Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should've looked into posting this in a different community.. It's closer to a silly "innovation".. soo.. is this considered FUD? I also don't support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had "privacy-violating" before the "solution".
A school district spends $180,000 (hyperbole, I don’t know actual numbers) of taxpayer money deploying this system between the actual hardware costs, maintenance costs to install the hardware, it costs to implement it into their network, and probably an ongoing contact with this dummy’s company. Maybe only for support but with the way things are now I’m sure they built this app to phone home to their servers (introducing a huge potential security risk over simply running it locally on the schools existing network infrastructure in a docker or something), calling it “cloud based”, and charging the district 1k/month to run the devices the district now owns and should be able to operate without the company. The company then talks about how they’ll back up records and safeguard data so you don’t have to worry about that (that it dept you pay is pointless!)
Three months after deployment it turns out the sensors can be tripped by many things not related to vaping, maybe increases in heat, mouthwash breath, etc. the false positives are due to a hardware flaw and cannot be fixed with a patch. Feel free to upgrade to sensor version 2.0, now with improved accuracy! (read: the problem still exists but isn’t as bad). Only another 40k to buy the new hardware, rip out the old hardware (which is now worthless), install the new stuff, and configure the software for everything (again, maintenance and IT costs)
9 months after deployment the company is doing poorly because their product is stupid and only a few idiots actually bought it (way to go idiot). There’s concerns because they sent a new Eula that outlines data sharing policies. They are potentially finding ways to harvest the data they agreed to safely store to try and create a new revenue stream to right their sinking ship. District counsel says fighting the Eula change will be expensive and there’s not much precedent for it, plus they state they will anonymize data before sharing so it’s not a ferpa violation, technically. It feels scummy but you can’t do anything about it. You also don’t really trust them to only sell anonymized data but you can’t prove they aren’t crossing that line so whatever, I guess
15 months after deployment they get hacked because they’ve run out of vc cash, never could get an actual profit stream going (turns out they’re spending 750,000/yr on salaries for 5 people and they’re all kitted out with sick work computers for what is basically coding a web app, but I digress). security of their servers was one of the budgetary constraints they chose to make to right the ship (but had to keep the $1800 office chairs and the 15-20k/mo rent loft they use as an office in a hcol area). The contract says this may happen and they’re not responsible unless there’s gross negligence on their part, which you can’t prove, and that they do some bare minimum reactionary shit after the fact to mitigate damage. So they’re legally blameless and now you get to notify your community their children’s data was leaked to god knows who, whoops
22 months after the fact they go out of business officially. You get a form email about the company’s journey and the difficult decision they had to make to stop fucking around on a dumb project that sucks because no dumbass vc will give them fun bucks anymore to keep playing tech bro billionaire. All the sensors stop working because they require a connection to the servers, which they shut off immediately without a sunset period. You’re reminded every day when you log in to the schools admin panel and get 350 “sensor not connected” error messages and your students bitch about the “sensor not connected: server not available” error pop up showing up on their classroom console. It takes IT a few days to remove their shit from the network and that costs you even more money in wasting your IT staff time when they should be fixing the broken computers in the computer lab or whatever.
Now your school has a bunch of weird boxes on the wall. Sometimes people ask you about them and you go “oh those don’t do anything” and remember that they cost taxpayers in your community tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars and wasted hundreds of hours of your supports staffs time that they could’ve been using to improve the school
But then you scroll on instagram and see there’s this new thing that will detect when kids are bullying each other. You just have to put a camera in each classroom. It’s okay, it won’t record. It will just use the power of AI and machine learning. You’re sold right there and the cycle starts again
This sounds about right. My only quibble is about sick computers and web apps. Twenty years ago I felt good because all I needed was a text editor and a web browser. Nowadays, the hungriest apps on my desktop are Firefox and VS Code.
To be fair, 20 years ago your computer would have choked doing 1/10th the stuff either one of those apps do today. Hell, I still remember writing a prank program that would lock up my school computers because I made it beep too fast.
Good God I hate linkedin types. Imagine thinking writing an app that literally just displays a single notification is worthy of making a whole post about. They basically wrote a Hello World app for Android TV. And I'm sure they got paid like 40k by some poor school district to do so.
I physically cannot read LinkedIn for more than 5 minutes at a time. I get seriously nauseated 🤢🤢🤢 from all the corporate talk
How long before the students gamify it to see who can generate the most alerts?
Or use it to elicit a response somewhere as a distraction for a prank or fight.
At least there are some criticisms. Considering it's LinkedIn, forever, it will get drowned by a sea of synergy pivoting lunatics.
Rare LinkedIn ✨positive vibes✨ theater going off-script
In my high school they managed to rip the alarm's siren off the wall without triggering it; if these kids have even an 1/8 th of the ingenuity they had, these things aren't gonna last
Its amazing the number of problems in life that can be solved with a $2 harbor freight automatic punch. Speakers especially.
Blowing vape smoke directly into the sensor to try to get the high score
The dildo of an unintended consequences is approaching.
Bullies will start blowing vape smoke on other kid's desks to get them in trouble. And someone will eventual create a smoke-box class room to get the screen to light up with alerts.
Then what? You need to cross reference the alerts with a video feed or snapshots.
Then some genius will figure that using AI to analyze all of the data is easier than manually doing so.
How is this invading someone's privacy? All it's doing is detecting if children are smoking in a room or space at school and then putting an alert up about the detection on a screen.
They have zero right to privately smoke at school, or anywhere for that matter, smoking is illegal for children and not something to be taken lightly.
Similarly, adults have no right to privately smoke whilst in the workplace in the bathroom or other non-smoking designated areas. This is also illegal and not to be taken lightly.
I agree. These are anonymous messages. I don't see any privacy violations.
They could set up camera's that record who's entering and leaving the restroom and thus violate privacy but this seems fair play to me. They'll just vape somewhere else.
Imagine paying taxes for education and they spend it on shit like this.
I strongly suspect stuff like this happens at rich people's private schools.
Ain't no public school in the US got money for this.
Unless there will be disciplinary follow-up ( -> no reason for this design), I only see this going the way of de-facto scoreboards among kids.
As it was with standardized testing, so shall it be with personal behavior: the goal is not to inform the student why, but to enforce compliance.
I’m in tech and could never take myself seriously ever again if I built this.
Bubble gum stuck into the sensor coming in 5 seconds...
It doesn't seem like there's any enforcement method, just "social influence".
In other words, they made a scoreboard.
Big LED light outside bathroom
paper sign underneath light "vaping detected"
The amount of over enginnering that went into this is why we can't have nice things.
If you want to record it, hook it up to a computer somewhere, detect whenever the sensor state changes and send an email to the admins...or just point a camera at it and the doorway.
Kids are gonna find ways to vape. It's just the way it is. Just like when I was a kid we all found ways to smoke. Making it more difficult just gives them more drive to "get away with it." Sometimes I feel like all these preventative measures that people come up with were by people that were never even a kid. Like banning fruity flavors. I started smoking when I was 14 and it wasn't because it tasted good.
Of all problems US schools are dealing with, surely vaping is the one that requires the most urgent action.
Sure it seems draconian, but how else are we going to get the kids to stop vaping and start smoking cigarettes like we did when we were in high school?
Won't someone please think of Phillip Morris' profit margins?
Look honestly I don't think this is that dystopian.
Smoke detectors existed in bathrooms forever. The main use in high school seems to be catching particularly dumb teenagers smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. When I was in high school they were tuned to be super sensitive to the point where water vapor could set one off. I remember one time where the entire school had to stand out in the rain after a fire alarm went off, in what was later determined to be just two teenagers smoking in the bathroom.
Teachers also have been trying to catch students smoking for like 50 years. Back in the 20th, there were assistant principals that basically roamed the halls looking for whiffs of cigarette smoke. Part of the reason memes about hanging out under the bleachers started is because it was the best place to smoke on account of being outside, out of the way, and old school gym teachers just not giving a fuck.
This dudes app just seems like a modern update on very old concepts. Instead of teenagers smoking cigarettes, they are vaping. Instead of a smoke detector, you have something designed specifically for vapes. Instead of some super anal assistant principal on patrol, you have some super anal assistant principal sprinting across the school. Who knows, maybe this is the thing that forces teenagers to touch grass because I'm willing to there aren't vape detectors under the bleachers and gym teachers still don't give a fuck.
I'll chime in with a weird take: this is a privacy community, we are united in a sense of defending our peaceful and unproblematic browsing on the internet and sending messages to friends from lunatics who seem to want everyone treated with the suspicion of highest criminal activity. the article posted describes a "privacy infringement" onto someone who not only has already broken the rule, but strongly publicized it by making people have to smell it. the perpetrators didn't even have an expectation of privacy, so the premise is ridiculous.
I'll say it like this: if the tv detects nicotine patches on someone's skin, then i pick up the torches and pitchforks.
This. It's a sensor, detecting only a specific air type. Not a camera, not a microphone. It doesn't have to do with privacy, this is not "scan and collect data about all to punish one" and cannot be turned into one.
I'll agree it's a fuc**ing dumb idea. Like utter useless garbage. Classic capitalistic "fix behavioral trash-consumption issue with overpriced fancy tech products that sound amazing in theory and are garbage in practice, without fighting the problem at the root". Screenshot comment said tax moeny but I'm willing to bet this is some kind of private school.
This may be a controversial take, but maybe we shouldn't surveil children in bathrooms full stop.
SIMlink 4G
Are these sensors connected to a cell network? What the hell? More than half my life ago, when I was in high school, we had wifi...
Yeah but putting it on 4G gives them a reason to charge for continuous use of the system and lock them in to their web based proprietary platform.
I am all for vape detectors. They only detect the fumes and aren't really that invasive. They are basiclly specialized fire alarms.
Nicotine is very bad for developing brains. I don't understand why you are ok with minors using it in a public school of all things.
Nobody said they were ok with young people vaping. The point people are making is that communication and discipline, both things that require time and skill, would be a better, less invasive approach.
Quite an expensive toy for the children. Because the boys will play around with it.
Introducing!
The Narc App!
Sure to be a hit. Hit with the closest blunt object.
Idk how much the school landscape has changed since I was last in school, but back when I was in school people would break their school assigned chromebooks just for shits and giggles. I can't imagine that tv will last for long.
Its easy enough to make a tube to blow through that should remove enough particulates to bypass the sensor. The kids would never figure this out though. /s
