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from the 1984-was-not-a-"how-to"-manual dept.
When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin's Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their "attendance points." And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they've been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.
"They want those points," he said. "They know I'm watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change."
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide Wi-Fi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students' academic performance, analyse their conduct or assess their mental health.
But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students' privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilise students in the very place where they're expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.
In response we have:
How to (Hypothetically) Hack Your School's Surveillance System:
This week, hacktivist and security engineer Lance R. Vick tweeted an enticing proposition along with a gut-punch headline: "Colleges are turning students' phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands," read the Washington Post link.
Vick countered with an offer to students:
If you are at one of these schools asking you to install apps on your phone to track you, hit me up for some totally hypothetical academic ideas on how one might dismantle such a system.
We're always up for hacker class, so Vick supplied Gizmodo with a few theories for inquiring minds.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @12:06AM
A few hops? Ha! We're there right now.
You can't or it is hard to get.. get a driver's licence, connect to gas water or electrity, have a package delivered, get a PO box, open an ISP account, buy a phone with a SIM (go figure), enter some places (yes, they ask for a mobile), stay at a hotel, and the list goes on.
I started keeping track of how often I was asked for my mobile number, licence, DOB, etc. It turns out that every company these days likes to do a credit check on you even if you pay in advance. Which is understandable in some ways, but not in others. If your account, like my ISP, is paid monthly by credit card prior to the service being used then why do they need a credit check? It's out of control.