[imnotlost]

The Brits have gone all in on the surveillance society with their CCTV cameras all over the place and now the Online Safety Bill. Still early days, I'm sure it'll be expanded at every opportunity. Maybe 1984 is the blueprint.

In the US the fundamental Christians are grabbing power and they're taking flamethrowers to books and talking about tracking women who may go across state-lines to get an abortion. Self-censorship for fear of being 'canceled' is putting a damper on the spirit of freedom. It's perhaps more along the lines of Fahrenheit 451.

May you live in interesting times.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Well, as a Brit, I agree with the surveillance society bit although the police don't even have time to go after the crims, so I suspect that most surveillance footage is ignored unless you're a political figure.

As a devout atheist, I have a particular view of Christians and from what I can gather, the Christo-fascists in the U.S. trying to grab power are Christian in name only and represent almost the exact opposite of the teachings of Jesus. I think it's more of a fascist movement that picks on the most gullible and easily led of groups for their support base.

[giantg2]

"although the police don't even have time to go after the crims,"

That's how it always works, even in the US. Selective enforcement of the laws against some group (or to favor some group).

[KennyBlanken]

It's not just the British.

For decades in the US, school administrators have been obsessed with monitoring student's online activity and email. There is a lucrative industry providing what amounts to glue and regexs for detecting and reporting suicidal language, threats of violence, and so on (you can be sure there's detection of LGBTQ language for all the various religious schools.)

There is a subreddit for K-12 IT administrators and the stuff people would post there about monitoring students was pretty shocking (also, the levels of incompetence are also pretty shocking. Most of the crowd are barely competent at IT basics. People who are in charge of IT at multiple campuses.)

Tell your kids that any email account associated with the school, and anything they even type into a school device (phone, tablet, laptop, computer) is monitored, and even the most innocent keyword could flag their email and put it front of admins. If they want to talk to a trusted friend about anything regarding the administrator or teachers, or something regarding mental health, sexuality, bullying, violence, etc - they need to do it on devices not associated with the school, with no school management software installed, on non-school accounts.

In fact, they should probably never use their school accounts or devices for anything except strictly school related communication and work.

It's amazing how completely ignorant these admins are that, say, hauling a suicidal student into a meeting with administrators is just about the last fucking thing that kid needs, and yet that's exactly what was described in some posts and discussions. The only thing they care about is snooping in student's activity and covering the school's ass.

[fnordpiglet]

Sadly a lot of kids only have one portal to the internet and that’s through a school device.

Otherwise the advice should be, as you said, to never use a school device for anything not explicitly required by the school. But when there’s no other route, surveilled access is better than none, I guess?

It’s a tough quandary though - schools can be held liable, at least socially so if not legally, if kids use school provided devices for all the things kids use devices for that they shouldn’t. Meeting sexual predators, bullying, etc. Many parents are technically incapable of monitoring their online activity, others too busy. Schools are being put in a weird spot of being access providers to an adult world online, not just educators.

I’ll wager a lot of school surveillance started with parents demanding it.

It’s a tough subject, I don’t have the answer. My intuition tells me schools shouldn’t be involved in access OR monitoring, but I also understand the “digital divide” isn’t just a media term. A lot of pretty smart kids live in a pretty neglected context, and without access to sources of fact like Wikipedia or sources of dubious plagiarism like ChatGPT (tongue in cheek), they’re at a structural disadvantage that can’t be overcome through hard work alone.

[SoftTalker]

Or they could just use paper and books and avoid the whole morass.

There is zero need to be using "devices" in schools at least until High School, and I'd question even then.

[fnordpiglet]

Except they can’t control the fact that wealthier kids will have access to devices that give them Wikipedia and ChatGPT and other online knowledge sources. Being able to tell ChatGPT “explain to me the Byzantine empires history” then interrogate it on fine points to prep to write an essay in immeasurably more powerful than “here’s a middle school textbook good luck understanding the nuances.” This puts the kids without a device at a structural disadvantage, a more steep disadvantage than they’re already at in society.

Finally, there’s an idea of digital literacy - the ability to use these tools to your advantage, and to navigate with sophistication the mental crack of algorithmic personalization. They will have a device at some point, and being taught at a younger age to be skeptical of mental crack might help weaken its hold (still to be seen!)

[SoftTalker]

Wealthier kids have always had and always will have advantages like that. Wealthier kids probably also have their own room and a quiet organized place to do homework. They've probably been encouraged to read and been provided with books and other enrichment opportunities. I think most teachers know who these kids are and and know if they are turning in their own work or not.

[fnordpiglet]

I’m not talking about ChatGPT writing an essay for you. ChatGPT is also a pretty good teacher in itself, and can help you learn many topics and subjects by providing direct access to a tutor on most topics. Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia available, more or less.

While schools can’t give you a good family or a nice house to study in, they certainly can give you an iPad.

[ndsipa_pomu]

It can work out cheaper to provide digital devices than providing plenty of books and of course they're a lot more flexible.

Modern society is of course dominated by technology, so there's a strong argument for getting all kids to have experience in using it.

[dgroshev]

The CCTV meme is completely disconnected from reality. There are plenty of CCTV cameras around, but they aren't connected in any way, most of them are private, and in reality the police mostly can't be bothered to try and access the recordings. American obsession with Ring-like cloud connected cameras and their dealings with police forces are way more dystopian than the reality of CCTV as practiced in Britain.

A good example is my partner getting pickpocketed on an empty tube train, which surely should make finding the person easy, right? Nope, the Met told me they'd need to go and pay the train maintenance company to retrieve the recordings from each carriage on the train, and they're not going to do that over a wallet.

In practice it works pretty well, because it implicitly sets a very high bar on the severity of the crime that would warrant retrieving dozens of recordings and tracing people through them. Skripal poisoning or murders get that treatment and are solved pretty quickly. Small scale crime (or whatever dystopian thought crime scenarios people imagine) doesn't.

[guitarbill]

> and in reality the police mostly can't be bothered to try and access the recordings

obviously this is the case if you are a normal citizen. imagine how fast they'd access the recordings if a police officer was hurt, or to identify protesters, etc

[dgroshev]

There are probably hundreds to thousands of protesters protesting for different causes in London alone every weekend. CCTV tracking of protesters is just not happening, it's absolutely unrealistic. Besides, you don't need street CCTV for that, local police van-based CCTV on mass gatherings is already a thing all over the globe.

Stuff like Ring (centralised, pervasive, and already cooperating with authorities) is way more sus than CCTV on British streets.

[didntcheck]

While I agree that our politicians are obsessed with sticking their nose in people's private business (and the shadow cabinet often merely object that the proposals don't go far enough!), but I would say this is mostly down to a different issue - an overzealous obsession with "safeguarding" and the belief that it must be possible to preemptively block all societal harms, and that those objecting to the cost of the attempts must just be running apologetics.

I have friends and family who work in education and other social care roles, so hear about the various training and policy they're given, and it almost feels like the public sector is putting parents on perpetual trial. And there's the underlying assumption of "if in doubt, raise it", with the false belief that a false report is harmless and will surely come out in the wash with no harm from the process.

Though it's important to remember this isn't down to the staff all being little Umbridges wanting to cause stress; as usual it's down to incentives. They are explicitly told they could be at fault for failing to report a Potential Safeguarding Issue, so it's the safer option in doubt. And at an organisational level, any instance where a child does come to harm leads to potentially nationwide accusations of negligence (sometimes fair) and demands to Do Something, no matter what that something is, what its collateral costs are, and if it even works in the first place.

And of course it would be unfair not to mention that the teachers themselves are often very much victims of similar overscrutiny, and are quite used to self-policing their behavior, with fear of both policy violations and parents' ire. Again, I'm largely criticizing the policy not the people. The common sense and discretion of workers on the ground is often a good defense against stupid policy, but not when there's a credible fear of being disciplined for that

[MSFT_Edging]

> Self-censorship for fear of being 'canceled' is putting a damper on the spirit of freedom.

I'm always curious about what people mean by this, because usually its people upset they can't say the N-word or upset they're getting cancelled over being sex pests.