[HN Gopher] Student Surveillance Vendor Proctorio Files Slapp La...
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Student Surveillance Vendor Proctorio Files Slapp Lawsuit to
Silence a Critic
Author : glitcher
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-02-24 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| [deleted]
| Netcob wrote:
| procto- , proct- Anus; (more frequently) rectum; Compare:
| recto-. [G. proktos]
|
| Classy name for an invasive surveillance company.
|
| Personally I think the root of the problem is how much value is
| placed on the outcome of exams. Apparently the deal is that
| companies, in addition to their own invasive and broken interview
| methodologies, want proof from extremely expensive external
| institutions that you can cram a lot of information and retain it
| for at least one day.
|
| Maybe we should switch to the old Chinese system where you had to
| write a nice poem and then were automatically qualified to do
| pretty much anything.
| sschueller wrote:
| We should be teaching trust and responsibility. This does the
| opposite. Guilty until proven innocent.
| imagine99 wrote:
| > Guilty until proven innocent.
|
| Not only in school or at university these days. Certainly
| seems to pervade large swaths of society and public opinion,
| that approach.
| imagine99 wrote:
| Those folks are obviously beyond having any sense of irony even
| if it slaps them in the face ("Honorlock" was mentioned as
| another piece of such software above), let alone an
| etymological understanding of their company name.
|
| I completely agree with you that any form of exam in which such
| a system would even theoretically add any value is broken,
| meaningless and should not be used in the first place.
|
| Ironically, nowadays Chinese schools (don't know about unis)
| are also among those who employ extremely invasive methods
| against cheating. Competitiveness for coveted spots at some
| institutions is orders of magnitudes higher than in the west,
| the tests are all completely standardized and students have
| shown remarkable inventiveness in finding ways to cheat.
|
| Don't say: "Undress to impress & show your proctos to your
| proctor."
|
| Say rather: The cloakroom pegs are empty now,
| / And locked the classroom door, / The hollow
| desks are lined with dust, / The students here no more.
| They sit at home, get perved upon / by proctors via
| cam. / I raise my glass and praise the fact / At
| school I no more am.
|
| Am I qualified to do pretty much anything? ;-)
| siraben wrote:
| The most malware-y test-related piece of software I've had to
| install on my computer is Lockdown Browser, which requires to be
| run as root on macOS or Windows(!) (no Linux obviously), detects
| if its running in a VM, has a blacklist of processes that it
| forcibly kills and disables use of external displays and
| keyboards. I've heard that there's also a camera/microphone
| option but my professor didn't enable it.
|
| And it's a difficult situation to be in because on the one hand
| you feel a moral imperative to say something but on the other you
| just want to pass the class. I have no idea how effective it was
| when students could just use their phone to look things up.
|
| It doesn't have to be this way. I especially like UC Berkeley's
| guidelines for remote exams[0], some of which have been followed
| by other professors. e.g. if you limit submission time it's going
| to be near impossible to learn how to convert a state machine
| into a synchronous logical circuit and perform it within 15
| minutes (plus other questions).
|
| [0] https://teaching.berkeley.edu/best-practices-remote-
| examinat...
| slang800 wrote:
| I haven't gotten anywhere making the moral argument to teachers
| or administration at my university. However, making the
| technical argument that Lockdown doesn't run on my system
| because I have Linux on my laptop worked. Occasionally teachers
| will ask to video chat with me during the exam, but I think
| that's acceptable.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| > how to convert a state machine into a synchronous logical
| circuit and perform it within 15 minutes
|
| You speak in riddles.
|
| We implemented similar recommendations at the start of Covid
| when our university got closed and they slow down the cheating
| process but it's not enough to stop students fully when they're
| coordinating over facebook. I'm hoping more strategies come out
| of the lockdown.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The most malware-y test-related piece of software I've had to
| install on my computer is Lockdown Browser, which requires to
| be run as root on macOS or Windows(!) (no Linux obviously),
| detects if its running in a VM, has a blacklist of processes
| that it forcibly kills and disables use of external displays
| and keyboards. I've heard that there's also a camera/microphone
| option but my professor didn't enable it.
|
| That's one of the reasons I'm not opposed to app stores and
| "closed garden" ecosystems.
|
| Want to run as root? Denied. Want to install your special
| snowflake driver? Nope. Kill processes? Never. Get a list of
| other running processes not started by your app? Absolutely
| not.
|
| Don't want to comply? Roll your own devices.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Oh yes, the webcam feature definitely exists and sucks. A lot.
|
| I have to use LockDown + Webcam for my physics exams, which are
| very heavy on solving equations on your own paper. It works
| mostly fine until it notices that I'm looking at the paper,
| then slaps a blue splash page over my screen saying "hey we
| can't see your face you filthy cheater, show us your face."
| Happened at least 10 times on one exam.
|
| With webcam exams I feel almost obligated to find a private
| space to take it outside of my room because you're not
| 'supposed' to have anything in the background of your video and
| that would be an unfair imposition on my roommate since he has
| to deal with the same crap. Fortunately my residence hall has
| study rooms I can use.
|
| Everyone hates LockDown. When I just had one laptop (a
| MacBook), there was a 50% chance it would lock up the entire
| laptop after launching the software, requiring a hard reset. I
| currently run it in a separate user account on a separate
| (Windows) machine. I have an iPad, and I'm honestly 100% ok
| running it on there but turns out some professors disable the
| iPad app for no reason and sometimes it just doesn't work.
|
| I definitely appreciate the exam guidelines you posted and
| agree with them. Funny enough, that physics class I mentioned
| also does the "set time exams" where everyone starts at 4pm.
| You're entirely SOL if you can't procure a working laptop that
| will comply with LockDown if yours isn't working.
|
| Fortunately not all instructors use LockDown here, some ask you
| to join a Zoom call while you're taking the exam (which I think
| is mostly fair) and some just post the exam as a regular Canvas
| quiz with varying security settings.
|
| Personally, I think the only form of "cheating" that should be
| actively seeked out is that students work alone and are
| submitting their own exam (that is, I should not be paying
| someone else to take my exam). There are few situations in
| which you do not have access to the internet and exams should
| honestly be written in such a way that internet access
| shouldn't completely break them.
| threatofrain wrote:
| CEO mentioned in the article, apologizing for using student chat
| records on Reddit.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/01/ceo-o...
| g_p wrote:
| > has since deleted the posts and apologised, saying that he
| and Proctorio "take privacy very seriously".
|
| There's an inherent irony in this that presumably he didn't
| realise at the time he made those posts...
|
| Actions speak louder than corporate mouthpiece words. Companies
| that care about privacy don't do this sort of thing, and don't
| build privacy infringing products.
| Netcob wrote:
| I can't think of a more meaningless sentence nowadays than
| "we take your privacy seriously".
| glitcher wrote:
| When I see that phrase I think: "We take your privacy.
| Seriously."
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| It doesn't help that it's been slapped on every website
| that doesn't respect the GDPR for european visitors.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Sometimes I wish I were in school still, so I'd have some
| motivation to play around trying to break these things.
| rayhendricks wrote:
| Hah just tape a clipboard to the back of your laptop and
| suddenly all notes are available. Expecting this software to
| actually prevent unauthorized use of notes/references is
| foolish.
| hamiltonkibbe wrote:
| Their CEO should have no issue with his testimony being run
| through Proctorio's software and being charged with perjury if
| it's flagged as suspicious
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| Sue the university
| vinni2 wrote:
| I don't understand why people don't switch to open book exams. I
| have been doing it since COVID-19 situation. Despite open book my
| students struggle to to get an A.
| avs733 wrote:
| My institution is using software called honorlock. It is a MESS.
| your laptop/device doesnt' have a webcam? you cant' take a test.
| Do the computers in computer labs have cameras? No. Need to take
| a test right after an in person class? your SOL because you will
| get flagged for having a mask on if you take the test in a public
| space...so you have to go back to your room. Have a roommate who
| needs to be in the same space while you take a test? Flags all
| over the place. Wear a facial or head covering? Flags all over
| the place....and then we have a serious issue.
|
| Add in that faculty have lazily started to just use the flags as
| 'you cheated' without reviewing them meaningfully. I tried it
| once, one student, for no discernable reason, generated over 200
| flags.
|
| These software are useless, not because they don't have their
| place but because they people implementing them are trying to
| solve their own fear rather than a meaningful problem in a
| meaningful way. Tests are minimally useful as an educational
| assessment to begin with. Some, like licensing exams, sure fine
| I'll give you some grace there. But if you are going to use the
| tool...you need to make at least a minimal effort to use the tool
| well. If you don't you make the tool useless. That lack of give a
| damn by users is driving a lack of give a damn by vendors.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Which university?
| nradov wrote:
| A better "tool" is to establish a rigid honor code and actually
| enforce it. My college had one and cheating on take home tests
| seemed to be rare.
| imagine99 wrote:
| I'm sorry but reading all this, at a certain point I have to
| ask: Why are people (students, faculty) playing along with
| that? Is there not a point where people are willing to stand up
| for themselves and say: Enough is enough?
|
| Imagine, students would be asked to appear in the nude to write
| the exams and undergo invasive checks to prove that they
| haven't got any miniature transmission devices hidden on their
| body. Would they just agree to this as well? Would the faculty
| that's tasked to check the students' orifices play along
| happily?
|
| I wonder what a degree from an institution that treats students
| (and faculty forced to use this) with such a level of contempt,
| treats them as a priori cheaters and crooks instead of teaching
| them honor and responsibility, is actually worth? The name
| "honorlock" alone is beyond ridiculous for obvious reasons.
|
| In my days (at one of the Ivies), admittedly a long time ago, I
| seem to remember that we had to complete a lot of coursework at
| home and most if not all our exams were open-book. I even
| remember a test or two where we could bring all our notes from
| class (not that it did you much good at all, the skills they
| asked for just weren't in the notes). Not one exam was
| proctored in that sense, I think, although I remember often
| longing for one as I imagined them to be much easier: Just
| regurgitate some knowledge onto the page and go home. No days
| and weeks refining your arguments and making a case for
| yourself.
|
| Professors also always knew if someone hadn't done all the work
| by himself. I remember a girl breaking out in tears during a
| presentation because she couldn't explain the meaning of a
| rather boastful technical term she had used in context (and
| apparently just copied from somewhere).
|
| I think, if I had been asked to install this kind of malware on
| my PC back then so that some incompetent perv could watch me
| answering stupid multiple choice questions, I would've laughed
| in their faces and just quit then and there (I did eventually
| quit anyway but that's because the offer was just too
| enticing). Maybe I would've set up an elaborate sound stage
| with green screen etc. and spliced it into the camera feed to
| fool the proctors first before turning on some holograms or
| dirty movies, I don't know (this stuff wasn't so advanced and
| readily available in those days).
|
| The point is, these setups can always be fooled. Always. You
| should therefore create an environment where you don't need
| them. Where people are proud of the work they do themselves,
| where the skills taught and asked aren't "replayed" in a manner
| that needs such proctoring, and where people adhere to an honor
| code that doesn't require them to cheat. If you can't teach
| people that nowadays, then what are you good for?
|
| How broken must the current educational system be that a) such
| software exists and is widely used and b) its vendors aren't
| simply laughed out of the room straight away and c) both
| students and faculty don't complain at least as loudly about
| that stuff as they complain about certain other things...
| neilparikh wrote:
| Students don't have a BATNA or the self worth to be able to
| say no, which makes sense, given how much they've invested in
| their degree already.
|
| Suppose you're a 3rd year student, and you're asked to do
| this. You've probably already spent at least ~20K and 2 years
| of your life on your degree so far (if not more). At that
| point, it's a hard sell to ask them to just quit at that
| point and throw away the time and money invested. Might as
| well just suck it up and deal with some spying for the next
| year.
| [deleted]
| duckfang wrote:
| The problem is inline with what venture capitalists seek for:
| a technological solution for something (so it can be repeated
| ad nauseum).
|
| And the root problem is that some things cannot and should
| not be automated. There definitely is a need - but the
| software itself is racist, sexist, and more because it is
| badly trained with data whose origins are racist and
| sexist... But the key is that 'its software so it doesnt have
| a bias and therefore we trust it'.
|
| And what do we get when we have this software subjected
| against us? We end up with black and darker skin people not
| being identified, we end up with software that discriminates
| against those who wear face coverings, and more... And when
| those maleficent softwares 'flag' people, the bias is that
| they have no bias and are to be completely trusted. And then
| the professors fall in line.
|
| Whats the solution here? Well, it's ugly. Most universities
| are just paths to a degree for a better job - and those uni's
| know that. People demand a return on investment and will
| cheat so they don't lose their money. So cheating will
| happen. But the ProctorAI and ilk are setting themselves up
| for company-breaking lawsuits. And until we have enough
| people vaccinated, in-person is going to be pretty
| discouraged (for good reason!).
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Why are people (students, faculty) playing along with that?
|
| My theory: Since the early 1970's the number of college
| administrators has gone up radically. Here is one example but
| it seems to be the same everywhere[0]. All things being equal
| one can assume that more administrators = more policy, more
| policy = more bad policy. As organizations grow they often
| turn inward and focus on their own propagation more so than
| their original mandate. That tends to end up in a scenario
| that, the bad policy that inevitably results from policy
| creation is defended as arguing against it is seen as a
| attack on the organization itself. A organization like that
| is calcified, it's members stop asking questions as they have
| seen others that have been punished for that insolence and
| they simply tow the line in order to make it out the other
| end (graduation or retirement respectively).
|
| [0]https://capitolweekly.net/tuition-uc-administrators-
| tripled-...
| [deleted]
| professoretc wrote:
| > Why are people (students, faculty) playing along with that?
|
| From the faculty perspective: lack of time to do anything
| else. Writing good test questions (questions that require
| synthesis of multiple topics and not just regurgitation) is
| _hard_ , takes a lot of time, and may not even be _possible_
| in some introductory classes. Looking for cheaters after the
| fact is time consuming, too. I have to pay for a Chegg
| account out of my own pocket, and then keep it open whenever
| I do my grading, to look for solutions to my own questions.
|
| That said, I steadfastly refuse to use Lockdown or Protorio
| or any of the other "solutions" my school offers; the
| downsides are simply too great. If I end up passing a few
| people who cheated their way to an A, that's a price I'm
| willing to pay.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Another aspect: How much inadvertent child pornography has
| Proctorio captured and stored within their system? What are their
| controls around handling and removing this data? Is anyone with
| access to this data a registered sex offender?
|
| How many professors and/or Proctorio employees have masturbated
| to images of students captured by this software? Do students with
| large breasts or cleavage showing have their videos reviewed more
| frequently?
|
| This whole system is creepy as fuck.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That's assuming "cutting edge machine vision" isn't offshored
| to third party contractors in foreign countries where the
| students and parents have no recourse.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yeah, are nude images of children being sent to foreign
| countries? Does proctorio have controls to prevent this
| and/or provably delete this data when this occurs?
|
| Are their third party contractors who have access to image
| data in jurisdictions where US courts can compel them to
| delete nude images that were sent to them by Proctorio?
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(page generated 2021-02-24 23:02 UTC)