Totally different concept, but this reminds me of the anecdotes my professor would tell us about the possibility of eavesdropping on a monitor (CRT then) based on the light radiation emitted, and not from seeing the actual image itself

You're thinking of Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays by Markus G. Kuhn in Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Berkeley, California, 12–15 May 2002.

Available here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ieee02-optical.pdf

Pretty amazing that this actually works, just using a high-speed photo-sensor – and doesn't even require line of sight, a reflection off a wall is enough. Unfortunately, I don't think it will work on LCD screens.

Maybe he was talking about project TEMPEST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST

I don't have a link to the paper, but I recall reading a whitepaper about it as far back as 2002.

How much less of an offense would it be if he took more time to just reword things, even if the same message was kept?

Depends on the extent of the rewording. The courts have methods to test for derivative works, and testing for a rote or uncreative transformation is one of those.

I know this letter was written for a UVA audience but there is almost no actual rhetoric about why he believes the administration to be wrong. I understand the power of losing every title and honor on your own,..but why not put more Ome into drafting a concise and powerful argument?

Isn't it the classic innovators' dilemma? Or I guess it's the opposite...IIRC, the innovators dilemma refers to a leading company that ditches the low end in order to focus on the high end...Apple went after tht niche and did so well that it caused execs...the ones who give IT folk their jobs...to demand iPhone support even if it meant a change in infrastructure

Is there at all a system to try to compare studies or evaluate how apples to apples they are?