[HN Gopher] The Surveilled Student (2021)
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The Surveilled Student (2021)
Author : smlacy
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-05-30 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chronicle.com)
| esafak wrote:
| https://archive.is/PKmcO
| teddyh wrote:
| > _College officials stress that a machine, not a person, is
| listening in,_
|
| "Okay, but that's worse."
|
| <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/okay-but-thats-worse>
| pixl97 wrote:
| >that a machine
|
| Yea, I don't know where that idea came from. Maybe the Boomer
| generation when machines didn't have practically unlimited
| storage and internet access where that data then can be crawled
| over by countless algorithms to judge your life and how you'll
| live from now on.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I think this kind of thinking must be the same kind that
| believes that _bulk data collection_ isn 't a _" search"_
| until the data is accessed by a _human_.
| reginald78 wrote:
| The worst part is the algorithms don't even have to be
| correct. A ton of algorithms, designed to find
| transgressions, likely judged by purchasers by _how many_
| they find. Eventually they are relied upon and are standard
| for ass covering. But people don 't understand how they work
| so give them a level of trust you wouldn't extend to a person
| doing the same task.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Not only is it worse, but I doubt it is even true in any
| meaningful sense. Even if the humans aren't 'listening in' and
| only the student gets the feedback directly, surely there are
| logs that contain at the very least metadata which a human can
| very much 'listen in' on and absent regulation with heavy
| penalties, _will_ listen in on either individually or in
| aggregate and which could be hacked and sold.
| yapyap wrote:
| (2021) btw
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You mean yesterday?
|
| What actually changed from 2021 to now besides GenAI?
| hatthew wrote:
| public perception of covid changed from The Apocalypse to The
| Flu 2
| qoez wrote:
| The Surveilled Child, The Surveilled Citizen, ...
| rapnie wrote:
| Living in a Smart City.
| m463 wrote:
| There's an app for you.
| bigyabai wrote:
| What's so "smart" about these phones, anyways?
| tanseydavid wrote:
| "I've got one that can see" -"They Live" John Carpenter
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Does privacy even exist anywhere? I assume that my work computer
| has a key logger to track if I ever type something nasty.
| Potentially records me to see if I am using an above average
| amount of profanity while coding.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| I'll just leave this here
|
| https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/
| nis0s wrote:
| This article...the kind of technology described herein, and other
| places which gets cast in a suspicious light, is actually quite
| useful.
|
| The problem with the information such technology affords,
| however, is that any primitive-minded human may misuse or abuse
| what they get out of it.
|
| The human mind has not wholly updated beyond family or tribe
| level self-preservation, but I guess some results have yielded
| from prior waves of cultural evolution. The only practical advice
| is that one should try to build in safeguards against abuse and
| misuse.
| 1shooner wrote:
| Society generally puts maximal responsibility on school
| administrators for the well-being of students, so it should not
| be surprising that they will take maximal measures in response to
| that expectation. They are ultimately risk mitigators, not
| privacy ethicists, what would you expect them to do?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Not be authoritarian weirdos.
| Loughla wrote:
| They're expected to have complete control of the students and
| are held responsible like they have complete control.
|
| How the hell else are they supposed to act? I genuinely don't
| blame the schools here. I blame every single person who
| expects the schools to hold all encompassing control over a
| group of kids.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > They're expected to have complete control of the students
|
| Since when?
| Loughla wrote:
| Since about 1999 or 2000. Columbine really shifted
| people's attitudes.
| ty6853 wrote:
| The administrators could educate and urge the parents and
| school board to vote against this faux risk mitigation.
| Onawa wrote:
| School boards have increasingly been taken over by people
| actively looking to dismantle our education systems. This is
| a battle that has to be won on multiple fronts to make an
| impact.
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/right-wing-extremists-
| schools...
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Right wingers have been saying the same thing about left
| leaning school boards for the last decade.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Seems like they are saying the left is trying to change
| the curriculum, not dismantle the education system. The
| push toward privitization and homeschooling is pretty
| lopsided.
| fn-mote wrote:
| To be clear, this is an article about COLLEGE students, the
| vast majority of whom are legal adults.
|
| It's not the same as first grade students being monitored by
| their teachers, regardless of what sibling commentors have to
| say.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Also see the installation of "HALO" type detectors in schools.
|
| They use zero-party audio recording to detect 'gunshots' (why the
| fuck does a school need this to detect gunshots which will be
| heard throughout the whole school? Are they expecting the world's
| quietest silencer?) And I put in quotes, because gunshots here
| seems like a thinly veiled way to try and finagle around
| illegally recording people.
|
| They also invade the bathrooms with 'vape' detectors that smell
| the children at all times to make sure they are in compliance.
| ge96 wrote:
| I could see sound being drowned out from all the bending
| hallways/closed doors, I remember being in pretty big schools
|
| Interesting though I've seen these spiral dots before but
| didn't know what it was
| Loughla wrote:
| Fun fact, vape detectors are bypassed by blowing through a
| sweatshirt or hoody, or by running hot water in the sink.
| danesparza wrote:
| "why the fuck does a school need this to detect gunshots which
| will be heard throughout the whole school?"
|
| To establish a timeline (and a sense of 'due diligence') for
| the inevitable deposition.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It's more about addressing management/stakeholder anxiety,
| and helping with blame/liability issues.
| nofinator wrote:
| Previous discussion (4 years ago):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453800
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, we do have to stay safe out there. We're in a pandemic.
|
| It amuses me that my rave groups already did contact tracing for
| respiratory illnesses before the pandemic and perhaps because of
| the large Asian friend group I'm part of we wore masks in more
| normal contexts when we had a cold.
|
| To be honest, most of the people designing the interventions are
| just generally short of mental horsepower and strong in self-
| belief. So they come up with novel approaches that aren't really
| required. The fact that there are students who aren't pro-social
| on campus complicated things but that's a self-imposed problem.
|
| It can't be helped: this is what happens with The Sort. If they
| were smarter they wouldn't be college admins.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This of course is about Covid, but the rise of LLMs is another
| point where students are supposed to become less private, opening
| up their devices to monitoring software.
|
| I think that there is exactly one correct direction to take here,
| which is that direct human interaction is the most valuable
| thing, both in learning and in keeping students mentally and
| physically healthy. Every single surrogate for that inevitably
| will make all of these aspects worse.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > won't just disappear when the pandemic subsided.
|
| Yeah I'm pretty sure they don't have to wear heart monitors now.
| krapp wrote:
| I wonder how far the overlap is in the Venn diagram of people
| who thought the pandemic would lead to an "Orwellian nightmare"
| and the people who voted for Trump and support DOGE, ICE and
| the administration's oppression of political wrongthink in
| universities. I'd bet it's an almost perfect circle.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The _US_ Surveilled Student
|
| I can't imagine such ideas being floated elsewhere. Certainly not
| without significant protest.
|
| So much for the land of the free.
| atoav wrote:
| Working in a German university. I had students in my courses
| where we noticed after two semesters that they aren't even
| studying here (not as if that was a problem, tuition is free
| and they were adding good spirits to the courses).
|
| And with "noticed" I mean they told us.
| otherayden wrote:
| https://unbloq.us/https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-surv...
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