Big Brother is watching and he doesn’t need to ask for permission.

College Fix editor Nathan Harden reports.

Yale Officials Can Read Student Emails Without Notice or Consent

Do you know who is hacking into your email account? Maybe a better question would be–Who isn’t these days?

Obama and the NSA are doing it. Harvard got caught doing it. And today I can report that Yale University is doing it too.

Yale officials have claimed the right to search student email accounts without notice or consent, according to a report in the Yale Daily News. According to a survey conducted by the Daily News, only 3 out of 73 students were aware that the university had the claimed the power to access their private university email accounts.

According to the Yale administration, reading student email accounts may be done for such vague reasons as complying with  “federal, state, or local law or administrative rules,” or whenever “there are reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of law or a significant breach of University policy may have taken place.”

The Daily News reports that the right to probe student email accounts is “outlined in a publicly available but little-publicized document,” entitled “University’s Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy.”

Judging from the broad and vaguely-defined causes for search outlined in the statement, it might as well be called the “We Can Read any Email You Send or Receive any Time We Want Policy.”

The policy not only allows for search anytime officials suspect you have breached university policy, but it promises full access for government officials–not just the feds, but for state or even local government officials.

Who would have imagined that a local police department could have access to the private emails of students under their jurisdiction without notice or consent? Could that actually happen? Has it happened? It’s hard to say for sure, but the snooping powers outlined in the university policy are so broad that it’s impossible to rule out.