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Comment by chuckee | Hacker News Reader

> In emails and chat messages, students discussed violent impulses, eating disorders, abuse at home, bouts of depression and, as one student put it, “ending my life.”

Of course the email and chat apps had prominent "Your messages may be monitored, including by your teachers" notifications, right? Kids weren't misled into thinking their private conversations were private, right?

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The point is they have no choice. There is no 'I don't want to be monitored' button. Just a message that says 'you are our bitch and there is nothing you can do about it'. The same as every other TOS for services that have become essential in our society and economy.

Don't they have the choice of communicating some other device or method? They are not forced to use the school computer. Many of them have phones, or a family computer.

Wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades we have AI monitoring your communication ready to flag you for psychiatric evaluation.

Already a thing

You may be interested in an anime called Psycho Pass that kinda has that as a plot point.

Law enforcement can point a gun at you to evaluate your psychiatric level and kill you if deemed to high

It's not just the computer. They tend to be forced to use Drive, email, chat, etc provided by the school to meet their collaboration/participation part of the rubric.

How many parents are going to buy their kids extra devices just to help them bypass rules and supervision?

In your world, is surveillance of kids OK just as long as you stick a disclaimer up front?

Absolutely not. In my world, a disclaimer is the line between merely "not OK", and "criminal hacking punishable by prison time".

That's how users of RAT* software are treated - what makes this different? A legal notice they hid as best they could? Currently, that might make it legal, but morally it makes no difference.

But I didn't suggest a prominent notice because that makes it better (though it does - if I were spied on, I'd want to know). I suggested it because that would make the victims of surveillance fight it. You can't rebell against what you don't know about.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_desktop_software#RAT

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