Tool Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now in 1k American Schools | Hacker News Reader

Tool Monitors How Long Kids Are in the Bathroom Is Now in 1k American Schools

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My partner was in a class at Berkeley where different teams devised ML projects and implemented them. One of the team's idea was to "combat obesity" by installing cameras in elementary schools to monitor the children's estimated weight and notify their parents if it seemed like the kid was getting fatter. The only thing more disturbing was that they called a bunch of elementary schools and got very enthusiastic responses from the schools - their presentation included a quote like "where have you been all this time?" from a school principal.

I'm guessing the project was not about ethics in ML

"Mrs. Smith, your son was supposedly in the bathroom for nearly 40 minutes."

"...he's 13..."

"Exactly. What could a 13-year-old boy be doing in the bathroom for that long unless it's something suspicious?"

"...you poor, sheltered soul."

It doesn't take 40 minutes.

I dunno, maybe the anxiety of being in a public place and the fear of getting caught would cause some performance anxiety.

...or possibly speed things up, I don't kink shame.

No, but when you're that young you can do it a couple of times in a 40 minute time span.

Can't rush the greatness + for some it is more about the journey than the destination.

Some people read 1984 and go 'huh, pretty neat idea'...

Tweet by @AlexBlechman

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

I think that we are way past 1984 at this point...

Nah, in 1984 they knew that nobody is watching most people most of the time, because there's simply not enough people to do it.

Now, it is watching everything all the time, and recording everything all the time.

They'll start using surveillance technology in schools so that easily impressionable kids will be used to it by the time they're adults - and by the time anybody speaks up it'll be used in the corporate environment, then society as a whole.

It's like how Apple pushed for their Apple computers to be in schools in the 80s (90s?), and how Google pushes Chromebooks onto educators.

Very scary... We can see technology being used in the worst possible ways and there's not much we can do apparently.

Chromebooks are a godsend for education. Especially for students who do not have a computer at home.

I agree wholeheartedly though that schools are used as a way to normalize authoritarian tech or policies.

>They'll start using surveillance technology in schools

This has been going on since at least the 90s. Most schools put CCTV in and watch everything that is done on the property, and administrators have very little limits of access controls in place to make sure nobody is creepily watching little timmy all the time.

Does that mean that they don't trust their teachers?

or do they want to know who goes to the bathroom at the same time?

All of the above.

These systems wind up getting used just like CCTVs. They get retroactively employed whenever and however the powers that be want them to. Sometimes that's figuring out what happened after some incident. Usually it's just petty stuff.

And usually it's just straight up spying on unwilling and unwitting kids who don't realize they're being spied on and now the principal is watching kids through laptop webcams in their own bedrooms.

Slavery by the back door!

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