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How does Brown University know where you are?
- patrickm129 6y agoBrown also has their students cellular telephone numbers. It's feasible that the University acquired/purchased their students geolocation history via their mobile providers.
- HPsquared 6y agoIs that kind of information really for sale on an individualized level, by mobile providers? Surely they have brands to protect, and don't like being sued.
- jswrenn 6y agoPutting on my tinfoil hat, I'll note that mobile providers depends on Brown University for antenna space on at least three tall campus buildings.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 6y agoYes, at least in the recent past. https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunte... They promised to stop, but I’m not sure I believe them.
- arkadiyt 6y agoYes, in fact government agencies like the Secret Service [1], CBP [2], IRS [3], and others frequently purchase it to circumvent warrant requirements. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/secret-service-other-agencies-buy-access-to-mobile-phone-location-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/secret-service-o... [2]: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-warren-brown-markey-schatz-push-for-investigation-of-cbp-phone-location-data-surveillance-program https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-warre... [3]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7agpa/irs-location-data-venntel-contract https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7agpa/irs-location-data-ven...
- gruez 6y agoThe information being sold there wasn't from mobile providers, they were collected by apps. See the first paragraph of the third article: "location data quietly harvested from ordinary smartphone apps over 10,000 times". The same applies to the other two articles.
- bilbo0s 6y agoWhy would they be sued? It's all right there in the contract in black and white. And, naturally, all the customers carefully read through the contract. /s I don't even know what could be done to stop this stuff at this point? I think it's too far gone.
- jskajakzkjx 6y agoA few years ago you could look up any cellphone number’s location on a public website: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsmart-leaked-location-data-for-customers-of-all-major-u-s-mobile-carriers-in-real-time-via-its-web-site/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsm...
- ogisan 6y agoThe NYTimes [1] did an excellent expose on this a year ago. They purchased location data on 12 million phones across the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...
- alisonkisk 6y agoIt's crazy that wiretapping is illegal but this getting is not.
- smnrchrds 6y agoThere is a saying that "if libraries did not exist for millennia, no government would create one in the 21st century. They would instead give people a means-tested tax credit for buying books and call it a day". I think this sentiment applies to much more than libraries or infrastructure. Laws against wiretapping and opening postal letters are vestiges of the past. They never got updated when communication moved digital. They would not be passed today. They are kept on the books only because of inertia. If they didn't exist in the first place, no government would create them in 2020.
- meekrohprocess 6y agoA government didn't create them in the first place, at least not in the US. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were drafted by small committees, and later ratified by each state outside of the existing (paralyzed) governmental process.
- ajsnigrutin 6y agoShouldn't there be like laws to protect against those, and a few huge class-action lawsuits, forcing the telcos to pay millions and millions of dollars because of that?
- alisonkisk 6y agoYes. Call your representatives and campaign for new ones, or run propositions
- ajsnigrutin 6y agoI live in europe, we have many such laws, and noone can get that data. ...except government agencies, local and foreign spies, system administrators, etc.
- tclancy 6y agoOf course there should be. We stopped expecting them during the Reagan Administration because private industry would upset the entrenched monopolies that were keeping us down. And safe. So now people think unions are icky and representatives that care about people rather than corporations are fantasy.
- johnjreiser 6y agoAs the article states, WiFi monitoring is likely happening on a large scale. Why purchase outside data when you have better data (including authenticated users) already in house?
- throwaway201103 6y agoDoes Brown require that its students have mobile phones?
- withPurpose9973 6y agoHelicopter parents rule the world.
- _nickwhite 6y agoUnless I were at Brown on a fully paid scholarship, I'd transfer out. Plenty other fine schools that won't be a nanny.
- grecy 6y agoAre you sure other schools are not doing the same, or won't in the very near future?
- notesinthefield 6y agoAside from camera use, because my team does not support that system, my team helped our university admin do the same things. In fact you could really just find/replace "Brown" with our name and this would be the same write-up. Lots of American schools run this same infra and did the same things.
- smabie 6y agoI kind of doubt it. You, as a 18-22 year old college student, would leave your friends, girlfriend/boyfriend, and everything else because of this? More likely, you and your friends would instead just bitch about it and call the admins nazis while getting drunk.
- Zhenya 6y agoThis is the correct answer. They technically capable students might try to somehow undermine this as well. That's the extent.
- ogisan 6y agoUnfortunately, this is standard practice across schools (and most big employers). This is definitely not a problem unique to Brown, or even elite schools. There was a scandal back in 2010 where a high school in Philadelphia was accused of spying on kids through school-issued laptop webcams [1], which is arguably more egregious. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2521075/pennsylvania-schools-spying-on-students-using-laptop-webcams--claims-lawsuit.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2521075/pennsylvania-s...
- scott_h 6y agoAmazingly written!
- alkonaut 6y agoI don’t understand why they were worried about students lingering on campus?
- ceejayoz 6y agoSame reason the NBA had their bubble.
- victorhooi 6y agoI'm not from the US, but from the excerpted letter, it appears to be related to COVID-19. In Australia, we did the same thing - a lot of universities went remote-only, so that we could eradicate the virus. It seems to have succeeded - COVID-19 seems to be under control in Australia (along with many other countries like NZ, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan etc) - however, the US/Europe seems to have really struggled to get it under control. I hope they succeed soon. I get the sense that a lot of people here (I assume from the US) are worried about their rights being infringed, as part of trying to protect people from getting sick. I'm not saying there doesn't need to be a discussion, or there isn't a balance - but it does come across as a bit churlish and petty, to try to openly defy public health measures in the name of defending human rights in the midst of a global pandemic.
- alkonaut 6y agoYes I understand it has to do with Covid. But more than asking people to leave - why do they actually worry if some don’t? E.g are they legally responsible somehow for making sure students leave?
- zem 6y agoyou don't need to be "legally responsible" to not want unnecessary covid exposure on your campus!
- learnstats2 6y agoAccusing students of lying does not avoid covid exposure, though? It just creates bad will (and possibly legal issue).
- darkwizard42 6y agoAfter reading the article, I didn't feel like any of these were particularly nefarious intrusions as they largely involved the student knowingly using Brown's services (buildings, wifi, access management system IPs, physical presence on campus). The article was pretty well-written and informative in general on how a number of services we take for granted can be used to locate you. I do take issue with Brown's extremely harsh language in one of the linked articles where they threatened students with suspension...all for being in the local Providence area?!
- alisonkisk 6y agoIs it an intrusion when Google/Android does the same thing when you access their servers?
- canofbars 6y agoThe difference is you usually don't directly access their servers. You just walk in to a store and your phone grabs your location, sends it to google and then asks if you want to leave a review of the store.
- alisonkisk 6y agoYou turned on location services.
- canofbars 6y agoI should not have to choose between giving Google a free for all access to my location data or having no location functionality on my device. This is one of the primary reasons I won't use Android. They always bundle critical features in with privacy violations.
- d3nj4l 6y agoIf you turn off location history, you shouldn't get the notifications to review stores and the like, IME. I've had location history off but location services on (damn you, uber!) for ages, and I don't get those any more.
- smnrchrds 6y ago> Brown University has a longstanding policy governing the appropriate uses of its surveillance cameras. Unfortunately, this policy is secret. That's concerning.
- naringas 6y ago"don't you worry, it's secret for your safety." they probably do really think like that. or at least claim to while their real reasoning is a private affair.
- ekianjo 6y agosounds like a private version of the FISA courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI felt this post took on a semi-conspiratorial tone, when all the things I felt were just "duh". It's not that Brown "knows where you are" at all times, they just know when you use on-campus resources. I'd be willing to bet a bundle Brown is just looking at building card access, or also possibly connection to an on-campus wifi network. In both cases I think any reasonable person would expect that Brown knew they were using these resources.
- amelius 6y agoThey bring together information from different sources, which should raise eyebrows.
- _vertigo 6y agoBrown University is conducting surveillance on its students. Everyone knew it was technically feasible, even trivial, but now that there is a financial incentive to surveil, it’s happening and impacting students. I think that’s the reason for the tone.
- jswrenn 6y agoAh, sorry, I didn't mean to take a conspiratorial tone. On campus, a LOT of students (perhaps the less technically adept ones) found it very surprising that Brown claimed to know where students were. This post was aimed primarily at those students, to clarify the technical mechanisms by which Brown located students. I tried to speculate as little as possible. The rough set of indicators Brown took is straight from the University Spokesperson — I'm mostly just trying to fill in the technical details. As for which of these mechanisms Brown is using most, the word on campus points mostly to IP geolocation.
- unityByFreedom 6y agomaybe "How Brown University might know when you are on campus"
- divbzero 6y agoI recall at one university there was a student who was clever enough to hack the card access system, but dumb enough to impersonate the university president and swipe into a main gate in the wee hours of the morning.
- bpp 6y agoWhen I was a student at Brown, Facebook would report which dorm you were logged in from, right there on your profile (for all to see!). If Facebook knew where you were on campus, campus IT certainly has a view into your physical location. Nothing about this surprises me.
- jasonpbecker 6y agoI remember these days when it helpfully pre-filled in Bronson as my probable location as a freshman. That was back when you could list all your courses and sections, which was incredibly helpful to find people to complain about Math 17 problem sets.
- jesboat 6y agoWas that on ethernet? If so, there's nothing particularly nefarious: each building had a /24 and the building's name was in the reverse dns. It's not particularly different from how many [citation needed] commercial ISPs have town names in reverse dns, except the subnetting mirrors geography in a bit more detail. Dorm ethernet has since died. If it was over WiFi, I would be much more concerned
- dmurray 6y agoWhat's different about it being on WiFi, where you most likely would be connecting to a base station in the same building that was then wired in over ethernet?
- jesboat 6y agoThey didn't (and probably still don't) subnet by building on wifi, so more precise location than "on Brown's wifi" would have required intentional information sharing.
- vermilingua 6y agoWhy would wifi be more concerning? The access points would presumably be broadcasting the same subnets as are available on ethernet.
- schoolornot 6y agoDidn't realize IT logs are subject to FERPA.
- jswrenn 6y agoI'm not positive that they are. This post has already spawned one FERPA request, so I guess we'll find out! I think the chances are good. If Brown is using IT records to determine academic standing, they're very much academic records.
- johnjreiser 6y agoI don’t believe it falls under FERPA. Plus, the WiFi monitoring tracks everyone with a mobile device, regardless of matriculation status.
- HeavenFox 6y agoI think universities err on the caution side. I read once that someone at Stanford filed FERPA request for some innocuous reason and found in horror a log of every time he swiped into a building on campus.
- im3w1l 6y agoIf the future elite is growing up under surveillance and this is normal for them - won't it then just be a matter of time before this becomes the new normal for all of us? As much as I would like it to happen, I doubt some switch will flip after they exit university, which makes them no longer accept measures like this.
- wolco2 6y agoI wouldn't call Brown students the future elite. till the middle management of the future should beware.
- neom 6y agoHow should/could you "configure" yourself to make this not true?
- Nightshaxx 6y agoIP you can use a VPN. Mac you can use the randomization method mentioned in the article. Swipe Card/Cameras there is nothing you can do.
- jswrenn 6y agoDisconnect from campus WiFi when possible. When not, stick to the Brown Guest SSID with MAC randomization. Always use a VPN. For swipe cards, tailgate into buildings. Brown's building access is so restrictive, and the experience of being locked out is so universal, that virtually all Brown students are conditioned to hold doors open for each other. For cameras, there isn't as much as you can do to protect your privacy. The camera map included in the blog post displays OpenStreetMap data. It's very hard go anywhere near Brown without getting caught up in its camera dragnet. You usually cannot avoid cameras altogether, but you can minimize your exposure! And the one bright side of 2020, in this regard, is that it's normalized wearing a mask!
- FandangoRanger 6y agocan't you simply buy the location history of cell phones these days? and the bluetooth pings each phone gives off can be unique too
- JosiahCardBerry 6y agoAs a recent Brown grad this makes me feel sick. I should have known but at the same time I did not expect this level of surveillance. New account because I don’t typically leak this much personal information. Maybe that speaks towards my concern about this. All I can say is that I’m glad I graduated before facial recognition and other massive surveillance tools became mainstream.
- jswrenn 6y agoHah, great account name! [0] Brown's security camera surveillance is about twenty years in the making. [1] There were student complaints as it was initially expanded, but it's long since faded into being just another part of campus life. Its electronic building access control system is perhaps about thirty years in the making? It seems to have been rolled out without any controversy. I've trolled the Brown Daily Herald archives and have failed to find any sign that the community discussed the convenience/privacy tradeoff being made. [0] https://library.brown.edu/info/hay/carberry https://library.brown.edu/info/hay/carberry [1] https://twitter.com/tenellous/status/1323752004775223302 https://twitter.com/tenellous/status/1323752004775223302
- dehrmann 6y agoI already knew how extrajudicial university kangaroo courts are, and this is a private university, so they literally can do what they want. Their burdens of proof and right to due process are already non-existent, and what would be Fourth Amendment rights in a real court are weaker than what you'd find in a FISA court. But I do agree that this case isn't "outrageous," per se. It's just a reminder of what data they have on students and the power they have over them.
- TechBro8615 6y agoCan any current students comment on why you didn’t take the year off? It just seems like such a waste / not worth it.
- jswrenn 6y agoI'm a late-stage PhD student, and thus academically unaffected. However, virtually all of my undergraduate friends did take the year off.
- kardos 6y agoGetting re enrolled next year will be twice as hard?
- TechBro8615 6y agoIs that true? I don’t know what COVID policies are but back in my day you could generally take a year off and come back without needing to reapply. Of course if everyone did that this year, it would create problems so I imagine colleges are trying to disincentivize it?
- kardos 6y ago> Of course if everyone did that this year, it would create problems so I imagine colleges are trying to disincentivize it? I think they would be disincentivising it so they still hve revenue this year. But yes if the admissions per year is fixed a lot of people won't get admitted next year
- TechBro8615 6y agoYes but my point is you don’t need to be readmitted if you take time off. At least under normal circumstances.
- thotsBgone 6y agoThere is already a disincentive: you don't get your degree until you finish.
- admiralspoo 6y agoUniversities seem like they're begging to disrupted with this sort of overreach to those who are putatively their paying customers.
- cosmodisk 6y agoA bit off topic,but I'm sure some positivity is needed, especially under such articles.Back in 2004, I finished the school and shortly after I was a freshly baked student at my little country's tech university. I was young little shit,so naturally, paying for the internet in the student dorm was beyond me. The entire campus is scattered all over the city, and more or less everyone was using this internal chat on the LAN( great to meet fellow students, especially women,as it was in my case). So it took me a few days to figure out that all I had to do to reach the Internet is to use any user's, that was on the chat, MAC address. There was at least 100 people connected at any given time,so plenty to choose from. As soon as I would give myself someone's MAC, they'd be kicked off the internet. It was glorious.I was little shit on wings! Anyway, one day, two,very very very pissed off people walk into our room( there were 3 of us living there). One looks like sys admin(he was),the other,who had a baseball bat, was the muscles.They ask to check everyone's PC.. he goes to my roommate first... It took me seconds to realise what's going on,so while the admin is checking my roommate's PC,I quickly try to change my PC name... And I run out of time before he goes on my PC...He goes mental... It's you!!! I've been trying to find you for nearly 6 months, checked so many rooms and buildings!!! I thought his head would pop.. The muscle man thinks it's an opportunity to hit me. Well, here I come..I put on idiot's play. I explain them that I'm clueless about computers, the room is more or less 24/7 party place with 20 people visiting just last night(not true,my roommates were calm). This goes on for 5 min or so,and they kind of believe and leave us, even though not quite satisfied with the outcome. Loved every single second of it..Still Karma exists,so fast forward 15 years later and I have to have very difficult conversations with people at work, who try to cheat the system...I became the sys admin.. of sorts..
- friendofblueno 6y agoas a recent Brown alumn, I really had no idea Brown could track us with such granularity. I wonder if they've used this data for anything else
- themonteray 6y agoI am also an alum. (Some of) Brown's tracking information isn't even particularly restricted. I have seen firsthand that live location information based on your device being connected to the network (I assume based on tracking MAC address as discussed in the article) gives room-level granularity, and can be accessed by students who work for the IT service center.
- supernova87a 6y agoCan someone explain to begin with why the university cares that you're still in town, if you declared yourself "remote"?
- jswrenn 6y agoA cynical assessment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320102
- ArnoVW 6y agoA comment higher up posits that this is a money issue. My understanding of this post: due to COVID students were give the option to study from home, so as not having to pay on-campus fees. The university does not appreciate students electing 'off-site' but then staying on-site
- wdr1 6y agoWhy does Brown University care?
- gorgoiler 6y agoI’ve seen my school’s firewall logs and the experience scared me. Something really clicked when I saw a log with my name on it. It showed everything I’d been doing and it was right in front of me and also someone else: the IT tech with whom I was working. I was getting help debugging something (package manager barfing on the org’s wildcard MITM SSL cert) and the inanity of the tech scrolling through everything I’d done that day in such detail was spine chilling. Deep packet inspection put everything from command line args to Google search terms at their fingertips. It felt grubby. My org requires that I install their SSL cert which made the logs more detailed than Brown’s. That’s certainly a pretty high level of creepiness. But even without SSL DPI when the org has control over the network and at least one website using your identity then it’s trivial to correlate the application layer userid all the way down to your network access, including AP location. If they outsource to Gmail or Outlook there’s usually still an org controlled single sign on that captures your identity. I love the accessible way in which this report is written. While it’s specific to Brown it summarizes the generic surveillance patterns of many employers and education orgs. We all know these programs exist but it’s not until one experiences them first hand that one realizes how desperately creepy they are.
- pcdoodle 6y agoWhat bugs me is the seemingly high influx of users on HN that are accepting of such behavior. The propaganda is real.
- gorgoiler 6y agoI cashed out and left the Bay Area many years ago. I currently work in a small college town doing something I love (teaching CS in a private school) and live in the nearby countryside. My school runs its IT department like it’s the 1990s from buildings constructed in the 1890s. That should give a frame of reference as to the progressiveness and pace of change I can reasonably expect. It’s salaried but I treat the job like a contracting gig: I provide my own equipment and network connection. It helps me sleep at night.
- astrobe_ 6y agoBuildings equipped with an access control system makes it easy to track where users are. That's even a feature ; for instance when an emergency evacuation happens (e.g. fire alarm), the system can tell you if there's still someone in there (assuming the fire has not destroyed parts of the system). Although one should assume nowadays that a public network is the same thing as a public street, and that using the LAN of a school is the same thing as walking on its campus, it is indeed disturbing that some people within those org (and the org itself) have some of the possibilities as police has - except that police would need a judge and a mandate in some cases. So as always there are pros and cons. Good uses and evil uses. In Europe, GDPR laws mandate that not every admin or user of the system have access to this type of data, and that's a good start IMO.
- jb775 6y agoI'd guess they simply sent this to anyone showing to have connected to on-campus wifi using their school credentials that wasn't supposed to be there. The lax attitude surrounding privacy overreach like this is paving the way for a future surveillance state as described by this author. The "they're a private entity and they can do whatever they want" argument is getting old quickly. Needs to be nipped in the bud.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThis data is also be highly unreliable. Some students might connect remotely to devices through labs or a dorms. I did that very often while I was in university. That said, the obsessive desire for surveillance should be stopped. Best day to start with that would be yesterday. People are getting crazy, which reduces overall security.