Dear Editor:

Why would the enlightened leaders of a public university contribute to the creation of Big Brother in the form of a monopsonist (single buyer) of our precious correspondence that is private even when dealing with teaching and research issues? This is precisely what the IT department (with higher-up consent) has been doing by transferring students’ e-mail to Gmail. Now, it is the turn of faculty’s and staff’s e-mail (Dateline, Feb. 5).

Who would trust the existence of a single bank? Who would destroy all the small and medium banks in order to channel all consumers’ savings and deposits to a single bank, say AIG? This bitter lesson has been learned the hard way. Why should it be relearned with Google’s behavior that, we already know, is very questionable and reprehensible since it keeps and scans all e-mail into an eternal databank?

This is how dictatorships are created, little by little. With the excuse that trains would be more efficiently run on time, travelers in some country have agreed to relinquish their freedom. The proposed transfer of e-mail to Google is on a par with that behavior that was regretted only when it was too late.

Quirino Paris

professor

Agricultural and Resource Economics