Harvard Secretly Photographed Students to Study Attendance

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
Harvard this week admitted to secretly photographing students to track attendance as part of a study. As you can imagine, the privacy backlash is causing quite a stir from both faculty and students.

The clandestine experiment, disclosed publicly for the first time at a faculty meeting Tuesday night, came to light about a year-and-a-half after revelations that administrators had secretly searched thousands of Harvard e-mail accounts. That led the university to implement new privacy policies on electronic communication this spring, but another round of controversy followed the latest disclosure.
Click to expand...
 
I don't see the issue. It's like saying your privacy is invaded because you were taped by a security camera at the mall.
 
As someone who is big on privacy....... what's wrong with this?

You are in a lecture hall. An private area not owned by you, and also not a place that explicitly or implicitly private like a public bathroom stall.
 
I am sure there are tons of security cameras at harvard, why is this even a thing?
 
pothb said:
As someone who is big on privacy....... what's wrong with this?

You are in a lecture hall. An private area not owned by you, and also not a place that explicitly or implicitly private like a public bathroom stall.
Click to expand...

I have to say I agree with this..I am extremely opposed to the constant erosion of privacy when it comes to data mining and the like. However. this is an extremely public place. At no point would I expect to be anon on a college campus much less in the classroom.
 
Universities do lots of research on students. They are interested in attendance, retention, performance, etc.
I think policies should be disclosed to students.
 
Problem with it is that the reasoning is stupid. If you want to study attendance, take attendance. Maybe i am just a cynic, but something doesn't seem right here. If you were going to cover up some creep professor taking pictures of girls in short skirts to jack off too, some cockamamie story about an attendance study would fit the bill.
 
well if you used cameras you could study number of students that show up and where they sit in the hall, and if where they sit varies by attendance and such...
 
I think I just heard someone in the NSA say "amateurs"
 
pigpen said:
Problem with it is that the reasoning is stupid. If you want to study attendance, take attendance. Maybe i am just a cynic, but something doesn't seem right here. If you were going to cover up some creep professor taking pictures of girls in short skirts to jack off too, some cockamamie story about an attendance study would fit the bill.
Click to expand...

That works so nicely when you have 200+ students in a class :rolleyes:
 
We have ways of taking attendance without doing what would be called stalking if done by an individual..... .......
 
pothb said:
As someone who is big on privacy....... what's wrong with this?

You are in a lecture hall. An private area not owned by you, and also not a place that explicitly or implicitly private like a public bathroom stall.
Click to expand...

I'll admit, I've been out of school for a while, but even 10 years ago it was pretty standard for lectures to be taped. There was a semi-permanent tripod and camera at the back of most larger lecture halls.
 
Yep...

Also, when I was in HS, there was a food fight, and that revealed that there was a video recorder in the cafeteria. Now, I don't like it, but it's nothing you should get up over because you don't have any right to privacy in such public areas.
 
Megalith said:
I don't see the issue. It's like saying your privacy is invaded because you were taped by a security camera at the mall.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I don't mind being taped at College. If it was my private living space that's different but shit the entirety of London is available to authorities On Demand , why is it a big deal if campuses want to know if attendance is high or low?

Of course Harvard should have disclosed what it was doing and the fact that they didn't was wrong. So in that regard they should be punished.
 
At the my college most classes didn't have an attendance policy... They treated you like an adult. You made the choice of how to utilize your time.
 
Kueller said:
I'll admit, I've been out of school for a while, but even 10 years ago it was pretty standard for lectures to be taped. There was a semi-permanent tripod and camera at the back of most larger lecture halls.
Click to expand...

yes, but the difference there is that you knew that the camera was there. these people (students and professors alike) had no idea that this was going on.

i do agree that it is a public place and that the expectation of absolute privacy is virtually nil, but there are better ways to track attendance than covertly photographing people.
 
xXaNaXx said:
yes, but the difference there is that you knew that the camera was there. these people (students and professors alike) had no idea that this was going on.

i do agree that it is a public place and that the expectation of absolute privacy is virtually nil, but there are better ways to track attendance than covertly photographing people.
Click to expand...

As always, there's like a total non-understanding of the difference between public and private property. The Harvard's campus is private property so there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. HOWEVER, Harvard is private property so most of the regulatory legal junk limiting surveillance doesn't really apply. I know that totally sounds like confuse-a-speak, but it makes sense in the context that there aren't legal protections against this and there is an expectation of privacy in the sense that monitoring devices operated by 3rd parties aren't present. First party monitoring, however, that's a whole other story.

Anywho, at least it isn't Google doing the monitoring. Those jerks would totally face-recognize everyone and associate it with data from your phone and e-mail account to advertise facial treatments for pimples if they were involved.
 
PCunicorn said:
Yeah me too. The NSA would never disclose anything like this :cool:
Click to expand...

The NSA doesn't do Photo Reconnaissance, that would be the National Reconnaissance Office and the NRO would do it with a satellite from 1000 miles up and yes, it would see right through the building :D
 
lcpiper said:
The NSA doesn't do Photo Reconnaissance, that would be the National Reconnaissance Office and the NRO would do it with a satellite from 1000 miles up and yes, it would see right through the building :D
Click to expand...

Aaaand they can read credit cards even when they're wrapped in tinfoil so they can buy stuff like sock monkeys and those USB powered fake fish tanks. I so read that on a conspiracy website this one guy that lives in a bunker under his outhouse writes and he has photoshopped images that PROVE it's true! Also, bigfoot is real and not just some guy in a rubber suit.
 
Dayaks said:
At the my college most classes didn't have an attendance policy... They treated you like an adult. You made the choice of how to utilize your time.
Click to expand...

It's hard to treat college / university students as adults when their parents are constantly hounding you about their poor grades.
 
lcpiper said:
Ummm, Creepy, I wasn't bullshitting you.
Click to expand...

I knew it! If bigfoot is real, then Elvis is living at the bottom of Loch Ness with Abe Lincoln in a yellow submarine that they bought from green men from Mars that visited Earth in a black helicopter they. Of course the submarine was made from stuff that you can only get from the insides of cattle so that was where all the mutilations are coming from. Mysteries of the world, totally solved! :p
 
xXaNaXx said:
yes, but the difference there is that you knew that the camera was there. these people (students and professors alike) had no idea that this was going on.

i do agree that it is a public place and that the expectation of absolute privacy is virtually nil, but there are better ways to track attendance than covertly photographing people.
Click to expand...

In my case, the HS. The students didn't know. not sure on the teachers though but it seemed that they did know.

Also, states have different laws with recording, so that could come into play as well.
 
Dayaks said:
At the my college most classes didn't have an attendance policy... They treated you like an adult. You made the choice of how to utilize your time.
Click to expand...

Mine didn't have an official attendance policy per se, but in the classes that attendance was taken a the difference between an A- and a B+ (if you were borderline) was based on stuff like attendance. Granted, with most of the courses I took if you didn't attend the lecture you were doomed anyway.
 
You're in a classroom with up to a couple hundred other people, there is absolutely no expectation of privacy in that situation. Still I don't see why it couldn't have been announced beforehand. I doubt it would have made any significant different to the results.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
The Harvard's campus is private property so there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Click to expand...

Privacy cannot be expecting on private property unless you own it. Cameras are everywhere now days and small enough to be hidden. Would be like if I had cameras in my living room its private property but my guests can't expect privacy because its not public.
 
uberjon said:
Privacy cannot be expecting on private property unless you own it. Cameras are everywhere now days and small enough to be hidden. Would be like if I had cameras in my living room its private property but my guests can't expect privacy because its not public.
Click to expand...

Yeeaaah, you kinda missed some key takeaways from my post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top