Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Students Surveilled By School Phone Apps
What could be more innocent than a clever app designed for your phone by your school or university? Some of them deliver points to students by seeing when they come to class; seems reasonable. Right?
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.
Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi 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, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.
(Via Washington Post)
What if you don't want to be surveilled by your own computer, which is what cell phone is these days?
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.”
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.https://t.co/DLGAjLUdln
— Lance R. Vick (@lrvick) December 25, 2019
First, some context: one app, SpotterEDU–which purportedly has been implemented in around 40 U.S. universities–pings camouflaged Bluetooth tracking beacons installed in classrooms. When contacted by Gizmodo, SpotterEDU founder Rick Carter insisted that Spotter only looks for one specific classroom beacon during the student’s scheduled class time, only to log attendance and that the company doesn’t see data associated with students’ anonymised IDs. But we’ll have to trust him on that because SpotterEDU’s over-4,000-word privacy policy gives it wide leeway to go in a different direction.(Via Gizmodo.)
In his 2008 novel Little Brother, Cory Doctorow addresses the subject of school-installed software that surveils students - see the article for SchoolBooks. And don't miss his ideas on gait-cams, which can help schools keep tabs even on non-students, or students who have wised up and hacked their own computers to out-fox school administrators.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/27/2019)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")
FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.' - Pournelle and Niven, 1981.)
Perching Ambush Drones
'On the chest of drawers something was perched.' - Philip K. Dick, 1956.
India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.' - Jack Vance, 1954.
LingYuan Vehicle Roof Drones Now Available, ala Blade Runner 2049
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles!
'Separate paths were provided for them...'
FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million
'The population of Castle Hagedorn was fixed...'
Project Silica Offers 'Long-Term' Digital Storage
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say?
A massive space borne lifeform from ST:TNG.
Garçon! A Menu For Artemis II, S'il Vous Plaît
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
'That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part.'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
Rogue AI Replicated Itself
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
When AI Takes Its First Breath
Any suggestions?
Chinese Aircar Light And Airy, Not For Blade Runners
Daytime version.
The Morphing Wheel And The Smartwheel
'If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it.'
