If A College Is Going To Make COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps Mandatory, They Should At Least Be Secure

from the tracer-round dept

One of the more frustrating aspects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been the frankly haphazard manner in which too many folks are tossing around ideas for bringing it all under control without fully thinking things through. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, desperate as I am for life to return to normal. "Give me the option to get a vaccine candidate even though it's in phase 3 trials," I have found myself saying more than once, each time immediately realizing how stupid and selfish it would be to not let the scientific community do its work and do it right. Challenge trials, some people say, should be considered. There's a reason we don't do that, actually.

And contact tracing. While contact tracing can be a key part of siloing the spread of a virus as infectious as COVID-19, how we contact trace is immensely important. Like many problems we encounter these days, there is this sense that we should just throw technology at the problem. We can contract trace through our connected phones, after all. Except there are privacy concerns. We can use dedicated apps on our phones for this as well, except this is all happening so fast that it's a damn-near certainty that there are going to be mistakes made in those apps.

This is what Albion College in Michigan found out recently. Albion told students two weeks prior to on-campus classes resuming that they would be required to use Aura, a contact tracing app. The app collects a ton of real-time and personal data on students in order to pull off the tracing.

Aura, however, goes all in on real-time location-tracking instead, as TechCrunch reports. The app collects students' names, location, and COVID-19 status, then generates a QR code containing that information. The code either comes up "certified" if the data indicates a student has tested negative, or "denied" if the student has a positive test or no test data. In addition to tracking students' COVID-19 status, the app will also lock a student's ID card and revoke access to campus buildings if it detects that a student has left campus "without permission."

TechCrunch used a network analysis tool to discover that the code was not generated on a device but rather on a hidden Aura website—and that TechCrunch could then easily change the account number in the URL to generate new QR codes for other accounts and receive access to other individuals' personal data.

It gets worse. One Albion student was able to discover that the app's source code also included security keys for Albion's servers. Using those, other researchers into the app found that they could gain access to all kinds of data from the app's users, including test results and personal identifying information.

Now, Aura's developers fixed these security flaws...after the researchers brought them to light and after the school had made the use of the app mandatory. If anyone would like to place a bet that these are the only two privacy and security flaws in this app, then they must certainly not like having money very much.

To be clear, plenty of other schools are trying to figure out how to use technology to contact trace as well. And there's probably a use for technology in all of this, with an acceptable level of risk versus the benefit of bringing this awful pandemic under control.

But going off half-cocked isn't going to help. In fact, it's only going to make the public less trustful of contact tracing attempts in the future, which is the last thing we need.

Filed Under: academia, contact tracing, covid-19, mandatory, security, students
Companies: albion college, aura

Mass Biometric Scanning Of Students Is COVID-19's Latest Dystopian Twist

from the a-whole-new-Big-Brother-program-for-troubled-teens dept

COVID-19 has disrupted almost everything. Most schools in the United States wrapped up the 2019-2020 school year with zero students in their buildings, hoping to slow the spread of the virus. Distance learning is the new normal -- something deployed quickly with little testing, opening up students to a host of new problems, technical glitches, and in-home surveillance.

Zoom replaced classrooms, online products replaced teachers, and everything became a bit more dystopian, adding to the cloud of uncertainty ushered in by the worldwide spread of a novel virus with no proven cure, treatment, or vaccine.

Schools soon discovered Zoom and other attendance-ensuring options might be a mistake as miscreants invaded virtual classrooms, distributing sexual and racist content to unsuspecting students and teachers. These issues have yet to be solved as schools ease back into Distance Learning 2.0.

Then there's the problem with tests. Teachers and administrators have battled cheating students as long as testing has existed. Now that tests are being taken outside of heavily controlled classrooms, software is stepping in to do the monitoring. That's a problem. It's pretty difficult to invade someone's privacy in a public school, where students give up a certain amount of their rights to engage in group learning.

Now that learning is taking place in students' homes, schools and their software providers seem to feel this same relinquishment of privacy should still be expected, even though the areas they're now encroaching on have historically been considered private places. As the EFF reports, testing is now being overseen by Professor Big Brother and his many, many eyes. All of this is in place just to keep students from cheating on tests:

Recorded patterns of keystrokes and facial recognition supposedly confirm whether the student signing up for a test is the one taking it; gaze-monitoring or eye-tracking is meant to ensure that students don’t look off-screen too long, where they might have answers written down; microphones and cameras record students’ surroundings, broadcasting them to a proctor, who must ensure that no one else is in the room.

Mass biometric surveillance has finally come home. Like equally intrusive productivity software used by employers with work-at-home employees, this proctoring software treats people's private spaces like classrooms. What would be upsetting to adults is targeting minors. And, unlike company employees who may have the option to pull the plug on their employment rather than be subjected to this, students generally don't have this kind of flexibility. For many, it's either this school (and its spyware) or nothing.

All this data and content being gathered on minors is subject to almost no public oversight. The software deployed by schools demands tons of personal info from students before it can even be used by them. And that's just the beginning of the invasive data collection. As the EFF points out, some school software collects additional info, such as computer and software information. Other log URLs visited and how long students stay on certain sites or web pages.

It's unclear what happens to all this information proctoring companies are gathering on minors. But there doesn't appear to be anything preventing them from using this information however they please.

Some companies, like ProctorU, have no time limits on retention. Some of this information they share with third parties. And when student data is provided to the proctoring company by an educational institution, students are often left without a clear way to request that their data be deleted because they aren’t considered the data’s “owner.”

Even if you can ignore the dystopian mass biometric collections targeting minors, you're left with the logistic issues. Some schools/software may think they've caught a cheater when all they're really "caught" is someone struggling with a less-than-ideal internet connection or dealing with compatibility issues. Or maybe the perceived "cheating" is nothing more than uncooperative siblings wandering into rooms where testing is taking place.

Granted, controlling off-campus testing to limit cheating is a noble goal. It's also an impossible one. Schools haven't eliminated cheating in environments they completely control. The tradeoff here doesn't appear to be acceptable. Students are being asked to give up a whole lot of privacy in exchange for minimal gains in remote testing integrity.

Filed Under: academia, biometrics, covid-19, dystopia, scanning, students
Companies: proctoru

Facing Multiple Lawsuits, ICE Decides Not To Punish Foreign Students For Furthering Their Education During A Pandemic

from the you'll-just-have-to-be-assholes-about-something-else,-ICE dept

ICE has already decided it won't make foreign students here on visas choose between their health and their education. The temporary relaxation of rules governing remote learning -- put in place in March when the coronavirus started rolling through the United States -- was suddenly (and inexplicably) reversed by ICE last week, even as COVID infection numbers continue to spike.

The reversal made no sense, unless disrupting the lives of foreigners here legally was the real point of ICE's unjustified rollback. With this rollback -- and no sign of abatement in the pandemic -- students here on visas were facing severe disruption. If the schools they were attending didn't offer in-person classes during the fall semester, their only option was to return home and hope everything came together internet-wise so they could continue their education.

ICE was immediately sued. MIT and Harvard went after the agency, claiming its reversal violated federal administrative law. Its lawsuit was joined by another 170 universities -- all of which faced the prospect of shedding foreign students or turning their campuses into COVID attack vectors. The agency was also sued by a number of state attorneys general for the same reason.

Fortunately for the ~100,000 affected foreign students, ICE has ditched its rollback, thanks to this legal pressure.

Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and “return to the status quo.”

The status quo referred to here would be (unfortunately for the health of the nation) the pandemic status quo. Released on March 13, ICE's guidance for allowed foreign students to utilize online learning to further their studies without fear of losing their visas and being removed from the country.

The (temporary) move by ICE made no sense from a pandemic standpoint. And booting out non-immigrant students for something as minor as not being able to attend classes that aren't being held in physical classrooms makes even less sense when combined with the economic downturn resulting from the COVID crisis. Foreign students bring money into the country and create jobs. Very few have access to grants or loans funded with US tax dollars. The group NAFSA: Association of International Educators has run the numbers. Foreign students are worth billions every year.

NAFSA's latest analysis finds that international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities contributed $41 billion and supported 458,290 jobs to the U.S. economy during the 2018-2019 academic year.

This number grows along with the number of students visiting the US to study. Encouraging foreign students to attend US schools makes a whole lot more sense than chasing them out because the administration has arbitrarily decided we don't have to worry about the coronavirus anymore.

Filed Under: covid-19, distance learning, education, foreign students, ice, pandemic, students, visas

Universities Ask Court To Block ICE's Directive Ordering The Removal Of Foreign Students Engaged In Remote Learning

from the don't-be-a-dick,-ICE dept

MIT and Harvard are suing to have ICE's latest attack on (legal) foreign visitors to this country blocked. A few days ago, ICE retracted an exception it had previously issued in response to the COVID pandemic. This exemption was issued back in March to allow students here on visas to continue their studies, even if all of their classes were now online.

It's now July and the COVID crisis isn't over. In fact, it appears to be getting worse. The US is expressing its exceptionalism by dominating the world in the number of new cases daily. Schools are prepping for the fall semester and the reality of the situation is that moving back to normal classes, rather than sticking with remote learning, just isn't possible at this point in time.

That reality makes no difference to ICE. It has decided the crisis is over and any students here legally should exit the country if they can't take classes in person. MIT and Harvard have no intention of moving back to physical classes when school commences in a couple of months. And the schools don't feel their foreign students should be punished for not attending classes that aren't being held or putting their health at risk unnecessarily just because the administration has unilaterally declared it safe to return to school.

Here's how the schools describe the current situation in their lawsuit [PDF]:

Medical evidence and official governmental guidance indicate that indoor gatherings of any size are of particular concern. Densely populated classrooms that are attendant with on-campus instruction have the potential to turn into “super-spreader” situations that endanger the health of not only the university community, but also those in the surrounding areas and anyone else with whom community members may come into contact. Indeed, in recognition of the exceptional risk of indoor congregation, Harvard has limited undergraduate on-campus residency to 40% of capacity for the upcoming term. Similarly, MIT has limited undergraduate on-campus residency for the fall to members of the rising senior class and a limited number of additional students.

Even if it were possible to simply ignore the ramifications of bringing students back on campus to partake in "super-spreader" classes, ICE is demanding schools jump through a series of logistical hoops to ensure students here on visas can continue to be enrolled and stay in the country. The first demand is that physical classes must compose a certain percentage of the total curriculum. Then it gets even more difficult. Schools will be required to do the following for each and every foreign student enrolled.

[ICE] announced that universities that have adopted a hybrid model—a mixture of online and in-person classes—will have to certify for each student on an F1 visa that the “program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load for the fall 2020 semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.” To do so, universities on a hybrid model will be required to issue a new Form I-20 for each of these students—in some cases, numbering in the thousands per university—by August 4, 2020.

Even if ICE doesn't care about foreigners, you'd think it might have some consideration for the Americans running these schools. But it appears it doesn't. The clawback of the exemption means schools must start putting more people on campus -- including staff and administration -- even if it means increasing the risk of virus transmission. The lawsuit points out the original exemption was supposed to be in place "for the duration of the [COVID] emergency." Without prior notice or request for comment, ICE has decided the emergency is over… at least for foreign students.

This unjustified move will do an amazing amount of damage to foreign students.

The July 6 Directive will harm continuing F-1 students immensely. For many students affected by the July 6 Directive, it is infeasible or impossible to attempt to transfer to a program that offers in-person curriculum and therefore allows them to pursue their education from within the United States on F-1 visa status. These students will therefore likely be forced to leave the country. The consequences of this sudden displacement are both financial and personal. In addition to incurring substantial expenses to make international travel arrangements in the midst of a pandemic that has significantly reduced the availability of air travel, as well as losing their homes—in many instances at great cost associated with broken leases—some students will be forced to upend their young children’s lives by returning to their home countries, while others’ families will be split apart in order to comply with the July 6 Directive.

[...]

For F-1 students enrolled in a fully online program, under the July 6 Directive those students cannot lawfully remain in the United States to continue their studies. Unless this Court intervenes, these students will be required to make precipitous arrangements to return to their home countries amid a worldwide pandemic that has caused nations to close their borders and has considerably limited international travel options. They must abandon housing arrangements they have made, breach leases, pay exorbitant air fares, and risk COVID-19 infection on transoceanic flights. And if their departure is not timely, they risk detention by immigration authorities and formal removal from the country that may bar their return to the United States for ten years.

The schools are asking the court to strike down the directive. They point out the guidance violates US administrative law, which prohibits "arbitrary, capricious" agency actions. Directives that fail to consider "important aspects of the problem" are the very definition of these terms. The suit also notes that directives like these are supposed to be preceded with a "notice and comment" period, which obviously did not happen here. The plaintiffs are asking the court to permanently block the new policy and declare it unlawful. Hopefully, the court will see ICE's move for what it is: an abuse of its power to inflict misery on foreigners -- even those who are here legally.

Filed Under: covid-19, education, ice, immigration, online education, students, visas
Companies: harvard, mit

Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible; Naughty Kids In Wuhan Edition

from the masnick's-impossibility-theorem dept

I keep trying to point out that content moderation at scale is impossible to do well for a whole variety of reasons, including the fact that sooner or later some people -- or some large groups of people -- may try to game the system in totally unexpected ways. Witness this amusing example from the London Review of Books, reporting on the situation in Wuhan, China, which was ground zero for the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak. With everything shut down in and around Wuhan, schools have moved to online learning -- and some naughty kids seem to have worked out a way to try to get out of having to do schoolwork: getting the app the schools rely on pulled from the app store via fake negative ratings.

Schools are suspended until further notice. With many workplaces also shut, notoriously absent Chinese fathers have been forced to stay home and entertain their children. Video clips of life under quarantine are trending on TikTok. Children were presumably glad to be off school – until, that is, an app called DingTalk was introduced. Students are meant to sign in and join their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework. Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4. The app has had to beg for mercy on social media: ‘I’m only five years old myself, please don’t kill me.’

Must tip my cap to the cleverness here, but on the content moderation side it shows, yet again, just how difficult it is to handle content moderation. No one running an app store or other platform prepares for a situation like this. In this case, at least, it seems likely that with so many negative reviews -- and now press attention -- the platform might take notice and discount the most recent thousands of reviews, but imagine having to keep track of every case where this is happening, often on a much smaller, less obvious, scale?

What seems easy about content moderation almost never is. Everyone seems to think it's easy until they're actually running a platform.

Filed Under: content moderation, content moderation at scale, coronavirus, covid-19, dingtalk, ios, remote learning, students, wuhan
Companies: apple

Tracking College Students Everywhere They Go On Campus Is The New Normal

from the normalizing-lots-of-stuff...-including-the-weirdos dept

The latest benefit of an education at an institute of higher learning? Becoming inured to round-the-clock surveillance.

A few months ago, the University of Alabama started penalizing students for leaving home games too early. Coach Nick Saban was apparently angered by students' refusal to stick around to the end of blowouts. Working with FanMaker, the university instituted a point system that rewarded faithful fans for sitting through entire games by awarding them points that placed them closer to the top of the list for tickets to actually meaningful games.

This mini-surveillance app tracked students' location during the game. Going outside the range of the stadium's network before the game was over docked points from the students' totals, dropping them down the list of ticket buyers.

This surveillance was weird and ultra-specific and motivated by perhaps the most powerful football coach in the nation. Other schools are experimenting with more pervasive tracking, this time tied to class attendance, as the Washington Post reports.

Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.

[...]

Instead of GPS coordinates, the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points to piece together students’ movements from dorm to desk. One company that uses school WiFi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 location data points per student every day.

School administrators are all over this. The thousands of data points provide comprehensive tracking of student movements. The focus is classroom attendance, assisted by hundreds of tiny electronic hall monitors. Instructors can be notified of missing students and send text messages or emails to their phones in hopes of getting them to class.

But there are more disturbing aspects as well. How anyone is supposed to determine a student's mental health by non-stop location tracking isn't explained, but the article says schools are adding "risk factors" like, um, not going to the library enough. A whole bunch of tracking isn't going to make any of these risk factors less risky. The mere fact that students know they're being tracked could discourage them from visiting on-campus mental health services or participating in events or gatherings that are critical of school policies or administration.

Inevitably, these trackers are going to be weaponized to keep tabs on only certain students… like maybe the browner or blacker students administrators might feel are less academically-inclined. And by "inevitably," I mean it's already happening and the company doing it thinks that's a pretty cool thing.

[SpotterEDU] has experimented with ways to make the surveillance fun, gamifying students’ schedules with colorful Bitmoji or digital multiday streaks. But the real value may be for school officials, who [company CEO Rick] Carter said can split students into groups, such as “students of color” or “out-of-state students,” for further review. When asked why an official would want to segregate out data on students of color, Carter said many colleges already do so, looking for patterns in academic retention and performance, adding that it “can provide important data for retention. Even the first few months of recorded data on class attendance and performance can help predict how likely a group of students is to” stay enrolled.

SpotterEDU utilizes Bluetooth connections to track students. According to the Post article, it's already being used by at least 40 major colleges. Competitors like Degree Analytics use WiFi to do the same job, tracking students through their connections to the school's network. That's another 20 state universities and 200,000 students being followed everywhere they go by surveillance tech.

The companies producing this tech believe pervasive surveillance is the best solution for both class attendance issues and any number of other personal issues students might be dealing with. It's a brave new world where students can be watchlisted for skipping out on lunch or simply deciding to change their habits. Degree Analytics says its algorithms will detect changes in students' "behavioral states" and alert administrators and other staff.

Universities buying into these programs are pushing students to homogeneity, which is pretty much what everyone's been saying about most education services for years now. The system isn't there to provide the nation with independent free thinkers. It's there to provide the nation's industries with cooperative employees who won't rock corporate boards after they've climbed onboard.

A classifier algorithm divides the student body into peer groups — “full-time freshmen,” say, or “commuter students” — and the system then compares each student to “normal” behavior, as defined by their peers.

[..]

The students who deviate from those day-to-day campus rhythms are flagged for anomalies, and the company then alerts school officials in case they want to pursue real-world intervention.

The other added benefit of regressing outlying students to the mean is getting them used to the level of surveillance they'll be dealing with in the real world, where employers track employees' internet use and vet their social media accounts before making a hiring decision. It also lets them know that they're numbers, rather than people. And whenever there's a deviation in the narrative, the tech will be believed before the individual tracked by it.

Several students said they didn’t mind a system designed to keep them honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time.

[...]

He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.

Are the tradeoffs worth it for students? That's a question no one seems to be asking -- at least no one buying or selling the tech. Seemingly forgetting the fact these students are paying for the privilege of attending these schools, administrators are acting like it's the students who owe the school some sort of allegiance, rather than the other way around.

By all means, the school should pay close attention to those it's paying for -- the ones there on athletic or academic scholarships. But the rest of the student body is there, voluntarily exchanging money for further education. It's on them if they don't show up in class. Tracking students everywhere on campus makes no sense if the primary concern is class attendance.

It doesn't make any more sense if the plan is to recognize at-risk students and intervene before problems get worse. Establishing a baseline using "normal" students will only help school staff more swiftly ostracize those wandering too far from the algorithmic norm, ensuring those with issues that probably should be addressed with professional help will become more adept at camouflaging their red flags.

Relying on pervasive surveillance to police things will only make things worse for everyone involved. Universities have long looked at students as nothing more than paychecks. Reducing them to data points further removes their humanity and agency, which makes it far less likely their concerns and issues will be addressed in any meaningful way.

Filed Under: college, students, surveillance, tracking

New Mass Shooting Prevention Bill Will Use 'Anti-Terrorism' Methods To Ramp Up Surveillance Of Students

from the not-quite-the-civics-lesson-schools-had-in-mind dept

The federal government still doesn't have any great ideas on how to head off future school shootings. But it does have some ideas. Some ideas are better than none when calls to "do something" abound. Something is indeed in the works. Unfortunately, the solution being offered just opens up students to increased surveillance, on and off campus.

You already know we're headed to a darker place when the head of the DOJ is touting anti-terrorism tactics as a solution.

As America grapples with the crisis, [Attorney General William] Barr wrote in a letter to federal and local law enforcement officials that it was “critically important ... that we learn from our experiences over the last two decades fighting terrorism and violent crime and that we apply those lessons to hone an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.”

Barr was speaking more broadly of mass shooters, but school shooters are also mass shooters, which means the "individuals" being "disrupted" will sometimes be school students.

Expanded surveillance of school students would be the result of Sen. John Cornyn's RESPONSE Act. (Expanded surveillance of everyone would also be the result of the proposed bill.) There are some helpful aspects to the proposed law, like increasing access to mental health treatment and the hiring of additional mental health professionals to handle the uptick in access.

But the law would also authorize less helpful things, like expedited death penalties and nudging ISPs towards monitoring their customers' internet use.

Encouraging Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to Better Collaborate with Law Enforcement to Prevent Mass Shootings —Clarifies that internet service providers and online platforms have the authority to share information with law enforcement concerning acts of mass violence, hate crimes, or domestic terrorism.

The bill doesn't demand increased monitoring. It just suggests law enforcement will be expected a bit more proactivity from service providers.

The bill also suggests doing more of what hasn't been proven to be useful, like the periodic traumatization of staff and students with active shooter drills.

But it's really about the surveillance. As The Guardian reports, schools are already engaged in plenty of student surveillance. Adding students to the "possible mass shooter" pool would just put existing systems on PEDs.

There is still no research evidence that demonstrates whether or not online monitoring of schoolchildren actually works to prevent violence.

Despite this, new legislation introduced Wednesday by Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and longtime ally of the National Rifle Association (NRA), would update the Children’s Internet Protection Act to mandate that public schools adopt “a technology protection measure that detects online activities of minors who are at risk of committing self-harm or extreme violence against others”.

That mandate isn't going to improve the faulty AI and algorithms already in place. It will increase their use, but it won't make systems prone to false positives any more reliable. Children will become haystacks sifted and sorted by companies like Gaggle. Students will spend more time talking to law enforcement about innocuous posts flagged as suspicious because they contain certain words.

Cornyn's mass shooting plan piggybacks on a vague law that demands schools monitor students online activities. What that covers has never been clearly defined. A do-almost-nothing law that demands increased surveillance will only make existing problems worse. No price is too high to pay for school safety, especially when the price is going to be paid by students.

Filed Under: gun control, john conryn, school shootings, shootings, students, surveillance, surveillance state, terrorism, william barr

County Agrees To Pay $390,000 To Students Arrested By A Sheriff 'Just To Prove A Point'

from the MAYBE-HIRE-BETTER-PEOPLE dept

Back in September, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unshockingly decided that it's illegal to arrest schoolchildren just to "prove a point." The Fourth Amendment demands probable cause for an arrest, even an arrest of students who have (slightly) diminished Constitutional rights.

This was Deputy Luis Ortiz's solution to a problem he shouldn't even have been attempting to solve. Ortiz decided the students he was speaking to about alleged bullying weren't taking him seriously enough, so he tossed a few in squad cars and took them to the Sheriff's office. Nothing about this was legal, but the county decided to defend this all the way to the appellate level. The Ninth Circuit's assessment of Ortiz's actions was harsh but far more fair than Ortiz deserved.

Deputy Ortiz clearly stated that the justification for the arrests was not the commission of a crime, since he did not “care who is at fault,” nor the school’s special need to maintain campus safety, but rather his own desire to “prove a point” and “make” the students “mature a lot faster.” The arrest of a middle schooler, however, cannot be justified as a scare tactic, a lesson in maturity, or a chastisement for perceived disrespect.

[...]

Deputy Ortiz faced a room of seven seated, mostly quiet middle school girls, and only generalized allegations of fighting and conflict amongst them. Even accounting for what Deputy Ortiz perceived to be nonresponsiveness to his questioning, the full-scale arrests of all seven students, without further inquiry, was both excessively intrusive in light of the girls’ young ages and not reasonably related to the school’s expressed need.

It appears this loss has finally pushed the county to accept the inevitable outcome of Deputy Ortiz's unconstitutional behavior. The Daily Bulletin reports taxpayers will be paying the arrested students for Ortiz's illegal bullying.

San Bernardino County has agreed to pay nearly $400,000 to three former middle-schoolers to settle a lawsuit stemming from a 2013 arrest a federal court ruled unconstitutional.

In October 2013, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy handcuffed, arrested and drove three seventh-grade girls from Etiwanda Intermediate School to the police station to “teach the girls a lesson.”

On Friday, Dec. 21, a lawyer for the girls announced the county has paid them $390,000 to settle their lawsuit.

This outcome was all but assured the moment Ortiz decided to start teaching students lessons by performing unconstitutional arrests. The county's decision to fight the district court's ruling doesn't reflect well on it or its legal representation. Somehow the county thought that if it just litigated hard enough, it would somehow talk a court into agreeing law enforcement can arrest people just to "teach them a lesson" -- even when those "someones" were teens who committed no crime and posed no safety threat to the school or the idiotic law enforcement officer it had hired.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 9th circuit, arrest, luis ortiz, san bernardino county, students

Iowa State Tells Students To Piss Off And Continues Its New Trademark Policy Despite Their Concerns

from the IS-R-U-kidding-me? dept

We've been discussing Iowa State University's bold attempt to twist itself into a knot over its trademark policy for some time now. This all started when the school attempted to bow at the alter of certain Iowa state government reps to disallow a pro-marijuana alumni student group from using school iconography. For its efforts, the alumni student group beat the school in court on First Amendment grounds, eventually resulting in a $600k judgement against the school. Rather than learning its lesson, the school reacted to all of this by rewriting its trademark policy for student groups, pulling back permission of all kinds for groups to use the school's name and symbols. This, predictably, led to a full on revolt by students, with all kinds of groups refusing to associate themselves with the school at all. The student government, meanwhile, pointed out that the policy was written with zero input from students or student representatives.

In other words, ISU managed to piss off its own students by trying for iron grip control for... reasons?

With the revolt in full swing, you might have thought that perhaps this would be the thing that caused ISU to wake up and reverse course. Noooooooope. Instead, the school's administration simply penned what reads like a canned letter to its students about the trademark policy, explaining its reasoning for doing whatever the fuck it wants and brushing student concerns aside.

“Thank you for your interest and concern regarding the recently modified Guidelines for University Trademark Use by Student and Campus Organizations (Guidelines),” the opening of the letter sent by the university trademark office reads. “We value your input as representatives of the student body.”

The letter explains the purpose, process and means through which the policy was implemented, going through the Trademark Advisory Committee (TAC) of which one current member of Student Government was present.

The letter did promise to expand the TAC to include more student representation, but that pledge is little more than tripe given that the policy has already been written and put into practice as of the first semester of school. On top of that, a big part of the frustration on the part of students has been the school's nonstop claim that the policy change had nothing to do with the court battle it recently lost, whereas the letter admits that it was.

Whereas University Counsel Michael Norton had said the court case between the Iowa State chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ (NORML) and the university had nothing to do with the implementation of the policy at a Student Government meeting in August, the letter said the policy was “certainly influenced” by court cases across the country, including the NORML lawsuit.

“It seems to have made student organizations more angry, it is getting worse not better,” Woodruff said. “The university still hasn’t apologized for their miscommunication, they still haven’t claimed any responsibility … This response is more of the same, telling students they are just associated with the university. We aren’t associated with the university, we are the university.”

Frankly, you would think the school would want to boast of a robust student organization landscape. That's one of the draws in campus life that brings students in. Prospective students as of this moment, however, have to be scratching their heads wondering why the school is in some stupid, needless intellectual property war with its own students.

And, honestly, why at every turn in this saga of stupid, Iowa State has managed to do exactly the wrong thing.

Filed Under: alumni, students, trademark
Companies: iowa state