‘NO’: Grad Students Analyze, Hack, and Remove Under-Desk Surveillance Devices Designed to Track Them
upstart writes:
Surveillance has been creeping unabated across schools, universities, and much of daily life over the past few years, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in October, however, graduate students at Northeastern University were able to organize and beat back an attempt at introducing invasive surveillance devices that were quietly placed under desks at their school.
Early in October, Senior Vice Provost David Luzzi installed motion sensors under all the desks at the school's Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex (ISEC), a facility used by graduate students and home to the "Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute" which studies surveillance. These sensors were installed at night-without student knowledge or consent-and when pressed for an explanation, students were told this was part of a study on "desk usage," according to a blog post by Max von Hippel, a Privacy Institute PhD candidate who wrote about the situation for the Tech Workers Coalition's newsletter.
[...] Von Hippel told Motherboard, however, that desk usage can already be tracked because desks are assigned and badges are required to enter the rooms. Instead, he believes the sensors were a rationale for the administration-which owns the building-to push out computer science students who don't use the building as much as others might.
In response, students began to raise concerns about the sensors, and an email was sent out by Luzzi attempting to address issues raised by students.
[...] At this first listening session, Luzzi asked that grad student attendees "trust the university since you trust them to give you a degree," Luzzi also maintained that "we are not doing any science here" as another defense of the decision to not seek IRB approval.
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