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Saint Louis University Is Outfitting Student Living Spaces With Thousands of Echo Dots (techcrunch.com)
Saint Louis University announced this week a plan to outfit living spaces with 2,300 Echo Dots. The smart speakers will be ready by the time classes start later this month. TechCrunch reports: SLU is quick to note that it's "the first college or university in the country to bring Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, managed by Alexa for Business, into every student residence hall room and student apartment on campus." It's certainly not the first to adopt Amazon's smart speakers, but it's among the largest scale for this sort of deployment. While the product has become a mainstay in plenty of American homes, it does seem like an odd choice dorms and student campus. SLU has worked with Alexa for Business to create 100 custom questions, including, "What time does the library close tonight?" and "Where is the registrar's office?"
The company addressed [the privacy concerns] on a privacy page, writing: "Because of our use of the Amazon Alexa for Business (A4B) platform, your Echo Dot is managed by a central system dedicated to SLU. This system is not tied to individual accounts and does not maintain any personal information for any of our users, so all use currently is anonymous. Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked."
The company addressed [the privacy concerns] on a privacy page, writing: "Because of our use of the Amazon Alexa for Business (A4B) platform, your Echo Dot is managed by a central system dedicated to SLU. This system is not tied to individual accounts and does not maintain any personal information for any of our users, so all use currently is anonymous. Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked."
What is the answer to question #3?
All use is currently anonymous. Let's just nudge that temperature a degree higher. You won't notice yet.
Because an Orwellian society never seemed so technologically sexy.
Fuck that, rip them all out!
Life is not for the lazy.
Yeah, knowing that the platform is managed by SLU instead of Amazon would make me worry even more about the platform being abused.
I'm sure that Amazon has some safeguards in place about safe storage and destruction of voice recordings, but SLU's IT department? Some student intern will probably start using it to snoop on the ladies dorms to get the latest juicy gossip.
If you thought facial recognition was getting good, think about voice recognition.... that ostensibly isn't used.
Just that the questions have an IP address (dorm, library, etc.) time of day, context, and therefore can be fingerprinted.
This will not turn out well.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The company addressed [the privacy concerns] on a privacy page
Personally, I would be more inclined to address the "privacy concerns" with a screwdriver or a baseball bat.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Because your government decided to subsidize college education to the tune of 20k+ per student per year in the form of college loans. Colleges that used to cost 5k per year to attend are now 30k per year because the educators know you still have that original 5k + inflation.
Because your university keeps adding nice to have features like Echo Dots instead of investing in actually teaching you something.
I'd be pissed if I had already made plans to stay in one of their halls and they then pull this crap.
Yes, it would be very difficult to unplug it if you personally had a problem with the device.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Form what I can tell there's some debate about whether FERPA laws would allow this.
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act):
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen...
This school admin even asks how he can remove Alexa form the network:
https://community.spiceworks.c...
are kicking themselves.
Just give the microphones a brandname and make it a lifestyle product, and people will PAY you to install them in their homes/workspaces.
Who knew people were this stupid? Fucking idiots.
What a strange word to choose to include in a sentence trying to reassure people about privacy.
I thought I was glad that there were no camera-phones during my stupid college years; this is so colossally bad ... I can only hope that there remains a faint flicker of resistance in today's youth, such that this spawns an entire generation of people adept and practiced at breaking ubiquitous surveillance.
I fear not, honestly.
-Styopa
Hundreds of Echo Dots in a broom closet with am MP3 player looping Nickelback.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think a good test would be to have a really incriminating-sounding conversation in the dorms and see what red flags go up.
"Yeah, she kept screaming 'no', but I know she wanted it."
"Yeah, and then the bombs will go off. You got your ammo yet?"
"$50 will get you the exam ahead of time. $250 for the answers."
"Make America Great Again!"
Reminds me of the days when /. sigs were used to spam Echelon.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Huxley, not Orwell. In Orwell's 1984, the masses are subjugated by an elite. In Huxley's Brave New World, the masses are seduced by all sorts of entertainment and conveniences available in a modern society, so they can be controlled by the elite. Any form of dissent is viewed as socially abnormal, so it was society you had to fear, not retribution by the elite. Actually, I'm not sure if an all-controlling elite even existed (it could be inferred since the social structure would make it possible). It may have just been all of society being self-guided by hedonism and self-appointed morals.