Venmo’s insistence that transactions be accompanied by notes makes me wonder what they’re doing with that data. For several months now, I’ve insisted on replacing any helpful indication with random characters.

To my own surprise, I’ve been getting into audiobooks recently, and having listened to Doctorow’s “Walkaway,” I decided to revisit his Little Brother series in audio form. Parts of the first book haven’t aged well (including some language that was bad enough to be edited out of the print version I have), and while I enjoy Doctorow’s opinions, they sometimes overwhelm the story here. That said, to quote TVTropes, some anvils are worth dropping, and the messages about privacy, surveillance, and civil liberties are as relevant as ever, I don’t know if I enjoyed the book as much as I did my first time through, but I still like it enough to give it four hearts.

Important points in here. link to ‘ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare, and we ought to be concerned | Ars Technica’

This is dumb and gross, and another reason I’ll never use Spotify. link to ‘People Can’t Stop ‘Spotify Snooping’ on Friends, Exes and Crushes - WSJ’

In the Canvas LMS main interface, it describes analytics reports as based on “near real-time data.” In documentation, it specifies that “near real-time” is “may be delayed by 40 hours.”

Canvas: “You can draw conclusions about student participation with our analytics!” Also Canvas: “Mobile page view data aren’t exact, and our analytics only update every 24 hours, so don’t draw too many conclusions, lol.”

Glad this story is still getting attention, because it so neatly demonstrates why facial recognition is scary. We shouldn’t tolerate this level of surveillance—by private or public actors. link to ‘Madison Square Garden’s facial recognition policy ignites debate over the tech : NPR’

I have written council representatives about this more than anything else, and yet I suspect that it will go through again without a fuss. This isn’t the worst form of surveillance, but it is still surveillance, pure and simple. link to ‘Lexington, Ky Mayor wants to expand license plate cameras | Lexington Herald Leader’

Josh is doing important work here—the kind of work that edtech researchers often don’t consider as being in their purview. Glad to see this getting coverage. link to ‘School Facebook Pages and Privacy Concerns: What Educators Need to Know’

I hate that there’s a need for articles like this, but I’m glad WIRED is putting them together. link to ‘How to Protect Yourself If Your School Uses Surveillance Tech | WIRED’

There is so much of both horrible and hopeful in this story. The way we’re normalizing surveillance is really worrying, and I’m glad some people are fighting back. link to ‘Pluralistic: 07 Oct 2022 “Don’t install spy on a privacy lab,” and other lessons for university provosts – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’

Lot of worrying stuff in here. Edtech needs to take surveillance tech more seriously, because the two are increasingly simultaneous. link to ‘When School Superintendents Market Surveillance Cameras’

This week, I’m hurriedly putting together some revisions for a book chapter on data ethics that I’ve been working on for an open access volume on ethics in educational technology. I’m excited about the volume, and I’ve really loved writing the chapter, so it’s kind of fun to be doing these revisions, even if I waited for the last minute to do them. One reviewer suggestion that I’m particularly grateful for is to elaborate on a sentence I wrote arguing that “learning management systems allow us to monitor students in invasive ways that would be unimaginable in a face-to-face context.

I had heard about this kind of software at a conference last year, but reading about it just makes it scarier. link to ‘The Ungodly Surveillance of Anti-Porn ‘Shameware’ Apps | WIRED’

I missed the vertical integration aspect of this in earlier reporting I’ve read. It makes this story even worse. link to ‘‘Ring Nation’ Is a Terrible Idea That’s Unstoppable Because Amazon Owns Everything’

This is a gross idea for a TV show, and I’m glad people are pushing back against it. link to ‘Dozens of civil rights groups are calling on Amazon and MGM to cancel Ring Nation reality show - The Verge’

Caring about privacy ought to be common sense. It’s difficult to push back, but that doesn’t mean those of us who do are crazy. link to ‘Everyone should join the “cult of privacy.”’

I have been writing a lot about ClassDojo recently, spurred by a combination of my professional concerns about the app and by my frustration that my kid’s school is now using it. Last week, I was pleased to see a new report from the United Kingdom-based Digital Futures Commission about not only ClassDojo but also Google Classroom. I’m sure my kid will have to use this latter software as well, so it’s good to be aware.

It isn’t that TikTok doesn’t pose a real threat, it’s that it’s not alone in doing so. In particular, I appreciate that this article points out that U.S. border agents REGULARLY SEARCH COMPUTERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. So, yes, raise concerns, but be consistent instead of creating a moral panic around thus one app (which, by the way, would be a privacy threat even if it were totally owned by a U.

What a story. I knew how awful the TSA could be to passengers, but I never knew how bad it also was for its own employees. link to ‘The Humiliating History of the TSA’

In addition to all the irritating ClassDojo stuff going on at kiddo’s school, I’ve also spent some time banging my head against the wall made up of two forms: One to opt out of FERPA directory information sharing, and the other to opt out of kiddo’s information being shared with media outlets. I’m too tired tonight to get into all the details of what’s been going on, but the short version is that there’s no (clear, easy) way for spouse and I to request that kiddo’s name and image not be shared on school social media without also insisting that kiddo’s name and image not appear in innocuous things like… a school yearbook.

Well, here’s some happy news! I hope this ruling sticks. link to ‘Scanning student rooms during remote tests is unconstitutional, judge rules : NPR’

Interesting read on privacy-focused phones—and related scams. link to ‘Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true | MIT Technology Review’

I’ve been grumpy about ClassDojo all week, and this is the only thing that’s made me feel better about it—BECAUSE THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE. link to ‘A Tool That Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now in 1,000 American Schools’

I’ve been blogging about ClassDojo enough over the past few weeks that I think it’s time for a quick recap before sharing some of the latest developments. I heard about ClassDojo being used schoolwide back in late July and started wondering what approach I should take as both a student’s parent and an edtech researcher. On Monday of this week, I talked to kiddo’s teacher about it and wrote up some thoughts the next day about teachers’ diminished agency in the realm of edtech.

I really will get back to blogging on other subjects sometime soon, but here’s an email I just sent to kiddo’s principal raising some concerns I have going into the school year. I’m not sure what will come of this—and I’m not at all sure this was the right email to write—but in the off-chance it’s helpful for someone, I thought I’d post about it here. Dear Principal [so-and-so],

Compelling example of the need for digital privacy in a post-Row world. link to ‘This Is the Data Facebook Gave Police to Prosecute a Teenager for Abortion’

Some really worrying privacy implications in this kind of edtech—and edtech as a discipline doesn’t care nearly enough about this kind of thing. Makes me worried as a scholar and a parent. link to ‘Kids Are Back in Classrooms and Laptops Are Still Spying on Them’

Concern about privacy is good, but not when it’s Sinophobic posturing. Yes, what TikTok is doing is worrying and problematic, but Bode makes an important point here: If they aren’t willing to fix the broader infrastructure, stances like Rubio’s just come down to trying to score cheap political points. link to ‘Marco Rubio Pretends To Be A TikTok Privacy Champion, Despite Years Of Undermining U.S. Consumer Privacy | Techdirt’

I’ve seen a number of headlines about how a post-Dobbs world changes the game for online privacy, but this is the first one that I sat down to read. School surveillance software is scary enough without this possibility, so let’s not make it worse. I can’t believe that this software gives schools any benefits that outweigh the heavy cost to students’ privacy. link to ‘After Dobbs, Advocates Fear School Surveillance Tools Could Put Teens at Risk – The Markup’

Good writing here. Vague Sinophobia drives a lot of media and political concerns, and I appreciate Bode’s challenging of that here. link to ‘The Myopic Focus On TikTok Privacy Issues Remains Kind Of Weird | Techdirt’

Well this is terrifying. link to ‘Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites – The Markup’

Yes please. link to ‘Sweeping Legislation Aims to Ban the Sale of Location Data’

Frustrating to see steps that feel like progress seem to shore up the tech giants I hoped were being kept in check. link to ‘How You’re Still Being Tracked on the Internet - The New York Times’

The focus on student learning in this year’s AECT reviews is good, but I worry that it blinds us to other important ed tech questions. I’d struggle to describe how surveillance, ethics, privacy impact student learning, but we desperately need that research too-or more!

Doing transcription yourself sucks. It’s long and tedious, and the final product never feels worth all the effort you put into it. For all that, though, this is exactly why services like Otter have never sat well with me. link to ‘This journalist’s Otter.ai scare is a reminder that cloud transcription isn’t completely private - The Verge’

Contract tracing is good, but apps for it are scary. Ugh. link to ‘German Police Caught Using COVID-Tracing Data To Search For Crime Witnesses | Techdirt’

Vive la France ! 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷 link to ‘French regulator tells Clearview AI to delete its facial recognition data - The Verge’

Not a great look. link to ‘Twitter reportedly suspended accounts by mistake after extremists abused new private media policy - The Verge’

File this under bad solutions to worse problems. link to ‘Twitter policy aimed at improving privacy sparks concerns over misuse : NPR’

Takes some real self-confidence to describe an always-on camera as a feature, not a nightmarish bug. link to ‘Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a privacy nightmare - The Verge’

Accelerometer data can be used for invasive tracking, and Facebook seems to be doing so. This is truly scary stuff. link to ‘Security Researcher Finds Facebook App Tracking iPhone Movements’

Very scary stuff here. link to ‘The Amazon Privacy Nightmare. “What you search for, what you buy… | by Micah Sifry | Nov, 2021 | OneZero’

Something else to write representatives about. link to ‘Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Stop Warrantless Car Spying by Police’

Interesting read on an important subject. link to ‘Ed Tech Usage is Up. So Are Parent Privacy Concerns’

Facial recognition is worrying. link to ‘In Moscow’s Technological Advances, a ‘Double-Edged Sword’ - The New York Times’

Good take on the privacy issues involved with modern gift-giving. link to ‘Internet-Connected Products: Ever-Advancing, Ever-Creepier | by Stephen Moore | Nov, 2021 | OneZero’

Terrifying stuff. I know “Orwellian” gets overused these days, but TVs that watch us are straight out of 1984. link to ‘Vizio’s profit on ads, subscriptions, and data is double the money it makes selling TVs - The Verge’

Good progress but need more. link to ‘Apple Has Listened And Will Retract Some Harmful Phone-Scanning’

We ought to be talking more about biometric data. link to ‘7-Eleven breached customer privacy by collecting facial imagery without consent | ZDNet’

Tech companies are often ad companies, and it behooves us to remember that. link to ‘Google and Facebook’s Ad Empires - The New York Times’

This means we’re going to get some soon, right? link to ‘Majority of Americans support national data privacy standards: poll | TheHill’

On the internet, more and more people can learn you’re a dog. link to ‘ProtonMail removed “we do not keep any IP logs” from its privacy policy | Ars Technica’

I have been thinking recently about streaming as a compromise in internet-era IP disputes, but this shows one reason that it’s not good enough a compromise. link to ‘A Thumbs Down for Streaming Privacy - The New York Times’

This blurb stood out to me: “Apple says, relentlessly, that privacy is the central feature of its iPhones. But as the photo scanning demonstrates, that’s true only until Apple changes its mind about its policies.” Seems to me we shouldn’t be dependent on tech companies’ decisions to ensure privacy. link to Opinion | The Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell - The New York Times

Please also give me the confidence of an Apple exec explaining how scanning all your photos is “an advancement of the state of the art in privacy.”

Give me the confidence of a FB employee wringing hands about researchers’ allegedly “put[ting] people’s data or privacy at risk.”

The thing about getting in the habit of reading privacy policies is that it sometimes changes your behavior, but it ALWAYS ups your anxiety about the impossibility of ever changing your behavior sufficiently.