, too).
> 
> I also have another child at a another school with a policy of  
> <student_id>@<school>.
> 
> Privacy advocates would suggest that the latter solution is correct,  
> proper, and maintains the all-important privacy demanded for minors.

As uni sysadmins can tell you, the student id is often used
as a form of obscuring identity.  For example, a list on my
door might say

   NETWORK ENGINEERING ASSIGNMENT 1
   DISTINCTION
   200500100
   CREDIT
   200422010
   PASS
   200500202 200534343
   REQUIRED TO RESUBMIT ELSE FAIL, SEE ME
   200500232
   FAIL, SEE ME
   200520202
   NOT SUBMITTED, SEE ME
   nil

So emails which have a header of

   Fred Bloggs <student200500100 at example.edu.au>

defeat this useful function of the student id.

All of which means that you need a systems id which is
unrelated to anything else.  And that id better not
be dervied from the student's name since people's names
can change but computers like ids to remain stable.
So students have two essentially random numbers to
remember :-(

-- 
  Glen Turner         Tel: (08) 8303 3936 or +61 8 8303 3936
  Australia's Academic & Research Network  www.aarnet.edu.au