[Wired] Mind your open tabs... (student monitoring, digital divide)

[VirtualLarry]

Borrowed a School Laptop? Mind Your Open Tabs

Students—many from lower-income households—were likely to use school-issued devices for remote learning. But the devices often contained monitoring software.

www.wired.com

How the "Digital Divide" grows larger, as lower-class, usually black and hispanic children, are forced to consent to monitoring software, while their richer compatriots, can pay for their own devices to opt out.

Sounded pretty draconian to me, kind of like school-assigned ankle-bracelets. And, before you accuse me of going too far, what happens when the primary means of computation for schoolwork is a smartphone, which is not only a web browser, but a private (?) communications device, and also in many cases, a realtime GPS tracker. Will "children of color" effectively be segregated to certain allowed areas of town, and risk being picked up by the local cops for being "out of area" on their school-assigned GPS trackers?

 

[lxskllr]

It's a shame people are so tech illiterate. It would be nothing to boot to a thumb drive using libre software to bypass the spyware. Won't help if the hardware's been modified, but I don't think that's a concern at this time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's a shame people are so tech illiterate. It would be nothing to boot to a thumb drive using libre software to bypass the spyware. Won't help if the hardware's been modified, but I don't think that's a concern at this time.

I don't think that you can do that with a Chromebook. (Would love to be wrong about that.) At least, not without physically-modifying the laptop, by removing the BIOS write-protect screw, and then flashing a version of CoreBoot appropriate for the Chromebook's hardware.
(And I think that there are penalties for tampering with an "ankle bracelet".)

 

[lxskllr]

A quick search says you can, at least on some models, but it doesn't appear to be as trivial as an x86 machine, and it looks like you'd have to wipe the contents.

 

[VirtualLarry]

On the whole, this is a shame, as most of the technology enthusiasts and developers, saw computers as an EMPOWERING thing, an equalizing and democratization tool.

Who knew that it would become a tool for civil unrest, and control over populations, large and small.

I distinctly remember a discussion I had with a MOO/MUSH/MUD developer (remember those things?). It was about implementing a Chess game. For one of my senior projects in HS, I implemented a graphical Chess game that was two-player (sorry, no AI). I painstakingly implemented all of the rules of the game, so as to not allow the possibility of someone "cheating".

When inquiring upon the M/M/M developer, how to implement said rules to the game, his philosophy was, "why do you need to implement hard rules? Just provide a board and the pieces". To which, I hadn't even considered the open-ended-ness of that sort of system. You see, I had always been conditioned that "systems have rules". I was floored at the open-ness of it all.

(Not to wax too political about this, but it was like someone exposed to "Big Gov't" all their life, suddenly being exposed to "Libertarianism". Of course, even a computer powered by a libertarian OS still needs Control Functions and Garbage Collection.)

 

[pauldun170]

Everyone in our district got chromebooks, rich and poor.
When accepting a school issued device where that device is district property you would have to be a complete fucking moron to NOT expect that every activity is monitored and the device is restricted to school activities.
Remote learning programs were hastily implemented and there was a huge learning curve for all involved.
The articles approach to link monitoring of school issued devices to economic and racial issues seems weak in my opinion. On quick read I had plenty of problems with the attempted arguments.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I seen some pretty crazy stories of just how bad the surveillance is for students in the states. They're basically treated like prisoners in their own room by the technology. You actually have less privacy working from home than in the class room. It's not just the privacy issue that's bad but the weird arbitrary rules that are enforced by the AI. You're walking on eggshells all day to avoid triggering the AI and getting in trouble. There's lot of rules like your eyes can never leave the screen and other movement related rules. Imagine staring at a screen for 8 hours straight, without even being able to glance outside or anything. That's basically what they do as the special software they are forced to install tracks their eye movements too. I don't think anyone is allowed in the same room either, which could be hard for multi kid families where not everyone even has their own room. I don't think it's as bad here in Canada but either way hearing this stuff makes me so glad I'm done with school. Also makes me glad my company is reasonable about letting us working from home and is not into full blown surveillance.

Similar to what they do to Amazon drivers actually, their eyes always need to be looking straight ahead while they drive, which is kind of hard to do because it's harder to check blind spots. If the AI picks up on too many "bad" eye movements you get fired on the spot by the AI. I really hate how they are starting to use AI everywhere now to make decisions like that now days. Some police forces are also using it to determine if someone is guilty using face recognition. It often gets it wrong but "computers are never wrong". It seems now days technology is being used against us more and more and everything is designed to be a surveillance and control device.

 

[Maxima1]

Borrowed a School Laptop? Mind Your Open Tabs

Students—many from lower-income households—were likely to use school-issued devices for remote learning. But the devices often contained monitoring software.

www.wired.com

How the "Digital Divide" grows larger, as lower-class, usually black and hispanic children, are forced to consent to monitoring software, while their richer compatriots, can pay for their own devices to opt out.

Sounded pretty draconian to me, kind of like school-assigned ankle-bracelets. And, before you accuse me of going too far, what happens when the primary means of computation for schoolwork is a smartphone, which is not only a web browser, but a private (?) communications device, and also in many cases, a realtime GPS tracker. Will "children of color" effectively be segregated to certain allowed areas of town, and risk being picked up by the local cops for being "out of area" on their school-assigned GPS trackers?

A $200-400 laptop would last years. This has nothing to do with rich vs. poor. It's a dysfunctional family problem.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Borrowed a School Laptop? Mind Your Open Tabs

Students—many from lower-income households—were likely to use school-issued devices for remote learning. But the devices often contained monitoring software.

www.wired.com

How the "Digital Divide" grows larger, as lower-class, usually black and hispanic children, are forced to consent to monitoring software, while their richer compatriots, can pay for their own devices to opt out.

Sounded pretty draconian to me, kind of like school-assigned ankle-bracelets. And, before you accuse me of going too far, what happens when the primary means of computation for schoolwork is a smartphone, which is not only a web browser, but a private (?) communications device, and also in many cases, a realtime GPS tracker. Will "children of color" effectively be segregated to certain allowed areas of town, and risk being picked up by the local cops for being "out of area" on their school-assigned GPS trackers?

Retarded. Just let the kids use the laptops, if they're misusing them in class, take them away and let them use paper and a pen for a week. If they're misusing it outside of school, who the hell cares?