"Another is that traffic is encrypted. Many educational establishments will have some capability for filtering traffic to malicious URLs as it flows through their network. That’s easy with unencrypted traffic. If the site uses SSL, then you have to do some kind of SSL interception."
"That’s easy with unencrypted traffic. If the site uses SSL, then you have to do some kind of SSL interception. Straightforward on a corporate network full of tightly-managed systems. Much harder on a network full of student machines, visitor laptops and the like, and in our opinion, something to be avoided."
Obviously, they do not see intercepting traffic as desirable. But who has time to read the article before commenting these days...?
From a read through of the Wikipedia article on SSL it's now clear to me that all HTTP headers are encrypted, including the requested path.
My understanding is that SSL establishes an end-to-end secure channel, then HTTP is inside that channel. Consequently, GETs and POSTs are not visible to outside parties.
Perhaps they could implement some more advanced email filters, e.g. removing all links to google docs, instead of blocking the service for all users?
I'd imagine a mass of the user-base of Oxford uses Google Docs for important things, from group work on a PowerPoint/Word doc, through storing their work in the cloud without the Office Suite.