Company creates "solution" to address school "vaping incidents".
Company creates "solution" to address school "vaping incidents".
Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should've looked into posting this in a different community.. It's closer to a silly "innovation".. soo.. is this considered FUD? I also don't support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had "privacy-violating" before the "solution".
A school district spends $180,000 (hyperbole, I don’t know actual numbers) of taxpayer money deploying this system between the actual hardware costs, maintenance costs to install the hardware, it costs to implement it into their network, and probably an ongoing contact with this dummy’s company. Maybe only for support but with the way things are now I’m sure they built this app to phone home to their servers (introducing a huge potential security risk over simply running it locally on the schools existing network infrastructure in a docker or something), calling it “cloud based”, and charging the district 1k/month to run the devices the district now owns and should be able to operate without the company. The company then talks about how they’ll back up records and safeguard data so you don’t have to worry about that (that it dept you pay is pointless!)
Three months after deployment it turns out the sensors can be tripped by many things not related to vaping, maybe increases in heat, mouthwash breath, etc. the false positives are due to a hardware flaw and cannot be fixed with a patch. Feel free to upgrade to sensor version 2.0, now with improved accuracy! (read: the problem still exists but isn’t as bad). Only another 40k to buy the new hardware, rip out the old hardware (which is now worthless), install the new stuff, and configure the software for everything (again, maintenance and IT costs)
9 months after deployment the company is doing poorly because their product is stupid and only a few idiots actually bought it (way to go idiot). There’s concerns because they sent a new Eula that outlines data sharing policies. They are potentially finding ways to harvest the data they agreed to safely store to try and create a new revenue stream to right their sinking ship. District counsel says fighting the Eula change will be expensive and there’s not much precedent for it, plus they state they will anonymize data before sharing so it’s not a ferpa violation, technically. It feels scummy but you can’t do anything about it. You also don’t really trust them to only sell anonymized data but you can’t prove they aren’t crossing that line so whatever, I guess
15 months after deployment they get hacked because they’ve run out of vc cash, never could get an actual profit stream going (turns out they’re spending 750,000/yr on salaries for 5 people and they’re all kitted out with sick work computers for what is basically coding a web app, but I digress). security of their servers was one of the budgetary constraints they chose to make to right the ship (but had to keep the $1800 office chairs and the 15-20k/mo rent loft they use as an office in a hcol area). The contract says this may happen and they’re not responsible unless there’s gross negligence on their part, which you can’t prove, and that they do some bare minimum reactionary shit after the fact to mitigate damage. So they’re legally blameless and now you get to notify your community their children’s data was leaked to god knows who, whoops
22 months after the fact they go out of business officially. You get a form email about the company’s journey and the difficult decision they had to make to stop fucking around on a dumb project that sucks because no dumbass vc will give them fun bucks anymore to keep playing tech bro billionaire. All the sensors stop working because they require a connection to the servers, which they shut off immediately without a sunset period. You’re reminded every day when you log in to the schools admin panel and get 350 “sensor not connected” error messages and your students bitch about the “sensor not connected: server not available” error pop up showing up on their classroom console. It takes IT a few days to remove their shit from the network and that costs you even more money in wasting your IT staff time when they should be fixing the broken computers in the computer lab or whatever.
Now your school has a bunch of weird boxes on the wall. Sometimes people ask you about them and you go “oh those don’t do anything” and remember that they cost taxpayers in your community tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars and wasted hundreds of hours of your supports staffs time that they could’ve been using to improve the school
But then you scroll on instagram and see there’s this new thing that will detect when kids are bullying each other. You just have to put a camera in each classroom. It’s okay, it won’t record. It will just use the power of AI and machine learning. You’re sold right there and the cycle starts again
How is this invading someone's privacy? All it's doing is detecting if children are smoking in a room or space at school and then putting an alert up about the detection on a screen.
They have zero right to privately smoke at school, or anywhere for that matter, smoking is illegal for children and not something to be taken lightly.
Similarly, adults have no right to privately smoke whilst in the workplace in the bathroom or other non-smoking designated areas. This is also illegal and not to be taken lightly.
The dildo of an unintended consequences is approaching.
Bullies will start blowing vape smoke on other kid's desks to get them in trouble. And someone will eventual create a smoke-box class room to get the screen to light up with alerts.
Then what? You need to cross reference the alerts with a video feed or snapshots.
Then some genius will figure that using AI to analyze all of the data is easier than manually doing so.
Kids are gonna find ways to vape. It's just the way it is. Just like when I was a kid we all found ways to smoke. Making it more difficult just gives them more drive to "get away with it." Sometimes I feel like all these preventative measures that people come up with were by people that were never even a kid. Like banning fruity flavors. I started smoking when I was 14 and it wasn't because it tasted good.
Bubble gum stuck into the sensor coming in 5 seconds...
Big LED light outside bathroom
paper sign underneath light "vaping detected"
The amount of over enginnering that went into this is why we can't have nice things.
If you want to record it, hook it up to a computer somewhere, detect whenever the sensor state changes and send an email to the admins...or just point a camera at it and the doorway.
I'll chime in with a weird take: this is a privacy community, we are united in a sense of defending our peaceful and unproblematic browsing on the internet and sending messages to friends from lunatics who seem to want everyone treated with the suspicion of highest criminal activity. the article posted describes a "privacy infringement" onto someone who not only has already broken the rule, but strongly publicized it by making people have to smell it. the perpetrators didn't even have an expectation of privacy, so the premise is ridiculous.
I'll say it like this: if the tv detects nicotine patches on someone's skin, then i pick up the torches and pitchforks.
Look honestly I don't think this is that dystopian.
Smoke detectors existed in bathrooms forever. The main use in high school seems to be catching particularly dumb teenagers smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. When I was in high school they were tuned to be super sensitive to the point where water vapor could set one off. I remember one time where the entire school had to stand out in the rain after a fire alarm went off, in what was later determined to be just two teenagers smoking in the bathroom.
Teachers also have been trying to catch students smoking for like 50 years. Back in the 20th, there were assistant principals that basically roamed the halls looking for whiffs of cigarette smoke. Part of the reason memes about hanging out under the bleachers started is because it was the best place to smoke on account of being outside, out of the way, and old school gym teachers just not giving a fuck.
This dudes app just seems like a modern update on very old concepts. Instead of teenagers smoking cigarettes, they are vaping. Instead of a smoke detector, you have something designed specifically for vapes. Instead of some super anal assistant principal on patrol, you have some super anal assistant principal sprinting across the school. Who knows, maybe this is the thing that forces teenagers to touch grass because I'm willing to there aren't vape detectors under the bleachers and gym teachers still don't give a fuck.
I’m in tech and could never take myself seriously ever again if I built this.
Introducing!
The Narc App!
Sure to be a hit. Hit with the closest blunt object.
Somebody teach the kids to pentest: get into their REST API and ring it for every desk this stupid sensor is placed in. If you're better than average, get into the operations of the electric controller which these sensors are powered through and fry them. Cost the school millions and they'll (maybe) come to their senses
This is reminiscent of the dystopian "name and shame" displays China has for jaywalkers. Good job, tech bro! Another innovation in our developing surveillance state.
Wait till this crowd hears about smoke detectors.
I dont remember them trying this hard to get me to stop smoking cigarettes in the bathroom.
Just make it look uncool! Cigarettes' image went from "cool" to "I'm 12 and I want to be taken seriously by mom/oh my god why did I even tried it". From "hip" vaping, where should it's image go? (Besides down the drain)
That looks like the emblem for my old high school, all 13+ years ago. If the kids are anything like we used to be, this will not last and will either have some one smash it, or just turn it off at the wall. Hell as pointed out, odds are the ones doing it don't give a damn and revel in the attention.
Needs more "amazing." Seriously, screw these corporate ass monkeys.
I 100% support this initiative.
Man, there are a lot of fascists on Lemmy.
🎉 Exciting news!
Oh God, no!
the way this was framed i thought they were using like cameras and shit to detect vaping. it's just the fumes?
yeah lol fuck you, don't smoke.
also i don't care whether it's for kids or not. no one should smoke. breathing air wherever you are is a right. fuck your smoking.
edit: i think some smokers or vapists may have misunderstood what i meant by the comment above. to be clear, fuck all of you who vape or smoke anything anywhere another human being breathes. you disgusting, smelly cunts.
i hope that clears any misunderstanding ♥
At least in the United States, most schools are not a place of privacy as the schools have a certain right to authority over their pupils. Consider Tinker v. Des Moines and what it meant for freedom of speech in schools. That case won students the right to freedom of expression. It's important, but in certain cases it becomes limited by Morse v. Frederick, a case that ultimately meant that such expression must not disrupt the learning environment. All of this is to say that students have certain freedoms until expressing those freedoms is disruptive to the learning experience, and I don't think there's any solid argument that would not consider vaping disruptive to the learning environment. Considering this as an invasion of privacy is a moot point when you consider that students don't really have the same rights as adults, especially in public school situations.
The funny thing is: This is very likely just a VOC detector with a fancy API. I can't imagine that they spent too much on actual hardware development, especially as they are afaik not a real hardware company.
So it will be triggered by VOC.
You know what else does cause a lot of VOC to be distributed in a environment?
Yeah. Taking a proper shit.
This has very likely never been tested on an actual toilet.
This is why being a wizard is illegal in Dragon Age.
Apart from everything else, this is horrible UI.
A pop-up with an X to close button that's supposed to be shown on a TV, which will have no mouse attached.
The text doesn't even read like something that should be customer-facing.One of the dumber positions I've seen in a while: that it's someone's right to break the rules and put others' safety at risk with fucking vaping, and disallowing that is against anyone's privacy.
edit: judging this sub so hard by this post and its comments. wow.