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Harvard turns panopticon: School photographed students, teachers in class without permission

The Crimson reports on a faculty meeting got a little testy when professors wanted to know why the world's greatest university was surveilling them and students. A muckymuck said it was part of a study by one group of researchers on student class attendance.

Prior to beginning the study, Bol said, he was given approval by Harvard’s Institutional Review Board, a federally mandated body that assesses academic research. According to Bol, members of that committee said that his work “did not constitute human subjects research,” and, as such, did not require notification or permission of those involved.

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Comments

"...the world's greatest university..."

Off topic: Has that moniker been around since time began , or do you owe some kind of debt to (Yalie) Alex Beam for using it?

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I know he can never resist using it, but I don't know if he came up with it (sounds like the kind of thing he would ...).

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What other schools have tried it?...

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I never! One expects such behavior at lesser institutions, but at Harvard?

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That's twice in one day, Adam. Word-of-the-day calendar? Or horrifying shift toward surveillance state?

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I'm voting for the former. Adam's new favorite word...

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This story doesn't bother me.

They weren't doing face recognition on the students. This was in a large lecture hall, not a small classroom or private space like an office suite. They used software to count the number of open seats, not the particular students who failed to show.

If a student in the front row turned around and snapped a photo of the room for twitter with the caption "look at all the kids who sleep in" no one would blink an eye. If a TA or work-study sat in the back and counted open seats each week no one would think this is grounds for concern. Years ago MIT famously used sensors to show the status of open stalls in the men's room on the internet as a fun hack.

Reading private email is a clear case of them going overboard. Photographing a large lecture hall to count empty seats notsomuch.

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They weren't doing face recognition on the students. This was in a large lecture hall, not a small classroom or private space like an office suite. They used software to count the number of open seats, not the particular students who failed to show.

That may all be true, but I don't see any of it explicitly stated in the Crimson article. Where did you get the additional information? The article actually mentions "cameras placed in classrooms", not lecture halls.

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