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EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

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Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#181

Post by yowlingcat »

bena wrote: post #169
driverdan wrote: post #161

Proctorio is on my red flag list. If any current or former employees of a flagged company apply for a job on my team I expect their reason for leaving to be for ethical reasons, or for them to tell me about how they had ethical problems with what the company was doing. If they don't I immediately remove them from the candidate pool.

I don't think that's entirely fair to the candidates. I don't know your stance on Proctorio and I'm not going to air dirty laundry to an effective stranger. And any company or hiring manager who tries to bait me into bad-mouthing a company I've worked at gets a red flag from me.

I'm not sure whether I can take this statement at its word. If that's the response when questioned about working at a company whose entire purpose is purportedly ethical, I would strongly reconsider your position. There are many corporate cultures where this kind of apathy and whatabout-ism would be considered a red flag. That would certainly be the case for any process I've run.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#182

Post by oxylibrium »

mkl wrote: post #134
moistbar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the fact that software is involved doesn't suddenly make things worse. When that software is required to be installed on private machines and is difficult to remove, yes, it absolutely does make things worse.

The software we use is easy to remove, and students have a lot of software installed on their private machines already, some of it more invasive in software terms (e.g. games with anti-cheating features). I have more qualms about the software and the privacy implications than the students do, and I'm resigned to it for now; the students just went ahead and installed it without comment.

There's two problems with this statement. First is the assumption that students don't care about privacy, second is the lack of discussion about consent.

I'm a student who takes special care about the software I install on my laptop. I use a Linux distro, run primarily open-source software, and sandbox every single proprietary app (limited access to files, no admin at all, no screen recording, disabled webcam, ...). I've also looked into several of these exam spyware tools (you really are forcing students to install spyware), and they're built with often hilariously poor security practices.

Which is to say nothing of the regularly stolen source code; If you held the exam spyware solutions to the same standards that you held students to, you would write up almost every single vendor to the Academic Integrity office. Another example of hypocrisy in academia from the perspective of a disgruntled student.

I deliberately do not install any video games with invasive anti-cheating functionality (and I regularly critique them, like I do for exam spyware); that is a false equivalence anyway, since they don't deal in the same breadth of personally identifiable information (like a permanently saved panorama of my bedroom).

Don't assume all students are the same.

Second, the consent dynamics are wildly different. For a game, its like "you trade this in for fun/relaxation" - and there's always other games that don't spy on you. I play those. With universities, many pulled a fast one and introduced the spyware to students after their tuition is already paid, and said "use it or drop the course". You can't switch universities because one university didn't consider the ethics of spyware; you can switch games much more easily.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#184

Post by yowlingcat »

I want to have faith in the justice system to eventually bring this company to heel -- to believe that what they're doing is not just ethically wrong, but also in severe conflict with the law and liable to open them to significant litigation risk. Any practicing lawyers here that have thoughts about this?

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#185

Post by ivan888 »

hyperpape wrote: post #172
driverdan wrote: post #161

Proctorio is on my red flag list. If any current or former employees of a flagged company apply for a job on my team I expect their reason for leaving to be for ethical reasons, or for them to tell me about how they had ethical problems with what the company was doing. If they don't I immediately remove them from the candidate pool.

I'm conflicted about this. I agree with you that I think working for this company and not having an ethical objection is a red flag. But the interview environment is fraught. Is it really obvious that no candidate would think "this question is a trap"? There's a lot of interview advice that says your answer to this question can only ever hurt you, so be as bland as possible. Some employers want compliant employees wh…

Yeah it's a tricky area. In multiple cases I have been tempted to badmouth someone or a company in an interview type context, but have almost always been glad that I avoided it and just found a more subdued (but still honest) way to express my feelings.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#186

Post by Turing_Machine »

mkl wrote: post #47
Guthur wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very disappointing that this whole monitoring system was deemed necessary to begin with. How screwed is the system that anyone one would believe this level of intrusion should be part of the education process.

When you've seen exam-sitting-for-hire in action, you believe it. Most students are honest and genuinely want to learn, and the few that are dishonest cause everyone to be subjected to this. It sucks for everyone, students and staff.

Most people don't smuggle drugs in their rectums, but the few that do cause everyone to be subjected to random rectal cavity searches?

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#187

Post by nradov »

lostcolony wrote: post #159
leetcrew wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheating was absolutely rampant when I was in college getting my CS degree. and that was with tests taken in person with the professor in the room! I'm sure students are even more brazen when all assignments are done at home. I think at the very least, all exams ought to be designed as "open book" with a time limit. that at least eliminates the issue of students using unauthorized resources. I'm not sure what can be…

With a CS degree a better solution is make it project based. Even if someone uses code found somewhere, just changing it up to not be obvious, that's not that different than actual industry, AND means they had to understand it at some level. And that's for stuff they -can- search for (such as 'implement a data structure/algorithm').

Sure projects are generally better than exams. But cheating on projects and papers is also rampant. Students just pay someone else to do the work.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#188

Post by Hiopl »

RHSeeger wrote: post #91
t0mas88 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, is that software legal to force upon your students? If you tried this in Europe, even with the student explicitly clicking "I consent", you would still be facing pretty serious GDPR penalties because the student had no other option than to accept making their consent invalid.

It would appear that it's already in use in Europe and has win in court. https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=Rb._Amsterdam_-_C/13/6846... > The Amsterdam Court of First Instance rejected the request by student representatives and an individual student for a preliminary injunction against the use of digital surveillance software for exams by a public university. The court ruled that measures against covid-19 did not al…

I don't understand how that passed.

> (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;

What's the point of GDPR if you can side-step it in this way?

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#189

Post by yowlingcat »

arp242 wrote: post #180
helloguillecl wrote: post #32

I have a question for anyone who has seen similar situations. (I'm 35+ years old and have never work at a corporation except for some small gigs when I was 18, so I'm really ignorant of how these companies and internal decision making work) Why in the world would a company sue a critic, under weak legal arguments, thus buying themselves this kind of terrible negative publicity? Who will trust/like/or want to be assoc…

A lot of people will likely never have heard of this, and it's not like you or I as a student will have any choice in the matter anyway; it's not like we can choose to not use this software. And universities generally don't care. They have nothing to lose, except a comparatively small amount of money. Given that the CEO has previously gone on Reddit to bollock a student complaining and post part of the private suppor…

After my years in the industry, I have to say that it at least feels like there's an overrepresentation of this in the CEO population. But I'm not sure whether that's statistically the case, or whether it's more because, as you say, a single vindictive and nasty C-level can set these things in motion without necessarily any checks and balances to stop it -- and that more over, it's really really visible and memorable when it happens.

Re: EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd

#190

Post by professoretc »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #164
lostcolony wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a CS degree a better solution is make it project based. Even if someone uses code found somewhere, just changing it up to not be obvious, that's not that different than actual industry, AND means they had to understand it at some level. And that's for stuff they -can- search for (such as 'implement a data structure/algorithm').

This is the answer. No one wants to hear this answer because it means actual work for the teaching staff (compared to, say, automated scoring of multiple-choice tests), but it is, in fact, the answer.

> actual work for the teaching staff

It's not just "actual work", writing high quality tests and projects and then grading them is multiple full-time jobs worth of work. It's equivalent to interviewing 100 job candidates every week, forever.

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