Team Firefox foreverrrrrr link to ‘Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome | Ars Technica’

Well, this sucks. [link to ‘*privacy not included | Shop smart and safe | Mozilla Foundation’](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/what-data-does-my-car-collect-about-me-and-where-does-it-go/

I’m torn between how much I dislike the idea of a connected car and how easy it just now made it to get a question answered at the local dealer. I guess we wouldn’t agree to all this surveillance if it wasn’t actually useful sometimes.

Some important—if disheartening—observations from Marwick. link to ‘You Are Not Responsible for Your Own Online Privacy | WIRED’

Ew, gross, no. link to ‘Lexington KY police start using Fusus camera software | Lexington Herald Leader’

Guns in schools are bad, but adding surveillance to schools is not the solution. link to ‘JCPS approves $11.7M for AI weapons detection in schools’

Hear hear. Ring is a creepy company, and we shouldn’t support them. link to ‘Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras | WIRED’

This sounds worrying to me. Surveillance can and will be abused, and we should be wary about embracing it on this scale. link to ‘Neighborhood Watch Out: Cops Are Incorporating Private Cameras Into Their Real-Time Surveillance Networks | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Heading into finals, campus sent out a message about AI detection tools maybe not being trustworthy, which is great. However, this is in the context of these tools being wrapped into plagiarism detection software we already have access to, so they should say the same about it, too.

I had never thought of a car as a creepy surveillance device, but this is horrifying. link to ‘Tesla employees reportedly passed around personal videos from owners’ cars - The Verge’

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’

Just because some worries about ChatGPT are, indeed, moral panics doesn’t mean that there aren’t legtimate criticisms of the technology—including from an educational perspective. I happen to agree with Masnick that schools ultimately need to roll with the punches here, but given how much we already expect of our schools and teachers, it’s reasonable to resent being punched in the first place. Masnick’s point about the error rate for detecting AI-generated text is an important one, though: I don’t think plagiarism-detecting surveillance is at all the right response.

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’

Hey, look, workplace surveillance doesn’t work. link to ‘Mouse Jigglers, Fake PowerPoints: Workers Foil Bosses’ Surveillance Attempts - WSJ’

Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of talking with Arianna Prothero at EducationWeek about Seattle Public Schools’ suing Snap, Alphabet, Meta, and ByteDance, and she ended up quoting me—and colleagues like Jeff Carpenter and Josh Rosenberg—in her article. I appreciate that all three of us were quoted in the article, because Jeff and Josh both made points that I didn’t articulate as well in my conversation with Arianna. For example, Jeff’s comments summed up a lot of the complexities that have gone through my head:

I see a worrying future for edtech ahead, and I’m not sure the academic discipline is adequately prepared for it. [link to ‘Brief – Hidden Harms: Student Activity Monitoring After Roe v. Wade - Center for Democracy and Technology’](https://cdt.org/insights/brief-hidden-harms-student-activity-monitoring-after-roe-v-wade/?utm_source=rss

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’

It is fun to see all my neighbors’ Halloween decorations tonight. It is less fun to see how many of them have Ring doorbells capturing my comings and goings.

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.”’

Americans should be more worried about the NSA than they are. link to ‘New Book Says NSA Pressured GCHQ To Shut Down Publication Of Snowden Leaks By UK Journalists | Techdirt’

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’

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

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’

These numbers sound great, but what cost are we paying? I’m not talking about the $70,000, I’m talking about the hard to quantify costs of surveillance—which, as the ACLU of KY points out, are likely to disproportionately target communities of color. Except we can’t know that because the city won’t tell us where the cameras are. link to ‘Lexington KY looking to address more crime, safety issues | Lexington Herald Leader’

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.

Such a bad idea. Normalizing Ring won’t make it any better—only worse. link to ‘‘Ring Nation’ Is Amazon’s Reality Show for Our Surveillance Dystopia’

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’

Who is allowed to watch the watchmen? This is why I’m grumpy about Lexington being hush hush about its new automated license plate readers—it sets a precedent for secretive use of even more invasive surveillance. link to ‘Police Are Still Abusing Investigative Exemptions to Shield Surveillance Tech, While Others Move Towards Transparency | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Opting out of location sharing is a good and important step, but there are no tech solutions to this horror—only political ones. We need good legislation, and we need it now. link to ‘DHS bought “shocking amount” of warrantless phone-tracking data, ACLU says | Ars Technica’

The amount of data collected by TikTok is more concerning for the possibility that it could be fed to Chinese state officials, but it would be just as concerning if it could be fed to American state officials, and still pretty concerning if only fed to corporate officials.

It’s concerning to see private surveillance prop up public surveillance like this. link to ‘Amazon Admits Giving Police Ring Footage Without Consent’

Gun control is good, but surveillance isn’t. I don’t think this is the answer. link to ‘New York gun applicants will have to submit their social accounts for review : NPR’

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’

I’m not going to link to it, but I am fascinated by a recent post on the Gab blog where Andrew Torba announced some new features to help Gab users push back against research on the platform. Not only do I have two or three ongoing projects using Gab data (one is in the very, very early stages and—ironically—uses Gab blog posts), but some of what Torba wrote also aligned with some of the (fortunately mild) trolling my co-author, Amy Chapman, and I have experienced because of my work on the far-right-influenced DezNat hashtag in Mormon Twitter.

Gun violence can’t be solved with educational technology—and make no mistake, all of this is edtech. link to ‘Schools Are Spending Billions on High-Tech Defense for Mass Shootings - The New York Times’

Heard a kid crying in the background of a company’s help line and realized it used one of those often-exploitative work-from-home customer service networks. That made me more mad than issue I was calling about.

Good for the court, though the narrow majority is disappointing. link to ‘Kentucky court delves into use of cell phones for tracking | AP News’

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’

I’ve been plenty spooked by Ring’s video capabilities, but apparently I haven’t been worried enough about its audio surveillance. link to ‘Senator Declares Amazon Ring’s Audio Surveillance Capabilities ‘Threaten the Public’ | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Disappointing news, but glad for the fight that the EFF and others are waging. link to ‘EFF’s Flagship Jewel v. NSA Dragnet Spying Case Rejected by the Supreme Court | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

The only thing worse than the already-bad reality of powerful, private data brokers is public agencies buying what they have to sell. link to ‘How the Federal Government Buys Our Cell Phone Location Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

This kind of social media surveillance has been bothering me for years. I’m happy it’s getting some attention, even if the impetus for that attention is such a tragedy. This is edtech and our discipline needs to treat it as such. link to ‘Software to detect school threats online is costly but mostly ineffective.’

This article may make its way into a chapter I’m writing on how assumptions about education shape our understanding of what appropriate data collection looks like. As Audrey Watters has written, this kind of thing is very much edtech, and we need to be critical about how we deploy it. Even if it did work, I’m not sure the surveillance would be worth it. If it doesn’t work, all the more reason to be skeptical.

There are a few yellow flags in this article for me. Quick and efficient sounds good, but are those the most important values in policing? What values do they stand in tension with? It’s great that there are policies against using a ALPR database for personal reasons, but these policies regularly get violated. No, these aren’t videosurveillance cameras, but that doesn’t make them harmless. link to ‘New Flock security cameras being installed in Lexington by end of May | Lexington Herald Leader’

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!

Do not be fooled by the headline, the article’s best contribution is its indictment of U.S. politicians and companies for their complicity in this sort of thing. link to ‘Nokia Busted Helping Russia’s FSB Spy On Citizens, Activists, Journalists | Techdirt’

Remembering the time that the only person at church who understood my dissertation research was the one who worked for the state of Michigan doing social media surveillance of social justice movements.

Certainly not the worst news I’ve read this morning, but still tremendously worrying. link to ‘George Washington University apologizes for tracking locations of students, faculty | TheHill’

Lexington just installed plate readers on a trial basis, so this hits particularly hard right now. It’s scary and it needs to stop. link to ‘Please Delete Your Recordings: Inside a Police Conference’

Let me get this straight: Invasive surveillance isn’t enough, now companies are creating opportunities to cheat just so they can ding them and take credit for stopping it? link to ‘A Network of Fake Test Answer Sites Is Trying to Incriminate Students – The Markup’

Surveillance is a bigger problem than we think. link to ‘Declassified Documents Shows The CIA Is Using A 1981 Executive Order To Engage In Domestic Surveillance | Techdirt’

This is unjustifiable. link to ‘We Need Answers About the CIA’s Mass Surveillance | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Surveillance is not going to help kids. link to ‘Senator Wyden: EARN IT Will Make Children Less Safe | Techdirt’

We should all be concerned about this. Describing this as “high tech” in the first line of the story fetishizes surveillance. It’s gross. link to ‘Lexington KY police test license plate cameras to solve crime | Lexington Herald Leader’

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’

Helpful if worrying read. link to ‘New Bill Claims To Ban ‘Surveillance Advertising,’ But Doesn’t Actually Do It | Techdirt’

Time to write some representatives. This is terrifying stuff. link to ‘In 2021, the Police Took a Page Out of the NSA’s Playbook: 2021 in Review | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Such an important read. link to ‘Students Are Learning To Resist Surveillance: Year in Review 2021 | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

Stingrays are bad news, and so is the ability to buy them without public scrutiny. [link to ‘Boston Police Bought Spy Tech With a Pot of Money Hidden From the Public — ProPublica’](https://www.propublica.org/article/boston-police-bought-spy-tech-with-a-pot-of-money-hidden-from-the-public

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

This report sounds terrifying. Even the Capitol rioters deserve some freedom from this kind of surveillance. link to ‘Report - Legal Loopholes and Data for Dollars: How Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies Are Buying Your Data from Brokers - Center for Democracy and Technology’

Nope nope nope. link to ‘Your Face Is, or Will Be, Your Boarding Pass - The New York Times’

Surveillance remains scary. link to ‘Police Aerial Surveillance Endangers Our Ability to Protest | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

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

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

Surveillance is scary. link to ‘EFF to Supreme Court: Warrantless 24-Hour Video Surveillance Outside Homes Violates Fourth Amendment | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

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

Location data harvesting is scary stuff. link to ‘Data Broker Veraset Gave Bulk Device-Level GPS Data to DC Government | Electronic Frontier Foundation’

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

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’

A great example of Ring cameras being gross. link to ‘My Neighbor’s Door Camera Faces My Apartment. Is That Legal? - The New York Times’

Nope nope nope nope. If plate readers are going to become more common, I’ve got to start biking more places. Not that that will protect against Ring. 🤮🤮🤮 link to ‘Surveillance Startup Brings Police Tech to Neighborhoods - Bloomberg’

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.”

It really bothers me when browsers hide anything after the domain name in a URL. Sure, it’s cleaner, but there’s so much important information (and low-key surveillance) embedded in a URL, and I want to know about all of it.

Does anyone know of research on social media surveillance by school districts? Some local news stories have me thinking of a potential future project…