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THIS IS NOT OKAY. We can't have children being used to constant surveillance and accepting this as a part of life. It sets them up for so many problems in the

THIS IS NOT OKAY. We can't have children being used to constant surveillance and accepting this as a part of life. It sets them up for so many problems in the future, where they won't understand the serious implications of constant tracking and surveillance. And sure, nothing too bad comes out of this stuff right now in most of the world, but have you seen China? The minute a government decides to do so, all that data that's been collected on you your whole life will be used against you to give you a flawed AI-generated social "score" that determines what you can or cannot do, or to determine whether or not you're a "threat" (see: someone who speaks out against wrongdoings) to such a government.

krilly 7y ago
Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned into a database to get a new phone. This has already been normalized by all the face swapping apps, like Zao. Kids in the west wouldn't think twice about accepting the Ts and C's for Snapchat or IG or anything else that includes face scanning tech.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  > Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. Blocking has been standard in some workplaces, and stricter blocking has been standard in schools, but monitoring isn't. Small and medium businesses and academia often have little or no blocking. No-one gets any alert if I write "I want to kill myself or maybe the president" here (over TLS), nor will they when you download this page. For some children, this does generate an alert -- even on a secure site.
  - tssva 7y ago
    Every large corporation I have worked with in the last 10 years has monitored internet access. Some block as well as monitor. The either monitor and block via network proxies and/or via locally installed software. When done locally the logs from the software are sent to a central logging system for the software. What the corporations do with that information has varied. Some don't actively look at it unless an issue arises and some send managers regular reports detailing the internet usage of their direct reports. There hasn't been a company of any size I've worked for in the last at least 25 years which didn't require signing an acceptable use agreement which includes notification that all activities may be monitored.
    - omginternets 7y ago
      Yes, and the point being made is that it's wrong.
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  Blocking certain internet resources has been in place for decades, not constant monitoring. Schools have started constant CCTV surveillance. Often with flawed AI systems in place. Clear bags and all these practices condition them to value their privacy less, which is a very bad thing. > Kids in the west wouldn't think twice about accepting the Ts and C's for Snapchat or IG or anything else that includes face scanning tech. Surely you understand why that's bad, right? What they're taught hasn't been updated in decades, whereas the world around them has changed so much. They're taught as kids not to trust strangers. Why are they not taught to not trust random apps?
- lm28469 7y ago
  > Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? To me the upsetting part is that these kids must feel unsafe / monitored. Which is exactly what they shouldn't go through in school, it's far from a good start in life. But then again with all the school shootings I don't blame the security companies, it's a deep cultural/societal issue. It's similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years, now it's business as usual when soldiers in full gear + assault rifles patrol the streets in major cities or during big public events. It sucks but there isn't a perfect answer to the problem.
  - burke_holland 7y ago
    The odds of being shot at school are incredibly low (~1 in 614,000,000), and have been falling since the 90's. It's just that when it does happen, it's so horrific that we cannot bear even the 1 because that 1 might be ours - myself included. That's ripe territory for companies to come in a make some good money on those mathematically irrational fears. The ones who suffer, though, are still the kids. While the likelihood of getting shot is lower than that of dying while simply traveling to school in the morning, the odds of being stressed and paranoid about it in school are now fairly significant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-... Nothing drives an economy like fear.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      I read a book a while back, and it is even more relavaent today. The Culture of Fear - Barry Glassner https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fear-Americans-Minorities-Microbes/dp/0465003362 https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fear-Americans-Minorities-Mic...
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      Parents subjecting their children to their own fears should be made aware of what they are doing.
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
- ptero 7y ago
  > Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. What country are you talking about? Honest question, just curious. I am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet (block parts, sure, but not monitor) and 10 years ago even large companies did not do it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedieaston 7y ago
    I know for a fact BofA was doing it 10 years ago, because a family member tried to show me a YouTube video on their work laptop and it was blocked by the BofA firewall, even though they were at home. I doubt that there was a reprimand or anything, but I bet it was logged somewhere “just in case”.
    - markus92 7y ago
      That's still blocking, not actively monitoring. Probably because it runs all network traffic through their VPN.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        How do you block specific websites without monitoring which website is being visited? That doesn’t make any sense.
        jakelazaroff 7y ago
        For example, downloading a list of prohibited domains to your device and running a local firewall. “Monitoring” in this context implies that someone will be able to later review the websites you’ve visited or tried to visit.
        tssva 7y ago
- salawat 7y ago
  You really shouldn't cite China as an example of anything being justifiably "normalized". Furthermore, children can't actually accept T&C's as a matter of binding law. The fact they just push the button notwithstanding. What has been normalized is legal predation (something parents should be paying attention to and warning children about as they get older), and apathy toward actively slapping down abusive corporate business models. This is showing indications of turning around, but there is still a lot of work to be done. In terms of monitoring Internet usage at schools; it may be done to a point, but I'm far more concerned with the trend toward omnipresent physical surveillance through facial recognition or device fingerprinting. It's one thing to try to police content to appropriate subject matter for a school; it's completely different to start holding a child accountable to having a digital footprint to manage all the time. Adults can't even manage that responsibly, and I don't think forcing them to do it while they are young will play well with ensuring they understand how to navigate the physical world well. Given the adversarial objectives of most technology companies, I can't see the sense in putting in the effort to basically manufacture "trained consumers" for big tech. I'd rather see them taught computing in general and gradually introduce them to software creation and program awareness so they can make their own decisions. Of course, that seems to end up the kind of thing you get at vocational schools instead of primary Ed nowadays.
- blattimwind 7y ago
  > That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. Monitoring work or school internet use without specific prior suspicion is illegal in the entire EU; so this level of surveillance may be "standard" in some countries, but hardly globally. > In China, Not exactly the reference I was looking for, though from this perspective any level of surveillance is normal.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Plenty of places in the EU routinely monitor customers and block certain websites. Rail companies blocking streaming sites for just one very reasonable example. It can’t be as simply illegal as you say it is.
    - bobwaycott 7y ago
      Monitoring and blocking are entirely different.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        How can you block without first monitoring what sites people are trying to access?
        ohazi 7y ago
        There's usually a legal distinction. Blocking does require looking at the request, but the accept/request decision is made instantaneously and is usually based on a static blacklist (or whitelist). It doesn't necessarily require logging. Monitoring usually means logging all activity and then automatically or manually sifting through the logs to look for things, possibly much later, and possibly in response to other subsequent events. Monitoring is considered by most people to be worse, and may come with more legal liabilities.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I'm most upset by internet monitoring. If I had had access to school devices and it had monitoring then I wouldn't trust the school with anything, because they wouldn't trust me with anything. Clear backpacks is such an absurd thing that I still find it difficult to believe that adult human beings came up with such an idea in the name of security. It's something I'd only ever expect to encounter in a novel about a dystopian future.
  - maze-le 7y ago
    Security Theater at its finest. If something happens they can always claim: "Look -- we did something -- it was utterly stupid and had no effect at all, but we did it, what else could we do?!?!"
- mayneack 7y ago
  Not that it makes it more or less effective, but my public school in Birmingham Alabama required clear backpacks back in 1996
  - drdeadringer 7y ago
    If you experienced that yourself, or know people who have, how did that requirement feel? Was there self-monitoring or worrying, at the very least for personal hygiene or medical items?
    - mayneack 7y ago
      I was 9, so didn't really think much of it.
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  It's not just internet access though. They flag private emails as well, is that not a violation of privacy? Also, I find this part highly disturbing: “They don’t really give you a list of things not to do,” he said. “Once you’re in trouble, they act like you knew.” This is eerily close to a typical oppressive state. See a troublemaker, make up a rule that you can prove they broke, punish them. Not a similar scale, of course, but it's still pretty bad.
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    >They flag private emails as well, is that not a violation of privacy? No. If you are using a school/employer provided email account you should be using them for school/work stuff. If you are using a school/employer device, you should be using them for school/employer stuff. If you want to tell Jack or Jane that they fuel your fire and you want to do sexy time or that you violently soiled your pants and wondered if they could bring you their gym shorts to the upstairs bathroom then use your own device on your own service.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Sure. Step 1, replace everything with a service. Step 2, make half of these free and employer- or government-provided, because people don't have time and money for dealing with subscription crap. Step 3, announce that if people want privacy, they should use their own devices.
      - asdff 7y ago
        Isn't that what is done essentially? The school provides the tech on loan and a school email account, just like companies do. And just like companies do, you keep work shit on work shit and personal shit on personal shit.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. My fiance is a high school teacher, in the past two months they've had a student come to school with a handgun and be expelled and handed over to the police and another expelled for having legit dealer quantities (nearly a pound) of marijuana (packed and placed in mason jars in her backpack) in a state where it isn't legal at a state level. I can see why some might want clear backpacks.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's still crazy. It's not like opaque lunch boxes and paper bags are luxury items. Concealing a handgun or drugs isn't all that difficult.
- delfinom 7y ago
  >The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. I think you'll find the opposite effect. Kids are being taught to hide things far better than before. Increasing their privacy skills for their adult lives :D
- magduf 7y ago
  >In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned into a database to get a new phone. Is it not possible to buy a used phone there? I got my last several phones on Ebay; like cars, they depreciate a lot in the first year or two, so getting a 1-2 year old model will save you a ton.
im_with_stupid 7y ago
You have people teaching nihilism. This is the result of nihilism. If you want to eliminate this problem, then eliminate nihilism. The solution to keep people from killing should focus on teaching others that life is not meaningless or worthless. Also, teaching kids humility wouldn't hurt either. Edit: Perhaps this should be obvious, but teaching about nihilism is not teaching nihilism. People teach nihilism more, if anything, through their actions.
- oliveshell 7y ago
  [Citation Needed]
  - im_with_stupid 7y ago
    You need a citation to believe that "the rejection of all religious and moral principles" would incentivize people to make their own "screw the system" morals? Really?
    - officeplant 7y ago
      As if "religious principles" in any way inhibit immoral choices and create a moral system outside of one beneficial to itself.
    - Zigurd 7y ago
      If you insist on linking morality with religion, yeah, I do need a citation
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  Can you explain who is teaching nihilism to whom and where? In school, while I did not have a clear backpack and quite obviously had internet monitoring on someone else’s network, I was never, not once, taught nihilism. In fact, in my education through grade 12, most everything was filtered through a compassionate lens. It’s not like I was taught that the Holocaust will happen again because humans are inherently bad and such everything is meaningless; instead it was that if we seek the goodness in the world we can prevent something like that happening again. Furthermore, if we were taught anything about nihilism, it would be that the Nazis used it to justify mass murder, which we were taught is the worst thing ever, because it is. Just my experience
entropea 7y ago
>We can't have children being used to constant surveillance and accepting this as a part of life. It sets them up for so many problems in the future, where they won't understand the serious implications of constant tracking and surveillance. Credit Scores, Cell Phones, Social Media. These kids will be tracked for the rest of their lives whether they have clear backpacks and ssl mitm or not.
slowhand09 7y ago
Funny this article coming from the Guardian which I believe is a British publication. And London being the only city in the top 10 for surveillance outside of China. https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...
- Symbiote 7y ago
  The source for the London figure is this article: https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-london/ https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-lo... Unfortunately, the source for that article costs £100.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  I think London is there mainly for the amount of CCTV cameras everywhere. The difference between this and place like China is how these tools are used - British society is fair and democratic to a high degree, in China this was never the goal. Of course priorities might change over time.
- detritus 7y ago
  My local corner shop has about 16 CCTV cameras in it, covering as many angles in the shop as they can. This is common. Very common. I'm totally OK with that kind of apparently 'pervasive' CCTV coverage - we're not talking government-owned networked cameras linked up to face/gait/whatever recognition systems or deep cold storage banks, we're talking small store-owners keeping an eye on junkies and thieves. The oft-regurgitated "x cameras per thousand people" narrative tends to overlook obviousness like this.
  - Rooster61 7y ago
    Mind showing me a camera that you can definitively say the government (or other actors) don't have the potential for backdoor access to? I certainly can't.
    - detritus 7y ago
raxxorrax 7y ago
I think part of the problem of polarization is distrust in the respective other political isle. Constant surveillance and constant crises are probably key drivers here. Some say it benefits security, but I think the calculation is flawed. You will never get engaged citizens in a open-air prison. People implementing these policies should be deeply ashamed of themselves.
- rchaud 7y ago
  I'd say that part of the problem is that surveillance data is monetizable, which increases every vendor's incentive to make that capability a fundamental part of the value proposition for the product or service.
balabaster 7y ago
The flip side of the coin is that kids learn from a very early age what it takes to slip past the surveillance net. The smart ones watch everyone around them get caught for infractions. Taking note. Quietly gathering data. Towing the line, purposely being caught for the occasional minor infraction so as not to appear too good to be true. Until one day, they disappear from prison in the middle of a storm and take the entire foreman's investment portfolio with them. Oh wait, I think there was a movie about this...
- ghostpepper 7y ago
  What movie is it? I would watch it.
  - redslazer 7y ago
    Shawshank Redemption
- Joe-Z 7y ago
  Then most people are still living in a surveillance dystopia / prison to stick with your analogy I‘d rather not be in prison than hoping I‘m the chosen one who gets out
- madengr 7y ago
  My daughters teacher was monitoring her and her friend instant-messaging each other on school issued laptops. The got around it by using a Google doc to chat in real-time.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Google-Docs-as-chat is extremely common in schools. Tons of schools use Google docs so they're not blocked, permissions (who you can bring to a doc) are usually wide-open, and monitoring's non-existent if you don't attract attention.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  This scenario ends up being fairly elitist. Everyone should be free, and not everyone can crawl to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine -- or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields; just shy of half a mile.
hindsightbias 7y ago
The horse has left that barn. They're under surveillance from the moment they enter the maternity ward. The population of HN'ers who let a babysitter take care of their kids w/o a webcam is probably way below the general population. Your kids will raise theirs under the watch of Alexa AI-Webcam and Apple Watch Child Protection kit. And one day they'll sit on courts and find the Fourth Amendment quaint.
- ddingus 7y ago
  Maybe. Quite a few of us are raising kids free range. Ideally, we can also pass along what life can be like.
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    What free range options exist for urban techs? I do find it reassuring to see more Jr High aged kids on Muni recently.
    - ddingus 7y ago
      You gotta go take trips. Find some outdoors place and visit it often. What about friends? If enough of you agree, the range is more free for the kids. Finally, in your home, you can be permissive.
ddingus 7y ago
I do not think so either. My own kids escaped much of this, and I was an active parent. Turns out, I am going to have to help another one, my granddaughter due to son's big fail and meth. (Not good, I have no words. It is all insane hard for him now) Maybe we can largely home school, or potentially move. When I compare my school experience to this mess? Who knew? It all seems crazy and so very unnecessary. The other disturbing trend is criminal records at increasingly young ages. When do kids get to learn from mistakes without being badly marked before they even come of age?
faissaloo 7y ago
This among the many reasons I don't want my children in the education system.
bb88 7y ago
A few observations: 1. Active shooters, while rare, have completely eroded our trust in our fellow humans. Either a gun is safe to bring into a school or it's not. If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? Active shooters have been both kids and adults. You might make the case that kids can't handle firearms safely -- though I was once a kid with access to firearms and I knew how to handle them safely. (Don't take this paragraph to mean I'm pro/anti gun control. It's just an observation) 2. Public Schools are public property. Private schools are private property. In either case, it's perfectly legal to have a surveillance system. 3. Parents feel more comfortable knowing the school has a means to keep their children safe. After all the school is responsible for the children while they are at school. Worse, should something happen to a kid on school property, there will be a lawsuit claiming the school did not do everything in its power to protect the children -- hence the need for surveillance.
- xabotage 7y ago
  > If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? It's often not allowed to carry in places like schools (varies depending on district or state). However, many pro-gun supporters make the argument that CC supposedly makes public spaces safer because active shooters don't really need a license to murder people anyway, so anyone carrying during a situation has more defense (just stating the argument, not certifying it's correctness). But I'm interested in hearing how often it's the case that some licensed idiot badly secures their weapon in a public space leading to an active shooter situation (and for this reason I definitely wouldn't trust students to CC. But I'm also not in favor of clear backpacks, as that similarly feels like a case of "solving the wrong problem").
  - bb88 7y ago
    It's not so much about how good or how bad you secure your weapons. It's about how likely are you to become insane when you have access to weapons. It seems to me that adults have been active shooters as often as children. Note that in most of the geographic US, concealed carry is the norm, not the exception: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Concealed_carry_across_USA_by_county.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Conceale... (blue and green are either constitutionally protected rights, or the state is legally required to give a permit)
palisade 7y ago
If you think that's bad. Check this out: https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/ https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/
flycaliguy 7y ago
What if exposing them to surveillance is actually educational? What if it helps them form models in their head that make noticing it’s overstep easier? Maybe this elaborate demonstration of surveillance is being used as a teaching moment by a woke English teacher?
officeplant 7y ago
I was born in the 80s and my dad was a network engineer with a hobby of privacy invasion. All computers in our house were open to remote login from him and all of our emails had to be through an email server he ran out of our home. Constant surveillance backfired on him in that it taught us how to be increasingly good at hiding activities and covering our tracks. Obviously that doesn't make up for the downsides of constant privacy invasion. One side of things that has me worried is I recently spoke with my brother over the holidays and he's a highschool teacher. ALL of his students use VPN's to bypass the schools monitoring and blocks on what they can do. What has me concerned is how many of these students understand the implications of funneling all of their private data through VPNs and vetting their VPN choice in the first place.
- asdff 7y ago
  When I was in highschool flash games were rising to prominance, and the admins naturally banned our favorite websites from the school network. We weren't savy enough for VPNs but we used proxies. At this point I have a pretty flippant attitude to my private data because of how much is out there. Telemarketers know my number and personal details. Spam emails do too. Even snail mail junk. My info has been bought and sold dozens of times by now, probably originally from Verizon as telecoms openly engage in this practice. VPNs leaking my info is the least of my worries, the cat is already far out of the bag. However, what can these companies even do? Not like I engage with their targeted advertisements or junk mail. If my identity was actually stolen, credit card numbers sold, it would probably only be mildly annoying for a month or two rather than some catastrophic thing.
Chirael 7y ago
I hate to say it, but it's perfect training for the world they'll live in once they enter the work force. It's the same thing there - you have no expectation of privacy when you're using the organization's equipment, if you want to do something sensitive you have to use your own equipment and data plan, and even if you do that, you risk being disciplined for doing something personal on the organization's premises/time.
tim333 7y ago
The bigger problem is the issues that led to the surveillance - the get an AR15 and shoot up a school culture in the US or the iffy government in China. Both those would be / have been a problem without any surveillance (eg. 30m + deaths in China earlier). On the other hand in our evolutionary environment we lived is small groups where everyone knew what everyone was up to and in the modern world your tech tracks you - it's just kind of part of life that doesn't really cause problems if people are nice.

krilly 7y ago

Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned into a database to get a new phone. This has already been normalized by all the face swapping apps, like Zao. Kids in the west wouldn't think twice about accepting the Ts and C's for Snapchat or IG or anything else that includes face scanning tech.

Symbiote 7y ago
> Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. Blocking has been standard in some workplaces, and stricter blocking has been standard in schools, but monitoring isn't. Small and medium businesses and academia often have little or no blocking. No-one gets any alert if I write "I want to kill myself or maybe the president" here (over TLS), nor will they when you download this page. For some children, this does generate an alert -- even on a secure site.
- tssva 7y ago
  Every large corporation I have worked with in the last 10 years has monitored internet access. Some block as well as monitor. The either monitor and block via network proxies and/or via locally installed software. When done locally the logs from the software are sent to a central logging system for the software. What the corporations do with that information has varied. Some don't actively look at it unless an issue arises and some send managers regular reports detailing the internet usage of their direct reports. There hasn't been a company of any size I've worked for in the last at least 25 years which didn't require signing an acceptable use agreement which includes notification that all activities may be monitored.
  - omginternets 7y ago
    Yes, and the point being made is that it's wrong.
rahuldottech 7y ago
Blocking certain internet resources has been in place for decades, not constant monitoring. Schools have started constant CCTV surveillance. Often with flawed AI systems in place. Clear bags and all these practices condition them to value their privacy less, which is a very bad thing. > Kids in the west wouldn't think twice about accepting the Ts and C's for Snapchat or IG or anything else that includes face scanning tech. Surely you understand why that's bad, right? What they're taught hasn't been updated in decades, whereas the world around them has changed so much. They're taught as kids not to trust strangers. Why are they not taught to not trust random apps?
lm28469 7y ago
> Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? To me the upsetting part is that these kids must feel unsafe / monitored. Which is exactly what they shouldn't go through in school, it's far from a good start in life. But then again with all the school shootings I don't blame the security companies, it's a deep cultural/societal issue. It's similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years, now it's business as usual when soldiers in full gear + assault rifles patrol the streets in major cities or during big public events. It sucks but there isn't a perfect answer to the problem.
- burke_holland 7y ago
  The odds of being shot at school are incredibly low (~1 in 614,000,000), and have been falling since the 90's. It's just that when it does happen, it's so horrific that we cannot bear even the 1 because that 1 might be ours - myself included. That's ripe territory for companies to come in a make some good money on those mathematically irrational fears. The ones who suffer, though, are still the kids. While the likelihood of getting shot is lower than that of dying while simply traveling to school in the morning, the odds of being stressed and paranoid about it in school are now fairly significant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-... Nothing drives an economy like fear.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    I read a book a while back, and it is even more relavaent today. The Culture of Fear - Barry Glassner https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fear-Americans-Minorities-Microbes/dp/0465003362 https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fear-Americans-Minorities-Mic...
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Parents subjecting their children to their own fears should be made aware of what they are doing.
- yabadabadoes 7y ago
ptero 7y ago
> Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. What country are you talking about? Honest question, just curious. I am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet (block parts, sure, but not monitor) and 10 years ago even large companies did not do it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jedieaston 7y ago
  I know for a fact BofA was doing it 10 years ago, because a family member tried to show me a YouTube video on their work laptop and it was blocked by the BofA firewall, even though they were at home. I doubt that there was a reprimand or anything, but I bet it was logged somewhere “just in case”.
  - markus92 7y ago
    That's still blocking, not actively monitoring. Probably because it runs all network traffic through their VPN.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      How do you block specific websites without monitoring which website is being visited? That doesn’t make any sense.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        For example, downloading a list of prohibited domains to your device and running a local firewall. “Monitoring” in this context implies that someone will be able to later review the websites you’ve visited or tried to visit.
        tssva 7y ago
salawat 7y ago
You really shouldn't cite China as an example of anything being justifiably "normalized". Furthermore, children can't actually accept T&C's as a matter of binding law. The fact they just push the button notwithstanding. What has been normalized is legal predation (something parents should be paying attention to and warning children about as they get older), and apathy toward actively slapping down abusive corporate business models. This is showing indications of turning around, but there is still a lot of work to be done. In terms of monitoring Internet usage at schools; it may be done to a point, but I'm far more concerned with the trend toward omnipresent physical surveillance through facial recognition or device fingerprinting. It's one thing to try to police content to appropriate subject matter for a school; it's completely different to start holding a child accountable to having a digital footprint to manage all the time. Adults can't even manage that responsibly, and I don't think forcing them to do it while they are young will play well with ensuring they understand how to navigate the physical world well. Given the adversarial objectives of most technology companies, I can't see the sense in putting in the effort to basically manufacture "trained consumers" for big tech. I'd rather see them taught computing in general and gradually introduce them to software creation and program awareness so they can make their own decisions. Of course, that seems to end up the kind of thing you get at vocational schools instead of primary Ed nowadays.
blattimwind 7y ago
> That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. Monitoring work or school internet use without specific prior suspicion is illegal in the entire EU; so this level of surveillance may be "standard" in some countries, but hardly globally. > In China, Not exactly the reference I was looking for, though from this perspective any level of surveillance is normal.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Plenty of places in the EU routinely monitor customers and block certain websites. Rail companies blocking streaming sites for just one very reasonable example. It can’t be as simply illegal as you say it is.
  - bobwaycott 7y ago
    Monitoring and blocking are entirely different.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      How can you block without first monitoring what sites people are trying to access?
      - ohazi 7y ago
        There's usually a legal distinction. Blocking does require looking at the request, but the accept/request decision is made instantaneously and is usually based on a static blacklist (or whitelist). It doesn't necessarily require logging. Monitoring usually means logging all activity and then automatically or manually sifting through the logs to look for things, possibly much later, and possibly in response to other subsequent events. Monitoring is considered by most people to be worse, and may come with more legal liabilities.
Mirioron 7y ago
I'm most upset by internet monitoring. If I had had access to school devices and it had monitoring then I wouldn't trust the school with anything, because they wouldn't trust me with anything. Clear backpacks is such an absurd thing that I still find it difficult to believe that adult human beings came up with such an idea in the name of security. It's something I'd only ever expect to encounter in a novel about a dystopian future.
- maze-le 7y ago
  Security Theater at its finest. If something happens they can always claim: "Look -- we did something -- it was utterly stupid and had no effect at all, but we did it, what else could we do?!?!"
mayneack 7y ago
Not that it makes it more or less effective, but my public school in Birmingham Alabama required clear backpacks back in 1996
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  If you experienced that yourself, or know people who have, how did that requirement feel? Was there self-monitoring or worrying, at the very least for personal hygiene or medical items?
  - mayneack 7y ago
    I was 9, so didn't really think much of it.
WilTimSon 7y ago
It's not just internet access though. They flag private emails as well, is that not a violation of privacy? Also, I find this part highly disturbing: “They don’t really give you a list of things not to do,” he said. “Once you’re in trouble, they act like you knew.” This is eerily close to a typical oppressive state. See a troublemaker, make up a rule that you can prove they broke, punish them. Not a similar scale, of course, but it's still pretty bad.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >They flag private emails as well, is that not a violation of privacy? No. If you are using a school/employer provided email account you should be using them for school/work stuff. If you are using a school/employer device, you should be using them for school/employer stuff. If you want to tell Jack or Jane that they fuel your fire and you want to do sexy time or that you violently soiled your pants and wondered if they could bring you their gym shorts to the upstairs bathroom then use your own device on your own service.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Sure. Step 1, replace everything with a service. Step 2, make half of these free and employer- or government-provided, because people don't have time and money for dealing with subscription crap. Step 3, announce that if people want privacy, they should use their own devices.
    - asdff 7y ago
      Isn't that what is done essentially? The school provides the tech on loan and a school email account, just like companies do. And just like companies do, you keep work shit on work shit and personal shit on personal shit.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. My fiance is a high school teacher, in the past two months they've had a student come to school with a handgun and be expelled and handed over to the police and another expelled for having legit dealer quantities (nearly a pound) of marijuana (packed and placed in mason jars in her backpack) in a state where it isn't legal at a state level. I can see why some might want clear backpacks.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's still crazy. It's not like opaque lunch boxes and paper bags are luxury items. Concealing a handgun or drugs isn't all that difficult.
delfinom 7y ago
>The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. I think you'll find the opposite effect. Kids are being taught to hide things far better than before. Increasing their privacy skills for their adult lives :D
magduf 7y ago
>In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned into a database to get a new phone. Is it not possible to buy a used phone there? I got my last several phones on Ebay; like cars, they depreciate a lot in the first year or two, so getting a 1-2 year old model will save you a ton.

im_with_stupid 7y ago

You have people teaching nihilism. This is the result of nihilism. If you want to eliminate this problem, then eliminate nihilism. The solution to keep people from killing should focus on teaching others that life is not meaningless or worthless. Also, teaching kids humility wouldn't hurt either. Edit: Perhaps this should be obvious, but teaching about nihilism is not teaching nihilism. People teach nihilism more, if anything, through their actions.

oliveshell 7y ago
[Citation Needed]
- im_with_stupid 7y ago
  You need a citation to believe that "the rejection of all religious and moral principles" would incentivize people to make their own "screw the system" morals? Really?
  - officeplant 7y ago
    As if "religious principles" in any way inhibit immoral choices and create a moral system outside of one beneficial to itself.
  - Zigurd 7y ago
    If you insist on linking morality with religion, yeah, I do need a citation
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
wbronitsky 7y ago
Can you explain who is teaching nihilism to whom and where? In school, while I did not have a clear backpack and quite obviously had internet monitoring on someone else’s network, I was never, not once, taught nihilism. In fact, in my education through grade 12, most everything was filtered through a compassionate lens. It’s not like I was taught that the Holocaust will happen again because humans are inherently bad and such everything is meaningless; instead it was that if we seek the goodness in the world we can prevent something like that happening again. Furthermore, if we were taught anything about nihilism, it would be that the Nazis used it to justify mass murder, which we were taught is the worst thing ever, because it is. Just my experience

entropea 7y ago

>We can't have children being used to constant surveillance and accepting this as a part of life. It sets them up for so many problems in the future, where they won't understand the serious implications of constant tracking and surveillance. Credit Scores, Cell Phones, Social Media. These kids will be tracked for the rest of their lives whether they have clear backpacks and ssl mitm or not.

slowhand09 7y ago

Funny this article coming from the Guardian which I believe is a British publication. And London being the only city in the top 10 for surveillance outside of China. https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surveilled-cities/ https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...

Symbiote 7y ago
The source for the London figure is this article: https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-london/ https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-lo... Unfortunately, the source for that article costs £100.
saiya-jin 7y ago
I think London is there mainly for the amount of CCTV cameras everywhere. The difference between this and place like China is how these tools are used - British society is fair and democratic to a high degree, in China this was never the goal. Of course priorities might change over time.
detritus 7y ago
My local corner shop has about 16 CCTV cameras in it, covering as many angles in the shop as they can. This is common. Very common. I'm totally OK with that kind of apparently 'pervasive' CCTV coverage - we're not talking government-owned networked cameras linked up to face/gait/whatever recognition systems or deep cold storage banks, we're talking small store-owners keeping an eye on junkies and thieves. The oft-regurgitated "x cameras per thousand people" narrative tends to overlook obviousness like this.
- Rooster61 7y ago
  Mind showing me a camera that you can definitively say the government (or other actors) don't have the potential for backdoor access to? I certainly can't.
  - detritus 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago

I think part of the problem of polarization is distrust in the respective other political isle. Constant surveillance and constant crises are probably key drivers here. Some say it benefits security, but I think the calculation is flawed. You will never get engaged citizens in a open-air prison. People implementing these policies should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

rchaud 7y ago
I'd say that part of the problem is that surveillance data is monetizable, which increases every vendor's incentive to make that capability a fundamental part of the value proposition for the product or service.

balabaster 7y ago

The flip side of the coin is that kids learn from a very early age what it takes to slip past the surveillance net. The smart ones watch everyone around them get caught for infractions. Taking note. Quietly gathering data. Towing the line, purposely being caught for the occasional minor infraction so as not to appear too good to be true. Until one day, they disappear from prison in the middle of a storm and take the entire foreman's investment portfolio with them. Oh wait, I think there was a movie about this...

ghostpepper 7y ago
What movie is it? I would watch it.
- redslazer 7y ago
  Shawshank Redemption
Joe-Z 7y ago
Then most people are still living in a surveillance dystopia / prison to stick with your analogy I‘d rather not be in prison than hoping I‘m the chosen one who gets out
madengr 7y ago
My daughters teacher was monitoring her and her friend instant-messaging each other on school issued laptops. The got around it by using a Google doc to chat in real-time.
- shantly 7y ago
  Google-Docs-as-chat is extremely common in schools. Tons of schools use Google docs so they're not blocked, permissions (who you can bring to a doc) are usually wide-open, and monitoring's non-existent if you don't attract attention.
jessaustin 7y ago
This scenario ends up being fairly elitist. Everyone should be free, and not everyone can crawl to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine -- or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields; just shy of half a mile.

hindsightbias 7y ago

The horse has left that barn. They're under surveillance from the moment they enter the maternity ward. The population of HN'ers who let a babysitter take care of their kids w/o a webcam is probably way below the general population. Your kids will raise theirs under the watch of Alexa AI-Webcam and Apple Watch Child Protection kit. And one day they'll sit on courts and find the Fourth Amendment quaint.

ddingus 7y ago
Maybe. Quite a few of us are raising kids free range. Ideally, we can also pass along what life can be like.
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  What free range options exist for urban techs? I do find it reassuring to see more Jr High aged kids on Muni recently.
  - ddingus 7y ago
    You gotta go take trips. Find some outdoors place and visit it often. What about friends? If enough of you agree, the range is more free for the kids. Finally, in your home, you can be permissive.

ddingus 7y ago

I do not think so either. My own kids escaped much of this, and I was an active parent. Turns out, I am going to have to help another one, my granddaughter due to son's big fail and meth. (Not good, I have no words. It is all insane hard for him now) Maybe we can largely home school, or potentially move. When I compare my school experience to this mess? Who knew? It all seems crazy and so very unnecessary. The other disturbing trend is criminal records at increasingly young ages. When do kids get to learn from mistakes without being badly marked before they even come of age?

faissaloo 7y ago

This among the many reasons I don't want my children in the education system.

bb88 7y ago

A few observations: 1. Active shooters, while rare, have completely eroded our trust in our fellow humans. Either a gun is safe to bring into a school or it's not. If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? Active shooters have been both kids and adults. You might make the case that kids can't handle firearms safely -- though I was once a kid with access to firearms and I knew how to handle them safely. (Don't take this paragraph to mean I'm pro/anti gun control. It's just an observation) 2. Public Schools are public property. Private schools are private property. In either case, it's perfectly legal to have a surveillance system. 3. Parents feel more comfortable knowing the school has a means to keep their children safe. After all the school is responsible for the children while they are at school. Worse, should something happen to a kid on school property, there will be a lawsuit claiming the school did not do everything in its power to protect the children -- hence the need for surveillance.

xabotage 7y ago
> If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? It's often not allowed to carry in places like schools (varies depending on district or state). However, many pro-gun supporters make the argument that CC supposedly makes public spaces safer because active shooters don't really need a license to murder people anyway, so anyone carrying during a situation has more defense (just stating the argument, not certifying it's correctness). But I'm interested in hearing how often it's the case that some licensed idiot badly secures their weapon in a public space leading to an active shooter situation (and for this reason I definitely wouldn't trust students to CC. But I'm also not in favor of clear backpacks, as that similarly feels like a case of "solving the wrong problem").
- bb88 7y ago
  It's not so much about how good or how bad you secure your weapons. It's about how likely are you to become insane when you have access to weapons. It seems to me that adults have been active shooters as often as children. Note that in most of the geographic US, concealed carry is the norm, not the exception: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Concealed_carry_across_USA_by_county.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Conceale... (blue and green are either constitutionally protected rights, or the state is legally required to give a permit)

palisade 7y ago

If you think that's bad. Check this out: https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/ https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/

flycaliguy 7y ago

What if exposing them to surveillance is actually educational? What if it helps them form models in their head that make noticing it’s overstep easier? Maybe this elaborate demonstration of surveillance is being used as a teaching moment by a woke English teacher?

officeplant 7y ago

I was born in the 80s and my dad was a network engineer with a hobby of privacy invasion. All computers in our house were open to remote login from him and all of our emails had to be through an email server he ran out of our home. Constant surveillance backfired on him in that it taught us how to be increasingly good at hiding activities and covering our tracks. Obviously that doesn't make up for the downsides of constant privacy invasion. One side of things that has me worried is I recently spoke with my brother over the holidays and he's a highschool teacher. ALL of his students use VPN's to bypass the schools monitoring and blocks on what they can do. What has me concerned is how many of these students understand the implications of funneling all of their private data through VPNs and vetting their VPN choice in the first place.

asdff 7y ago
When I was in highschool flash games were rising to prominance, and the admins naturally banned our favorite websites from the school network. We weren't savy enough for VPNs but we used proxies. At this point I have a pretty flippant attitude to my private data because of how much is out there. Telemarketers know my number and personal details. Spam emails do too. Even snail mail junk. My info has been bought and sold dozens of times by now, probably originally from Verizon as telecoms openly engage in this practice. VPNs leaking my info is the least of my worries, the cat is already far out of the bag. However, what can these companies even do? Not like I engage with their targeted advertisements or junk mail. If my identity was actually stolen, credit card numbers sold, it would probably only be mildly annoying for a month or two rather than some catastrophic thing.

Chirael 7y ago

I hate to say it, but it's perfect training for the world they'll live in once they enter the work force. It's the same thing there - you have no expectation of privacy when you're using the organization's equipment, if you want to do something sensitive you have to use your own equipment and data plan, and even if you do that, you risk being disciplined for doing something personal on the organization's premises/time.

tim333 7y ago

The bigger problem is the issues that led to the surveillance - the get an AR15 and shoot up a school culture in the US or the iffy government in China. Both those would be / have been a problem without any surveillance (eg. 30m + deaths in China earlier). On the other hand in our evolutionary environment we lived is small groups where everyone knew what everyone was up to and in the modern world your tech tracks you - it's just kind of part of life that doesn't really cause problems if people are nice.