Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#81

Post by IkmoIkmo »

rickdale wrote: post #54
jacobolus wrote: post #34

> At least one student has received the records, and said he was surprised by what he got back: several hundred pages, including a log of every time his electronic identification card had been used to unlock a door, [...] It seems totally unnecessary to indefinitely store every door swipe. Sure, store the swipes used to access the rare book room or the chemistry lab for 6 months or a year, but there’s no reason for e…

When I was at college a friend of mine was being accused of a heinous crime. In the end, he used key card time slots to prove he was innocent. But even with the key card it was a matter of the incident happening like a single minute after he was there. Luckily, all of the key swipes were stored and it showed that shortly after he had already swiped his card etc. Anyways, long story short, it doesn't hurt to keep that…

If I tracked 100% of people's activity, professional, sexual, recreational, intellectual, physical, I'm sure an anecdote would arise where someone didn't go to jail because we all had this information to prove he was innocent.

I hope you're seeing how this isn't very relevant however to the question whether we want this kind of monitoring.

I also don't see how your anecdote in any way is a long story for 'it doesn't hurt to keep that kind of data'. It's a story for how 'it can be helpful to keep that data as shown by one particular anecdote'. That's not really the point, I think we all agree we could find a useful application with data, the point is that we may not want these things to be monitored for opposite reasons.

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#83

Post by qq66 »

wdaher wrote: post #55

MIT had the same problem in late 2003, and in the case of the college applications, solved the problem by simply destroying parts of the records when they were done with them. ( http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N53/53studrec.53n.html and http://tech.mit.edu/V124/N47/47e3.47n.html )

Which is how it should be. I can understand keeping a summary of the data to track the performance of your admissions process, but you shouldn't be keeping highly personal information about students for any longer than it takes to make the admissions decision.

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#85

Post by eadler »

spiritplumber wrote: post #78

I tried the "rejection rejection letter" joke with Stanford after applying and being rejected (2009). I ended up working on a project with a Stanford prof for six months after that. It was fairly fun, and it let me decide that I didn't want to do grad school, so win-win there. History is made by those who show up. If you're told to not bother showing up, SHOW UP ANYWAY! I never had to escort a security person out of…

By any chance, was the Best Buy story related to http://improveverywhere.com/2006/04/23/best-buy/ ?

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#86

Post by hdhriek »

stfu wrote: post #47
clarkm wrote: post #6

The newsletter from The Fountain Hopper (who appears to have discovered this) has some more interesting details: When you apply to Stanford, your application gets assigned at least two admissions 'readers.' FoHo knows you get a third (specialized) reader if you're a legacy or a 'minority' (though we're not too sure how that's defined). We also think you get an additional reader if you're an athlete or development kid…

development kid (i.e. you donated $$$) Anyone got any numbers on that? What does it take to become a development kid...

How are people not angered to the point of spittle launching fury by "development kids"? Its outrageously contra to a functioning meritocracy.

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#87

Post by DanBC »

gwern wrote: post #69
rickdale wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at college a friend of mine was being accused of a heinous crime. In the end, he used key card time slots to prove he was innocent. But even with the key card it was a matter of the incident happening like a single minute after he was there. Luckily, all of the key swipes were stored and it showed that shortly after he had already swiped his card etc. Anyways, long story short, it doesn't hurt to keep that…

Your friend would have been saved with even an aggressive retention policy, from the sound of it. Heinous crimes usually don't take years to pop up.

Jimmy Saville. Harold Shipman. Etc etc.

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#88

Post by akshatpradhan »

Shivetya wrote: post #52
jacobolus wrote: post #34

> At least one student has received the records, and said he was surprised by what he got back: several hundred pages, including a log of every time his electronic identification card had been used to unlock a door, [...] It seems totally unnecessary to indefinitely store every door swipe. Sure, store the swipes used to access the rare book room or the chemistry lab for 6 months or a year, but there’s no reason for e…

Look at it from this way, its probably more work to go back and delete entries that really don't take up much disk. Heck, collecting is easy, setting up periodic purges, archives, and such, usually gets pushed to another phase.... which may never come. another side is, its both good and bad. You can see patterns and alert to changes. You could also use it to prove someone wasn't where others claim and so on. If your…

>setting up periodic purges, archives, and such, usually gets pushed to another phase.... which may never come.

Isn't that where security compliance programs come into play? I think someone doing their due diligence in asking, "What is the business justification for storing building access logs indefinitely" would have been able to create a procedure for addressing the storage of these types of things.

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#89

Post by rmc »

swatow wrote: post #77
barry-cotter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minority is in scare quotes because they have to be the right minorities. East Asians and South Asians don't count.

I understand that, and agree to some extent, and yet universities don't claim to give preference to East Asians or South Asians (actually they discriminate against these groups, but that is another matter). Usually universities would call Blacks and Hispanics "historically underrepresented groups" or something similar.

A good term to use is "margarine group", it's more accurate than minority. In apartheid south Africa black people were a margalized group despite being the majority of the people.

Likewise, one could say that a minority of the USA is Asian, but are Asians a margalized group when it comes to university?

Re: Students Gain Access to Files on Admission to Stanford

#90

Post by colinb »

DanBC wrote: post #87
gwern wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your friend would have been saved with even an aggressive retention policy, from the sound of it. Heinous crimes usually don't take years to pop up.

Jimmy Saville. Harold Shipman. Etc etc.

I'll agree that the crimes committed by these individuals took a long time to come to light, but I don't see that either had any relevance to the discussion about retention of data that could be used to track their movements. Saville didn't escape discovery because there was no proof of his movements. He escaped because those who were harmed by him were cowed into silence, or ignored by those whose job it was to help.

As for Shipman, wasn't it precisely because of anomalies in data collected about him that he was caught? And do you agree that collecting clinical data about doctor's use of drugs, and their outcomes vs. statistical norms might be reasonably exempted from the kind of personal data logging that many people find objectionable [me!]

Post reply on HN