Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#81

Post by Noos » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

esaym wrote: post #74

Noos wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're complaining about an authoritarian public school system, but are replacing it with an even more authoritarian solution. Homeschooling keeps the child under the parent's eye 24-7 and completely captive to their worldview and idea. If that worldview and idea is for them to be "schooled" in helping their dad run his landscaping business, or being prepared to be married off, well, good luck. Public school is impor…

>Public school is important precisely because it is public. It gets the kid out to realize society exists and to deal with it as it exists. Perhaps your public school was better than mine, but what I was conditioned into socially while in high school did not line up at all with "the real world". At the age of 20, after many months of deep thought about my life's direction, I literally realized I needed to throw out e…

You don't know the opposite though.

The kids that fail are barely educated; they may have fourth grade level math. They end up indoctrinated totally by their parents worldview or unable to function with others. They have no real way to connect with others because there isn't even the shared topic of "public school sucks." CEO isn't an option for them; hell a life apart from their parents barely is.

I think people romanticize it way too much, and there is the HLSDA which really pushes a lot of narratives about it. The blog Homeschoolers Anonymous is inactive, but a good reference on some of the issues.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#82

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #60

esaym wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you right now (as someone that actually went to the mentioned Brazosport school) that if they had more stricter rules and monitoring "in my day", I probably wouldn't be here right now (as in being part of the HN community). I'd probably be in prison or working a minimum wage job. I was not interested in going to high school. Perhaps because there were no classes that interested me (another issue). I cut cl…

Our it could have earlier identified you as 'at-risk', and led to more positive interventions in your education. You fell through the cracks, that's hardly an optimal outcome.

>and led to more positive interventions in your education

You mean actions that are arguably beneficial on paper but in practice amount to the school telling the at-risk student to respect my authority?

That stuff never works in practice when the party the at-risk person doesn't respect/care about is the same party or has sufficient/control or incentive alignment with the party doing the intervention.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#83

Post by homonculus1 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #67

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #2

"The local Brazosport Independent School District had recently hired a company called Social Sentinel to monitor public posts from all users, including adults, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. The company's algorithms flagged Lafrenais's tweet as a potential threat. Automated alerts were sent to the district's superintendent, chief of police, director of student services, and director of guidan…

>OK, I think we really need to investigate protecting the privacy of our youth. This is effectvely acclimating our children to minimal privacy as enforced by authoritarian organizations. There's no privacy when you post things publicly on the internet.

Semantics distract from the point at hand. There's no privacy when you leave your house either, but you still expect people (including school administrators) not to follow you around recording your actions and statements.

There is a reasonable expectation to /not be stalked/ even when conducting yourself in an otherwise public setting. Calling this "privacy" is a loose application of the word, but we never really had the need to come up with another one before the information age made it economical to do this to everyone all the time.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#84

Post by elliekelly » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #59

elliekelly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought exactly. If the school "knew" about it and dismissed the alerts as a false positive I would have to imagine that opens them up to far greater liability than simply not knowing about the behavior in the first place.

> If the school "knew" about it and dismissed the alerts as a false positive... Knowing what you know about liability, ask yourself, what are the real chances of the school knowing something and dismissing it as a false positive? I think if you search your heart you'd probably come to the conclusion that the fact that the school will follow up on every little thing is exactly the problem. Not everyone means "I'd kill…

> I think if you search your heart you'd probably come to the conclusion that the fact that the school will follow up on every little thing is exactly the problem.

The issues of school administrator overreach and school district liability for negligence are not mutually exclusive.

> Knowing what you know about liability, ask yourself, what are the real chances of the school knowing something and dismissing it as a false positive?

Knowing what I know about liability and knowing what I know about compliance monitoring systems with high rates of false positives is precisely why I said what I said.

Negligence = known or should have known of X

Efforts to hold schools accountable for shootings have historically been difficult because the plaintiffs must show (1) but for the action of the school, the injury would not have occurred and (2) the injury was a foreseeable result of the school's negligence.

This monitoring system creates actual knowledge of a potential threat where most law suits over school shootings have had to argue the school "should have known" and requires the school to take make a record of their decision for every alert (investigate or ignore).

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#85

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #50

momokoko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100 surveillance You absolutely, positively, cannot have that. Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Especially boys. The only way you prevent it all the time is to never leave boys alone in a group with no monitoring or supervision. Edit: If you are downvoting or disagreeing with this, you are part of the absurdly unreasonable expecta…

> Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Especially boys... I don't think you've ever been responsible for a group of adolescent girls. Far better than boys, at pretty much every aspect of bullying.

>I don't think you've ever been responsible for a group of adolescent girls. Far better than boys, at pretty much every aspect of bullying.

If your definition of bullying is mostly physical (which is a crappy definition but I digress) boys are way worse.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#86

Post by Maximus9000 » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #66

Maximus9000 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm thankful this kind of stuff didnt exist when I grew up. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard an adult say this phrase lately, I'd be rich! Did adults used to say this phrase 30 years ago? What are we doing to ourselves and our kids?

It's kinda crazy. We say this - but I suspect we are a minority. Simply because "we" (some of us - not I) are parents of kids in these systems, but there are other parents of our age with kids in these systems who like them just fine - and I suspect there's more of them. Otherwise - why would "we" let these systems exist, if "we" are glad they didn't exist back when "we" were in school? I also suspect that those pare…

> It's kinda crazy. We say this - but I suspect we are a minority.

I'm not sure I agree there. For example, I've heard stories where parents don't really want their children to use Instagram... however, they also don't want their kids to be excluded. If all other kids are on Instagram, the parents don't want their child to be excluded. It's kind of a trap if all parents feel this way.

I've heard stories of those parents getting together and collectively agreeing that they will all simultaneously ban their children from using Instagram so that no one feels excluded.

So in your example of "we"... it could be that "we" all feel this way, but we need to raise our voices together instead of as individuals.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#87

Post by reallydude » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28

momokoko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's pick one. Either: 1. Allow for potential bullying and sexual harassment and other things kids put each other through. 2. Monitor every single thing they do and police them at all times. We as a society need to make a choice. You cannot have a perfectly safe and positive environment at all times for children(and adults) without constant and detailed monitoring. My guess is that the correct answer l…

Its popular to create false dichotomies. Like this one. How about: monitor them sometimes and train them into good behavior patterns, so as to create a population of civil citizens You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100 surveillance. Like any civil society.

> Its popular to create false dichotomies. Like this one.

It's not a false dichotomy, it's a practical issue.

eg > Kids tease each other, they call each other names, they occasionally get into fist-fights, but that's not necessarily bullying

There's no nuance between dominance behavior and bullying. It looks like bullying, regardless if you call it teasing or horsing around. Laws and policies are, in large, black or white. It's not practical to pretend that, because there is a subjective element, that it will be legislated that way.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#88

Post by panzagl » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #65

panzagl wrote: post #58

Do any of the naysayers here work in a public capacity- teacher, law enforcement, military/intelligence, etc? Have you ever been solely responsible for the security and well-being of more than, say a half-dozen total strangers? It's a hard problem, a continual tweaking of what we would see as engineering trade-offs, usually performed by people with minimal training, support, or reward who are stuck with the responsib…

I have, yes. However, I don't believe it's always necessary to have experience doing something in order to understand how it works - humans developed pretty well in ways to enable us to share experience with one another. Anyway, as I see it first we should agree on what exactly the problem is; in this case, it appears this was created to solve the problem of mass shootings in schools. If that is the problem, this sol…

How does it go beyond? The systems discussed either grab public social media, or monitor information created on the schools' machines. I don't know that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy on either.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#89

Post by esaym » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #60

esaym wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you right now (as someone that actually went to the mentioned Brazosport school) that if they had more stricter rules and monitoring "in my day", I probably wouldn't be here right now (as in being part of the HN community). I'd probably be in prison or working a minimum wage job. I was not interested in going to high school. Perhaps because there were no classes that interested me (another issue). I cut cl…

Our it could have earlier identified you as 'at-risk', and led to more positive interventions in your education. You fell through the cracks, that's hardly an optimal outcome.

>Our it could have earlier identified you as 'at-risk', and led to more positive interventions in your education.

I've honestly thought about that a lot. You know, "what if someone took me under their wing and showed me how to truly fit in with society and be a great person". I doubt that would have worked. I saw most adults as idiots at the time and was not inclined to listen to anyone. For one, the advice I did get never helped or lined up with reality.

My parents told me to graduate high school, even though they hadn't. The counselors told me not to do drugs, even though the grapevine told me they themselves had (doesn't matter if that was true or not, as a teenager you make up your own "facts"). And my brain told me I had it all figured out and was part of the elite, and the rap music I blared that spoke of killing cops, beating women, and "making millions" justified my own thoughts. I was beyond help. It was only through basically getting kicked of my parents house and going all the way to the bottom did I then realized that I knew nothing.

Of course, perhaps if there was some counselor or authority that I could have repected at school, maybe then I would have listened. But finding someone to mesh with my mentality would have been difficult and would have required a lot of thought, care, and time on their part. And in my general experience, most counselors seem to get pretty burned out after 5+ years of dealing with unruly children and they then revert to not trying much and just occupying a desk chair. Most of my high school's faculty was like that. Most had had the same position for the last 20 years.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#90

Post by ilikehurdles » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #44

guitarbill wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm seeing a serious trend toward unhealthy social interactions, cyber bullying Admittedly the "cyber" part is relatively new, but that's called being a teenager. I'd rather my kids have this learning experience for the future. Me having to help them through it is simply part of being a parent. Especially if it's difficult, there's a learning experience in that. > If your country doesn't allow it, you may not have…

That sure is a lot of assumptions and accusations.

Most of the comment was spent explaining the counter-arguments to your own accusations.

Homeschool helicopter-parents have thought that public schools are a dumpster fire for as long as they have existed. Parents absolutely do not have the skills alone to give their children a well-rounded education, period. That some people can even think this could ever be different is a testament to the low quality of education and media in the US.