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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>That isn't to say these remote proctoring solutions will necessarily prevent cheating either (and having now used one of these services, I think cheating would have been relatively easy), but it at least should make test takers think twice.

Sounds like security theater.

>I think we can all agree that an in-person exam would have been better, but the state of the world made that untenable.

Why not? Just rent out a large open space (stadium, convention center, school gym), and space the students 20ft apart. The risk should be negligible. Let's be honest here, the real reason is that [cost of exam surveillance software] < [cost of conducting a physically distanced exam]

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> Sounds like security theater.

I think a bit of security theater is exactly what's called for in this scenario.

This isn't like hacking into a computer network, or bringing an explosive onto an airplane, where one dedicated bad actor can defeat the system for everyone. It's much closer to something like shoplifting, where your goal is to make instances of bad behavior as low as possible, given other constraints. A security camera does not need to be 100% effective to be worth installing—and doesn't even necessarily need to be turned on.

A remotely-administered multiple-choice test is like a retail store without any staff, which asks customers to kindly leave money in a basket. You're much better off with even a single cashier, and even one who spends most of their day watching Netflix.

People may not die if I cheat on my exam, but casting doubt on the accuracy of the results by eroding trust in the examination process certainly affects all who took the exam when they end up not getting a job.

Security theater doesn't apply evenly, however. I know a couple students who could pretty blatantly cheat without getting caught simply because they owned a second computer they could position in the right spot, and had a hardware disconnect on their microphone. People that aren't well-off or tech savvy are going to be at a significant "disadvantage" here.

Some SW can simply be run in a VM and you can do anything you want on the host computer and activate and deactivate passed devices.

They try to detect Virtual Machines. I don't know how easy it is to spoof since obviously I wasn't going to try it.

> the real reason

... has been discussed at length by people with direct knowledge. E.g. Dr. David Joyner. In-person proctoring works for a niche set of situations but leaves a lot of other students unable to participate.

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