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Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

wired.co.uk

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Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#221

Post by yibg »

raxxorrax wrote: post #20
wonderwonder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework /…

As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would have broken out of there as quickly as possible.

But kids have to do a lot of things they don’t want to do. Going to school in the first place is often one of them.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#222

Post by watwut »

tata71 wrote: post #87
wonderwonder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework /…

> its very helpful to look up what homework / tests are due as the kids tend to not manage this so well themselves How do you expect they'll develop these sorts of self-starter skills and mental models, besides experiencing things like the (comparatively low-impact!) consequences of not handing in your 5th grade homework....? Hopefully you're going full parabola and also providing disproportionately strong incentives…

What you propose is to not teach them nor give them gradually more responsibilities.

You literally demand the system in which kids are expected to be well organized. If they are not they will be punished until they learn to be organized. If they don't despite punishments in school, parents won't be told until end of year. Then they get the surprising final report and only thing they can do is to yell at kids or something.

That is rather poor pedagogy.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#223

Post by true_religion »

Diggsey wrote: post #83
wonderwonder wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you have kids, I am guessing not, if I am wrong, my apologies. Knowing what your kids have due for school is not micromanaging its a core part of being a good parent. I know if my kid has a math test so it lets me sit down with him and review for his test, it allows me to ensure he knows the basis for whatever comes next in his curriculum. Terribly overbearing parents are not good but I think people a…

That's absolutely micromanaging and negative. The goal of school isn't just to pass the tests. If a kid fails to revise for a test, but it doesn't matter because their parent will just look up the schedule and force them to revise, then they learn nothing beyond what's in the test. If they fail to revise and as a result do badly at the test, then next time they might actually take the initiative and revise through th…

You're saying that the negative results of failing a test should come from the school and not the parent. I don't see why this is true.

A school will grade a student down, but often kids will simply just not care about that unless there's impetus to do so from their peer group or people they rely on as a role models (e.g. parents).

Also, when talking about kids... I think it's useful to clarify what age group you think a particular standard applies to. Kindergarteners need more parent care and management than secondary schoolers. It's more okay for a 6 year old to fail a test, than a 17 year old prepping for university. The stakes are different, and the mental abilities of the child are different. What is reasonable for one is not necessarily reasonable for another.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#224

Post by contingencies »

rootusrootus wrote: post #101

Perhaps Jeff Bezos wasn't the first person to think of it, but I give him credit for the decision to turn every single internal Amazon service into an API. Obviously it worked splendidly for monetizing it, but as a guideline I really appreciate the idea. The better the APIs a project has, the better the quality of interaction with other development. In the end this just raises the tide for everyone.

Yes, this is one of the best Bezos observations. Manage as you program: create well-defined interfaces. If there's value, there's a fair chance you can export it as a spinoff business.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#225

Post by munk-a »

monocasa wrote: post #194
munk-a wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might technically look like an API - but it could still not count as an API legally (for the constitutional trick) if the interface was not intended to be public. If you want to stretch the terms, everything on and off the web that does communication is basically an API - it's just that some of those APIs use JSON to encode their data and make it really easy to access... and some of them bury it in mountains of HT…

Privately documented APIs are still APIs.

I don't disagree (though when it comes to this particular case it's a question of what the opinion of Swedish courts is) but there's just a lot of grey area there.

Would you consider `ls` an API for exposing your filesystem?

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#226

Post by tsimionescu »

munk-a wrote: post #187
titusjohnson wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is clearly an API in play here. The article mentions it numerous times. The client app has to use an API to get its data, that's a downside of deploying a SPA. You need to make an API for it to get data from. If you don't want to make an API that exposes raw data just write a SSR app. If you want to deploy a SPA, well, you have to deploy an API as well and you need to plan around the fact that when you throw an…

It might technically look like an API - but it could still not count as an API legally (for the constitutional trick) if the interface was not intended to be public. If you want to stretch the terms, everything on and off the web that does communication is basically an API - it's just that some of those APIs use JSON to encode their data and make it really easy to access... and some of them bury it in mountains of HT…

> One outcome of this fight might be that government organizations are directed to use more proprietary communication methods which would be a poor outcome for everyone involved.

I agree with the rest of your argument, but I think that this part is not necessarily a good example of the risks. Far easier would be to use a shared key between the app and the site, and thus use encryption to prevent reading the data, while still sending it in JSON over HTTPS. A pinned certificate would do the trick, at least on phones which prevent the user from inspecting app bundles.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#227

Post by alibarber »

falcolas wrote: post #117
antihero wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in I swear we just had an A4 piece of paper with my lessons on it on the fridge.

And printing out a schedule for every child is a bit silly when there is calendaring software... Everything once done on paper is now done electronically - and revisions (fixes) happen much more quickly to boot.

You're not wrong, but, my school timetable changed once every quarter, that was sort of feature. It's not work, no one is flying in from $city on $day to kick off a project, students and teachers would follow a routine, it was easy.

Frankly there are some aspects of it I miss...

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#228

Post by true_religion »

raxxorrax wrote: post #20
wonderwonder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this digital child managing system sounds moderately dystopian to be honest" I disagree, I have 2 kids in elementary school and it is very useful to be able to look up what the kids have scheduled for the day to determine what to dress them in, see what's for lunch and if I need to pack them something if they won't like the available option. Most importantly though its very helpful to look up what homework /…

As I said, as a kid I would have hated this. I don't think kids benefit from this kind of overbearing parenting in the long run. Better than being neglected, I guess. Perhaps this is useful for very young children, but knowing myself I would have broken out of there as quickly as possible.

Let me preface this by clarify that when I say 'children', I mean young children 12 and younger, not teenagers in secondary school who can reasonably be expected to care for themselves...

Personally, I'm not seeing why this is a huge issue. In the 1980s, parents of at least the private school that I used would get a syllabus containing all the homework and class plans for the year.

If you wanted to know what was happening on week #7, you just had to look it up on paper without having a handy app to put it on your calendar. It wasn't seen as surveillance, but rather normal planning. If the teacher and school system know what's upcoming, then why shouldn't parents. It was seen as obvious that parents would help their children with homework, and that education necessarily involved parental support.

Along the way if there were any disciplinary or academic issues, parents would have to sign-off on handling minor problems, and would get a personal phone call from the school for major ones. This is in addition to monthly meetings, PTA, etc.

Has the world changed so much nowadays that people just drop off young children at school and can reasonably expect to be totally uninvolved?

Now to contrast, in my country, secondary school (13-17) is usually boarding so kids are 100% outside of your view for 4 years and are forcibly made independent.

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#229

Post by yummybear »

aenis wrote: post #208

It would be interesting to know what contractor delivered the original $120m mess, and actively sabotaged open source efforts. The combination of large budget and terrible result suggest some of the very large contractors used to doing work for fortune 500 companies. Shame on those who work there.

Are we shaming employees for company choices? Who works at companies who haven't done questionable actions?

Re: Stockholm parents built their own school app, then the city called the cops

#230

Post by tofflos »

taylodl wrote: post #109
urvader wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am Christian Landgren, cofounder of the project) You are right, the city believes they have ownership of the data, mainly because they fail to understand that they aren’t showing data in an app, but rather publishing data in an API. In Swedish law, once you have released data from a government, the receiver have the right to do whatever they want with the that data (as long as it isn’t violating any other laws). T…

That's an interesting angle - the government published the data via an API and therefore the data is now public and so as a result these other laws you mention come into play. Fascinating! Please keep us posted as to how this progresses.

The act of publishing has little to do with it. Sweden is open by default and the government has to provide public access to official documents to anyone and everyone - including foreign nationals.

> The principle of public access to official documents serves as a guarantee for transparency in the work of the Riksdag, the Government and the public authorities. The principle is set out in the Freedom of the Press Act, which is one of Sweden's fundamental laws, and means that everyone is entitled to access official documents.

> Everyone is entitled to contact a public authority and request a copy of an official document. Anyone requesting access to an official document does not need to provide their name or any details of how the document will be used.

The government can opt-in to secrecy.

> The Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act contains provisions on secrecy to protect public interests, for example, national security. It also contains provisions on secrecy to protect individuals’ personal or financial circumstances.

Source: https://www.riksdagen.se/en/how-the-riksdag-works/the-riksda...

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