Recording

Technology companies seek data and engagement and pit institutions and their members against one another. Universities fear reputational damage from actions and complaints by students and faculty on unregulated platforms, causing schools to increase visual and auditory surveillance.

Cost/Benefit

Video recordings capture everything and have benefits such as increased security to fight against crimes and help victims. However, surveillance benefits institutions in other ways, such as by providing more and quicker information than institutional members have, such as in the case of a violent crime on campus weeks ago. This allows a faster response by better access to truth than journalists and school members. Students and media could have caused reputational damage on media platforms, and students could not leave their testing rooms for safety reasons. Surveillance rarely benefits students and faculty, and classroom surveillance has led to reputational damage for some.

Law/Policy

Potential responses regarding mass recording within colleges include looking at GDPR and forced deletion of recordings. Also, looking into an argument that recordings can be educational records and looking at FERPA.

Advertising

In addition, courses require students to access content on Canvas, which profits off students and faculty through advertising partnerships. Moreover, access to class recordings is restricted if cross-site tracking and cookies are disabled.

Cost/Benefit

Advertising profit can make recordings more affordable by redistributing cost savings to students. However, it seems odd. There are privacy concerns for students, primarily as some rely on access to recordings as they are immunocompromised or ostracized from class.

Law/Policy

NY section 50 and 51, FTC, and the Higher Education Act of 1965 could be changed.

Waiver

The school also asks new students to sign a release form that grants the university ownership of any photos and recordings taken of them. The waiver's language includes photographs or photographs, including but not limited to still photographs, live-streaming, videotapes, film, and digital, of the student. Students will be increasingly recorded as the school's construction and property portfolio increases through discounted rent to students and the replacement of the library.

Cost/Benefit

The waiver has some benefits, such as helping the university promote and attract new students and providing them with a better educational experience or increasing advertising. However, there are also risks to students' privacy and the potential for recordings to be used to harm them in the future.

Law/Policy

Potential informed consent changes requiring schools to give students better information about the risks and benefits of signing the waiver. The waiver could also be more precise, concise, and transparent regarding its scope. The waiver seems unfair or reasonable due to the area of surveillance.

Ownership

Furthermore, Echo360 has issued a new statement asserting that recordings of students' instant thoughts on law and policy are not intended for public consumption. Students are prohibited from copying, sharing, forwarding, or allowing others to view or listen to such audio. Additionally, microphones continue to record vastly during breaks without any available means for students to remove the recordings, while some course recordings have been shortened.

Cost/Benefit

Computer-generated audio of humans has grown in popularity, and schools likely possess the most audio recordings of students and faculty. Faculty are also at significant risk of the consequences of digitization and commodification, as their physical movements and voices are constantly being digitized, and they have a great deal of excellent writing across the internet. The benefits of video surveillance for law students and faculty seem low, although classroom recordings can help absent or inattentive students.

Law/Policy

More clarity is needed from the school regarding the ownership of this audio and the transfer and use of images or recordings. Even if copyrighted by students or faculty, looking at fair use. Also, while technology companies continue to snowball, systems must be in place to prevent them from attempting to self-regulate and verify.

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-- By ElieShnerson - 2023

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Video Certainty

Many young people accept a lack of privacy as the norm. A social media user searches for a product on Amazon and subsequently sees an advertisement on Instagram without questioning this occurrence or feeling any sense of discomfort. Modern society accepts this invasion of our privacy and sees it as a necessary by-product of the convenience of the internet and personal computers.

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Horrifyingly, facial recognition technology has advanced significantly in recent years and is, unfortunately, used for the aims of nefarious actors such as law enforcement and advertisers. During class, we read news stories regarding policing and facial recognition, such as the Madison Square Garden scandal, and odds are more will come. Even so, everyone focuses on facial recognition rather than the cameras or how all this surveillance data gets stored. We have come to accept these cameras, focus on facial recognition, and lazily excuse it by claiming they help stop crime, or that property owners have a right to protect their property. However, this invasion extends beyond those aims.

Although the increased use of facial recognition technology raises serious privacy concerns that legal and regulatory frameworks have yet to address comprehensively, the public must also look at rules surrounding cloud storage and advertising.

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An individual walks out of their apartment to the grocery store and passes by hundreds of cameras owned by local stores and giant conglomerates. Odds are, all of this is cataloged and stored somewhere. Years ago, these recordings were probably deleted as keeping them was pricy, but what happens when they never get deleted because cloud storage becomes cheaper and cheaper? We have entered an era where individuals sometimes expect privacy but seldom know if they have privacy.

Shopping malls, airports, and other public spaces may have installed cameras or other surveillance equipment and sell or license the footage to advertising companies like Quividi and Admobilize that aggregate the camera footage over various time points and physical locations and use facial recognition to track citizens and serve advertisements.

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What is worse is that even if the recording owner is not doing it now, if they are using cheap cloud storage, they could later apply software to see something a cataloged passerby did in the past. Think about someone going to an abortion clinic or union organization, even while taking adequate precautions like not bringing their cell phones. A camera still picked them up, and all this data can be stored with cloud service providers like AWS, or Azure.

Moreover, camera quality has gotten insanely better. Look at this interesting Facebook patent, a product that can track users through microscopic lens scratches on their cameras and subsequent photos. Essentially, it is a fingerprint that allows Facebook to see that a photo person B uploaded was sent to them by person A, and they might be friends, family, or related.

The focus should be on something other than facial recognition and why our society has allowed all these cameras, and where this data is going.

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Additionally, we cannot count on this storage to be safeguarded. Proponents might argue that state-of-the-art security measures are in place, but look at data leaks like Equifax. Forced deletion and bans on cameras might be necessary. More than fines or regulations on facial recognition is needed. Facebook's $5 billion penalty was deemed significant, but it was just a drop in the bucket compared to its giant market capitalization.

Headlines regarding the police or foreign countries using facial recognition often makes the news, but since state-subsidized capitalism runs America, an appeal to commercial aims could be more effective.

Proponents might say that there are some valuable things to facial recognition, such as how a government can stop crime if they can track everyone or how Walgreens improves GDP and the standard of living by profiting off facial recognition.

However, it could kill creativity, ideas, and the economy. As more and more people lose privacy, even outside their computer devices, they will become increasingly wary of trying new things and generating ideas. Humans tend to conform, yet everyone does private things that they fear might lead to them being ostracized. As privacy disappears from increased surveillance, people will tend to act and think the same (unless the divisive social media feedback loop pits them against each other.)

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Citizens should know where the tape of them walking into a coffee shop is stored and be able to have it deleted or opt out of any subsequent advertising. Mass conformity and surveillance will hurt the economy, and appealing to the legislature regarding potential commercial losses could strengthen an attack on these violations. While facial recognition technology has often been in the news because of government and law enforcement intrusions, cloud storage pricing, advertisement aggregators, and the long-term psychological effects of mass surveillance and social conformity also need to be addressed in the conversation.

Legal and Regulatory Responses

Personal Responses

Conclusion

Footnotes Get the links from old

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Outlining was necessary to make a diffuse draft into a tighter presentation that would pull the reader along. Some links would make the piece informative for readers who want to follow up on your statements and are now left without guidance. Though this is ultimately a draft about citizens and their rights you do not mention any of the legal and regulatory responses, in the United States or anywhere else in the world, to the issues you are discussing. Focus, information and clarity seem to me the three primary routes to improvement.