He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None

I would argue the root cause of this is administrative creep. Faculty don't care about student movements accross campus, but for administratos it's an opportunity to improve their job security and expand the role of the beurocracy.

Most of these technologies are solutions in search of problems. There is no need for invasive proctoring software if students just take exams in person like they always have. There are presently too many economic incentives to violate people's privacy and almost none to protect it.

> On a recent Monday, Eric Natividad woke up around 8 a.m., showered, ate breakfast, and braced himself for a day of being tracked.

Barf. I don't like surveillance culture any more than anyone else, but I especially hate histrionic culture. Surveillance is creepy, invasive and unnecessary-- so just say that. It's fucking surveillance, not the plight of a migrant worker risking death to bring water home for his children.

We're all worked up about companies using surveillance tech, but this hits closer to home than anyone thinks. Micromanagers love enabling email read receipts. "Ask before sending" is the first thing I enable in Outlook at new jobs.

The problems he has with Canvas, iPhones normalize the same behavior. Your wife/girlfriend texts you something you know is going to start a fight if your response has a single word out of place, so you don't respond (or start typing and stop). It's too late; "I know you read it and you ignored me!" Now you have two problems.

I eventually refused to use Hangouts for the same reason. Like, I love you, I do, but back the fuck off. "I'm in a meeting at work and can't deal with your shit right now" never goes over well. Appearing to not have read it is the only safe alternative to responding.

There's a fun thread on lolcow.farm about the insane shit women do to spy on their boyfriends/husbands to sniff out cheating and porn usage. IIRC it involves everything from self-taught CIA interrogation techniques to snooping through your shit and even sniffing DNS caches. (I actually learned a couple new phone forensic techniques. Thanks, ladies.) If you spend over an hour in the bathroom or stay up late gaming, you're also suspect.

Mine's tried to use the "making sure you're not a serial killer" excuse on me long ago, but it's all intel collection. They play the long game. Drugs, financial accounts and other artifacts are generally of interest too, so they know where you hide your money and your skeletons long before they withhold sex, catch you watching porn (or cheating), and cash out through divorce uncontested by threatening public humiliation. Bitcoin shook up this scheme for a while by making funds undiscoverable but that market is collapsing.

Watch your back...the NSA and your school aren't the only ones with their eye on you.

Fast food, Shopping, and all sorts of predatory 'reward' programs are just as bad. we need to legislate what a reward is.....it's becoming used as an extortion tactic.

We've got to make this sort of data "radioactive", because otherwise the temptation is to just gather it and hope hey, maybe someday we'll have a good use for it. Oops, got hacked!

That article reads like an episode of Black Mirror.

But I get it - he's making a valid and important point.

I'm curious how similar issues are handled in Germany or other countries with (allegedly) stronger privacy laws.