I just finished reading a Washington Post article on how American colleges are turning students’ smartphones into surveillance machines, keeping track of their attendance in class and their activities around the campus. To say that this is highly disturbing is an understatement. It’s bad enough that companies and even the authorities can track us at any time using surveillance software, but now even the privacy of students on campuses across the U.S. and Canada is under attack.
Officials like to employ euphemisms to justify their actions, including references to “monitoring” instead of “tracking” and moving toward “heightened educational vigilance”. In particular, colleges appear to be interested in tracking via smartphones the activities of those athletes in receipt of athletic scholardships. You’d think that the purpose of grades would be enough to ensure scholarship requirements are being met. Some have even suggested that such surveillance can be used to track the “behaviour” of students in order to evaluate their mental health. Again, you would think that there exist adequate and available campus services to assist students in need while maintaining their privacy at the same time.
As data scientists and companies themselves recognize, much of the data collected is not always guaranteed to be “accurate, complete, correct, adequate, useful, timely, reliable or otherwise”. For example, this issue is one that has particularly been raised with respect to “facial recognition” software. Unfortunately for students, tracking their attendance in classes, visits to libraries on campus, etc.,etc. may be misinterpreted due to faulty soft-ware or the misuse of data.
As the article points out, surveillance technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous in societies. People being constantly monitored — their peers, and themselves — feel that they can’t really do anything about it, thus “reinforcing a sense of powerlessness”. The issue of privacy of our movements and activities has become even more pertinent with the increasing use of surveillance technology and expanding reach of “surveillance creep”. Over 90 percent of North Americans now claim to use a smartphone, highlighting what will become the greatest privacy issue of the next decade. I firmly believe in ensuring one’s privacy is protected as a fundamental right. This is why, by choice, I don’t have a smartphone and prefer to go with a so-called “dumb phone” as my cellular option. Think about it!
FROLITICKS 