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<p>It’s not only a violation of his son’s right to privacy as established by past supreme court rulings, but also likely a violation of Federal and State hacking/network eavesdropping laws and the privacy/networking rights of the college and/or the government if it’s a public institution. </p>
<p>If OP is dumb enough to act on this…he’d be lucky if only the local/state courts sentence him to prison. </p>
<p>There’s also the possibility that in addition to all that he/she may be visited by the Feds as many colleges receive federal funding and have computing networks which enable communications nationally and internationally. All those factors have the potential to snowball into a Federal case.</p>
<p>It also doesn’t seem to register with the OP that once you hook up a computer to an institution’s network…that computer & its owners are now subject to policies/laws related to being connected on that network. </p>
<p>As it’s not the network of the computer owner’(s’) the institution which owns the network has the right to dictate conditions for users to connect their computers on that network such as hardware/software configuration, minimum system requirements, mandating installation of security software, signing agreements to comply with network policies/laws as a condition to connect up, and being subjected to possible sanctions and even prosecution if such policies/laws are violated.</p>