Ed-Tech Dragnet
“With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet” writes 404 Media co-founder Jason Koebler, in response to Amazon’s ad in the Super Bowl promising that its front poor camera could be turned into a neighborhood surveillance network. The ad posits that this as a good thing -- it’s just for finding lost doggies! pinky swear! -- but it’s clear, as Koebler argues, that that is not what camera footage is being used for. Not right now, certainly. But honestly, not ever. This isn’t some civic-minded technology that brings people together. It is a tool used by secret police (now) and by plenty of Ring’s owners (always) to identify “outsiders.” “Unlike, say, data analytics giant Palantir or some other high-profile surveillance companies,” Koebler writes, “Ring is a surveillance network that homeowners have by and large deployed themselves, powered by fear mongering against our neighbors and unfettered consumerism.”
The FBI shared footage this week captured from a camera on the front porch of kidnapping victim Nancy Guthrie. It’s no surprise, I suppose, that tech companies are willing to hand over this sort of data to the police -- that is one of the selling points of the surveillance machinery. But what this incident should remind us, as The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell pointed out, is that these cameras are recording footage and storing it on company servers, even if we are no longer paying the subscription (which apparently Guthrie was not).
As privacy researcher Chris Gilliard tells 404 Media’s Koebler, “In Amazon’s alliance with this administration, it’s become more clear than ever that Ring is an extension of the carceral state.” We have to think about Google that way too (even as some employees are asking the company to cancel any contracts it might have with ICE and CPB). Indeed, The Intercept reported this week that Google handed over information about a student journalist -- including bank account and credit card data -- to ICE.
When I read Koebler’s headline – “With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet” – I immediately thought of how readily we could argue something similar about education technology: that with the various pieces of hardware and software that schools have adopted in the last few decades, they too have built a surveillance dragnet, one that is being actively used to identify, harass, arrest, imprison, fire, monitor, and deport teachers and students and school community members alike.
With Ed-Tech, American Schools Built a Surveillance Dragnet
(Via The Guardian this week: “Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown.” Via Inside Higher Ed: “UNC Administrators Can Now Secretly Record Faculty.”)
I recognize that many people who work in education and education technology still want to insist that these tools are benign if not beneficial, or at least that they’re using them for good. But I’m not sure how one can continue down this path of turning the campus and the classroom (even further) into a techno-dystopia wherein “networked learning” becomes a vast system of racial purity and ideological compliance.
Related: The high school students’ protests against ICE aren’t getting enough attention, Jennifer Berkshire argues.
Your children, your neighbors are not giving up.
Via The Daily Northwestern: “Late Northwestern professor maintained long-term relationship with Epstein, released government files show.” That professor would be one Roger Schank.
Many of the pair’s comments used derogatory language toward women.
In January 2010, Schank pens an email with the subject line, “there is a simpler explanation about women and intelligence.” He claimed that intelligence “comes about in part from real focus” which he wrote women can’t have.
“(I)t is a rare woman who is not first and foremost focussed on what others are thinking and feeling about her,” Schank wrote. “(H)ard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you or why you dont own a kelly bag.”
Epstein replied that there are “no really smart women —none.”
Schank’s work is seen as foundational in the field of learning sciences. He is viewed as a pioneer in artificial intelligence. He has been praised by many working in and adjacent to education technology for his contributions to our understanding of teaching machines.
As he – along with Marvin Minsky and Noam Chomsky and others whose work is formative to cognitive science and “AI” – were so close to Epstein, I reckon people in and adjacent to these fields must come to terms with this. And not simply some pat response about “a few bad apples.” But I want to see some reflection on if and how some the core tenets of the field may be implicated in a violent misogyny, one that has been comfortable with the exploitation and degradation of women – of girls, not to mention one that is deeply and overtly eugenicist.
You cannot build a home – physical or intellectual – that is safe and secure if the foundation is rotten. The foundation of these fields -- cognitive science, psychology, artificial intelligence, computing, educational technology -- is rotten.
Today’s bird is the little blue heron, Egretta caerulea (not to be confused with the great blue heron, Ardea herodias, that is much larger and has a yellow bill). These birds can be found throughout the Americas, in both fresh and saltwater habitats, although like many birds, their population is in decline. Juvenile birds are white, but by adulthood have a purple-maroon head and dark, slate blue-colored body. The little blue heron’s bill remains two-toned throughout its life.
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