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Michigan college is tracking its students with a flawed app
- darcys22 6y agoAfter a certain point is it just better for everyone to keep an old burner smartphone for these ‘required’ apps
- smt88 6y agoIn this case, I disagree. This is a private school, and its students are customers. Their school is forcing an app on them that violates their privacy far more than is necessary for contact tracing, and it was developed by a non-software firm with no understanding of security. The solution here is to petition and protest the school, not just work around the app.
- kyleee 6y agoI think you are both correct, but since there is no guarantee about the timeline and success of the "petition and protest" approach, I'm all for the burner phone strategy in the meantime.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoI can't read the article (no js = blocked) but why not, when asked, hand over an ancient no-internet dumbphone and say "this is my only phone"[0] - what are they going to do, ban you, buy you a smartphone with their money? [0] in my case that would be true
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoThey will just tell you to buy a compatible phone or you will not be allowed on site. Its a private school so if you are too poor for a $50 android phone then you wouldn't be able to go to the school anyway.
- smabie 6y agoI bet you could make the school buy the phone, these kind of places desperately need the money. I attended a very small liberal arts school right after the great recession. If you were paying your way (50k/yr), they were desperate to have you. The number of scholarship students who got expelled for drugs or alcohol were many, the number of full tuition students, zero.
- gruez 6y ago>If a student leaves campus without permission, the app will alert the school, and the student’s ID card will be locked and access to campus buildings will be revoked This seems so flawed and easy to bypass. Leave your phone in your dorm and sneak off campus, it's as easy as that.
- smt88 6y ago> Leave your phone in your dorm and sneak off campus, it's as easy as that. To do... what? Without a phone, many will have no means of transportation. They won't be able to sync up with friends or use GPS. It's absolutely unimaginable that a large number of college students will leave campus without a phone. They're much more likely to have a separate phone to put the app on.
- neckardt 6y agoDon't you have old phones laying around? Install the app on one of those and keep using your main phone.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smt88 6y agoRead the fifth sentence of my comment, where I proposed exactly that. I was responding to someone who proposed leaving campus without a phone.
- ashtonkem 6y agoIf you’re not going to use it as a phone, it neither needs to be good nor have a data plan. Literally the cheapest phone available would do the trick.
- crooked-v 6y agoYou can get a refurb Android phone for literally $5 from Tracfone right now, for example.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI'm curious about the interplay of (a) this app/policy vs. (b) other measures the college will take. E.g., mandatory social distancing, masks, dorm occupancy, etc. I could see how implementing (a+b) might yield lower infection rates than just (a) or just (b). But if having (a) in effect lulls the college into relaxing (b), and some students subvert (a), then I could see how it's a recipe for an outbreak.
- lki876 6y agoThe rate of infection may be lower, but that doesn't necessarily mean fewer people will be in infected -- it means the spread takes more time.
- aetherspawn 6y agoYeah, I’d just buy a $100 android phone and use it as my keypass whilst at uni. Don’t take it off-site with you - you’d have virtually unlimited freedom if you leave it in your room, or turn it completely off before leaving campus. It is a straightforward response to a ridiculous request on user privacy: you can’t force me to use my personal phone how you’d like unless you provide it. You can force me to buy into an app that tracks the location of my device in order to enter buildings and such, but you can’t control which device I choose to use, nor force me to carry it in my personal life. The flaw in the underlying assertion (one-to-one phone/person relationship, location of a phone = location of a person) is not my problem.
- crooked-v 6y ago> $100 You don't need to go nearly that high. Right now, Tracfone has a sale for a SIM-locked refurb Android 8.1 phone for literally $5, and even outside of sales the low end is only about $20.
- swiley 6y agoI bought one as a balloon tracker the other year (I didn’t realize this was illegal). As soon as you connect it to a network (including WiFi) it will automatically download gigabytes of malware from the play store which will keep launching in the background and crashing things by using up all the ram. It was pretty eye opening to realize what people actually deal with if they can’t afford nicer phones and don’t know how to (or can’t) replace the firmware. Cheap android phones make cheap PCs look nice. Also an emulator or container is $0.
- gorgoiler 6y ago> students are expected to use the app or face suspension How does this work in the contract the college has with the student? Is there a term in the contract that allows the college to unilaterally add additional terms — terms which can then lead to unilateral termination of the contract by the college with or without some kind of notice period? Presumably “suspension”, while framed as a punitive measure against students, is legally just the college withdrawing from the contract under previously agreed terms? I ask because I’m increasingly encouraging young people to recognize that they are legal adults when they go off to higher education, and they should politely resist any trend for colleges to infantalise them by reframing terms of contracts as silly rules.
- applecrazy 6y agoAs a university student (not attending the university mentioned however), I can chime in here. If we chose to come on-campus, we were given an addendum to our housing agreement to sign before we moved in. Simply put, no addendum signed = no housing (since they reserve the right to terminate one's housing for any reason). I imagine it's a similar situation for many universities nationwide. Regarding your second point: > Presumably “suspension”, while framed as a punitive measure against students, is legally just the college withdrawing from the contract under previously agreed terms? The article addresses this: private universities have a lot more leeway on how they conduct business.
- jacobkania 6y agoIf you already signed a lease, you don’t have to agree to new terms for that lease. It’s already a valid lease that can’t easily be terminated, and Michigan has pretty good renter protection laws (I used to live there). Not a lawyer though, but a lease is a binding agreement that they can’t just arbitrarily change and force you to accept
- brown9-2 6y agoStudents don’t lease dorm rooms in the traditional sense of a lease
- aaron695 6y agoCovid apps using Bluetooth are useless. If you want a chance for it to work, this might. This is what a lockdown is. Taking huge risks, be it loose APIs or destroying parts of the economy, all to stop a huger risk. If you want to understand why Republicans protest the lockdown, look here, this is the beginning of the creep. Republicans mightn't understand what they are protesting but they at least can see the fear, which Democtatz can't. Given what the media, politicians and the public in general say, everyone just doesn't seem to understand either risk or it's magnitude.
- Nitrolo 6y agoI'll admit I'm not an expert in this area, but why are apps using Bluetooth useless? Because people turn Bluetooth off?
- aaron695 6y agoOn the iPhone it just goes to sleep. This is a killer. But it's not the end of it. Bluetooth can't measure distance well, it's totally not in it's design. Every phone model is different, I think including software version. So there are databases of phone models to try and fix this. But it's still far from perfect since it's still not in the Bluetooth design. Measuring time of exposure is hard with Bluetooth. Now Apple and Android released frameworks to try and fix these issues. But governments had already invested in the old solution and it's not clear if the new framework will fix much. To do what they want to do with Bluetooth would be pretty amazing. It's basically Geo Location using beacons using existing phone tech. That's fucking cool, yet for some reason it's never been done before this, Covid solves all technological issues it seems? GPS tracking works really well. You will also know where. So you can see if it was inside, outside, walls between them, all things vague Bluetooth apps can't do. Lot's of context with GPS. So, what do we think governments will do when Bluetooth has been shown not to work, but this privacy invading app works really well, which it should.
- taejo 6y agoMeasurement-Based Evaluation Of Google/Apple Exposure Notification API For Proximity Detection In A Commuter Bus https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.08543.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.08543.pdf "We find that the attenuation level reported by the GAEN API need not increase with distance between handsets, consistent with there being a complex radio environment inside a bus caused by the metal-rich environment... Applying the rule used by the Swiss Covid-19 contact tracing app to trigger an exposure notification to our bus measurements we find that no exposure notifications would have been triggered despite the fact that all pairs of handsets were within 2m of one another for at least 15 mins"
- lki876 6y agoIMHO: Don't bother with college. All information anyone could possibly need is available from libraries and the internet. If you learn what you need to know and prove that you know it, people will hire you.
- ignoramous 6y agoIf only colleges' sole purpose was to impart knowledge. I think they're a great place to meet like-minded people, form friendships, find potential co-founders, grow your network, get inspired by people some of whom are likely to be world's best at what they do. Another thing is colleges force you through a rigid system of semesters, courses, and exams that takes most of guess work out of the learning. Besides, I'd wager one needs a disproportionate amount of patience to be disciplined enough to follow their own curriculum of learning regardless of accessibility and availability of content. I am not saying the current system is the best humanity can do, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- galoisgirl 6y agoI like my surgeons like I like my women: with a formal education.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoYeah well unfortunately the HR department that screens resumes doesn't agree.
- globular-toast 6y agoIn my experience, people who are self taught can be quite competent in a very narrow area (like frontend web development), but have vast, gaping holes in their knowledge when it comes to the big picture. I'm talking about really fundamental stuff like what an algorithm is, what memory is and why it's useful etc. University is such an important part of development overall that it really shouldn't be skipped. It's a shame that they've become overrun with stupid SJW/feminist nonsense these days, but I think it's still overall extremely valuable. You can't replicate the university environment at home. Not only that, you'll be looked over for many opportunities when compared with people with degrees. This isn't entirely unfair, given the justifications for university above, but it is a little. Unfortunately that's just the way it is, though. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
- mindfulhack 6y agoThis is insidious. What kind of college dean or president would think that this is OK? With such a low level of regard towards young people and with only potential for gross abuse, if the staff's leadership refuse to apologise and withdraw the app's obligatoriness then they should be sacked without delay. I know this is a strong opinion but I'm really on board with that petition.
- paul_f 6y agoIf you're not sure the answer, it's almost always money. The school wants their $45,000 tuition bills paid
- gnu8 6y agoIt is very disturbing that Nucleus ignored and stiffed the security researcher who pointed out their obvious issue with AWS keys. They should not expect cooperation from the security community in the future and I hope this will have a severe impact on their ability to attract and retain customers.