I recall that Harvard employed the "honor system" which required each student to be truthful on all things academic but that it all assumed honor in the student - it had the assumption that the university would not engage in constant surveillance of the students.

A policy of "we'll surveil you as much as technologically possible and we are allowed to harshly punish all evasions of this surveillance" is essentially a "dishonor" policy, indistinguishable from the policies that prisoners face.

True, but it's a two-way street. An academic honesty policy seems predicated on the assumption that the system run by faculty is inherently honest.

> [...] said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time. He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.

I pride myself on my honesty, but even I would have a hard time feeling bad about cheating this system.