Ongoing Investigations

Tag: resources and references

  • The Persistence Project: What It Was, How It Went

    The title’s a little misleading, I suppose, but it’s accurate for me — my part in the Persistence Project has come to a close. Hopefully it’ll do as its name suggests, and persist into next year and beyond.

    Basically, the Persistence Project was an effort to think critically about how digital projects at Carleton are structured while live and archived long-term. Live projects aren’t often made with their archival practices in mind (why think about the future when you can think about the now), and unlike books or papers, it’s often hard to determine what the archivable components of a live project are.

    I mean, if you think about it, a digital project can be interactive; it can be reactive; it can, and often is, structured through hyperlinks. These affordances don’t translate well to having a single, stable work in the archives. And technology marches on. What’s cutting edge now may very well be outdated in five years, and it may not even be capable of running in ten. Assuming, of course, that your links don’t break and your sources don’t move and your hosting service doesn’t fold and your servers don’t crash and your data isn’t lost…

    So the early stages of the Persistence Project — my particular role — was to succinctly explain these dangers in a way that even people who aren’t tech-oriented can understand, and to provide advice. Digital projects are great! They can lead to amazing ways of demonstrating information or engaging audiences, and no one should be scared of them just because they’re scared of how to manage their project’s longevity.

    The end result of my work was a PDF, emailable and transmittable, which can be shared with Carleton professors (and maybe even beyond) even after I’m gone. I won’t transcribe the whole thing here. Just click through to the attached document, and enjoy.

    Archiving Your Digital ProjectsDownload

  • Zoom’s Downsides in Regards to Privacy

    I’ll admit I’m a bit late in writing this blog post – classes have been going for three and a half weeks, we’re almost at the midterm point, and we’ve been on Zoom the entire time. But better late than never, I suppose.

    You may or may not have heard about people’s concerns when it comes to Zoom. There have been issues of hacking, security flaws, and sloppy design that have led to major privacy issues, causing many people to lose trust in the service. Zoom has put out some updates meant to address these issues, as well as made several public apologies. Additionally, their privacy policy looks extraordinarily transparent, at least at first glance (though it’s worth noticing that it seems to have last been updated in March). But what does all this mean for Carleton?

    Zoom’s fixed some stuff. There’s other things they need to look at. But what does this all mean for Carleton?

    What’s in the Past

    Meeting rooms have a number associated with them that people can use to join those rooms. If you have the number, you can use it. This is a problem if the number gets out, especially if you use the same number for every meeting of a certain type (which happens a lot for repeatedly scheduled meetings).

    There’s not a ton that can be done to stop this, since it’s the core concept, and people do need to know the number sometimes — but Zoom did fix a previous issue, where the meeting room number was displayed prominently in the video screen. This meant that any screenshot of the video chat would contain it, which made it way easier to get out. That’s over now. You can find the meeting number if you try, but it’s not visible by default anymore.

    The controversial attention tracker is also gone. Basically, Zoom had a feature where, when enabled, if the Zoom window was not your primary window for more than 30 seconds, it would alert the meeting’s host. This was bad from a general privacy standpoint, but also not particularly accurate for people who have multiple windows open at a time — say, to take notes during a work meeting.

    They’ve also included a note in the banner that says when a video call is being recorded by the host. It’s a small red light in the top right corner, next to the word “Recording” (though as far as I know, the only current ways to opt out of being recorded are to mute your audio and video, or to leave the call).

    Two new features introduced specifically to combat ‘Zoombombing’ (the sudden entrance of bad actors into a Zoom call through a leaked meeting ID or link) are automatic waiting rooms and the ability to prevent banned users from rejoining. Zoom waiting rooms make people wait to be admitted to the meeting, rather than letting them join whenever, and if a user is kicked out for bad behavior, there’s an option to prevent them rejoining entirely.

    Concerns about data being shared with Facebook are now addressed as well. Previously, Zoom sent analytics data to Facebook, even for users who had not logged in using their Facebook account. They made a comment addressing this, saying, “Zoom takes its users’ privacy extremely seriously. We originally implemented the ‘Login with Facebook’ feature using the Facebook SDK in order to provide our users with another convenient way to access our platform. However, we were recently made aware that the Facebook SDK was collecting unnecessary device data.” Since I can’t find updates about this in the past month, when other concerns such as the ones above have arisen, I’m going to give Zoom the benefit of the doubt and assume they’ve fixed the issue.

    Current Concerns

    At present, there are other issues. Some are my personal concerns, others could be major red flags.

    Personally, I don’t love the fact that hosts get to keep full logs of each meeting’s chat by default. There was misinformation going around that saved chatlogs include all private chats as well as public ones, but Politifact debunked that, saying, “If you send a private message to the person recording the meeting, it could end up on a transcript. If you send a private message to another person in the meeting — someone who isn’t able to record the meeting — those messages won’t end up in the transcript.” Still, while I get that it’s practical, it feels like something that should be opt-in rather than opt-out, and something which people should be notified about while in the call.

    Similarly, the notification Zoom has added to indicate when a call is being recorded is small and easy to miss. Since it’s part of the top bar (next to the encryption lock, sound controls and information button), it blends in with other settings if you’re not looking for it, and it fades away after a few seconds without moving the mouse or interacting with the screen.

    The biggest issue, though, is encryption. In its marketing campaigns, Zoom claimed its calls were all end-to-end encrypted. What that means, practically speaking, is that the information from your call is encoded, passed from you to Zoom, passed from Zoom to the other parties on the line, and then de-encoded. Zoom has no way of decrypting your messages or finding out what you’re saying — in theory.

    In practice, Zoom does not use end-to-end encryption, and its own custom encryption software has been criticized for not being up to industry standards. This means Zoom could decrypt your calls and, theoretically, so could other parties. Additionally, they’ve been taken to task for using insecure servers overseas in China to route personal call data, making it possible for foreign governments to access the Zoom meetings.

    These security issues are among the many reasons why Zoom is no longer used by companies such as SpaceX and Google (which hosts a competitor, Hangouts), and governing bodies like the New York Department of Education, all Taiwanese government agencies, Singapore’s Ministry of Education, and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The United States Senate and Pentagon have restricted or cautioned against the use of Zoom, though not banned it outright. The United Kingdom Parliament has elected to keep using Zoom to pass legislation (though only bills that are expected to receive near-unanimous support).

    In its privacy policy, Zoom claims to be compliant with the CCPA, the GDPR, and the US-EU Privacy Shield Act (check out my article on the CCPA here). As various countries start to distance themselves from Zoom, that’s looking more and more questionable.

    Carleton Usage

    Let’s start off with the obvious: Carleton is not a governing body. It is, however, an educational institute. Most of the concerns surrounding education have not come from questions of data privacy, but issues like Zoombombing, where people have joined virtual classrooms in order to expose themselves to children and teens, or shout and display racist or hateful messages.

    I have no idea how I would begin to assess the risk that this might happen to Carleton classrooms, particularly since the public reaction has sent Zoom scrambling to keep this from happening again. Additionally, Zoom has a number of features that make it very well-suited for Carleton’s usage: a Licensed account (available to all Carleton community members) can host meetings with up to 100 people for an unlimited length of time, customize meeting IDs or links, and other perks. This would suit pretty much any class Carleton offers, and allow for some more specific security options.

    The biggest question to ask (as a number of articles point out) is: is what I am doing over Zoom worth hacking? Government bodies, which deal in state secrets, are right to be worried, as are major corporations; educational departments dealing with minors are reacting to threats that have already been demonstrated. Telehealth and medical information is not advisable to be transmitted over Zoom, though many (including SHAC!) are doing it already. But for personal meetings or college classes, it would be better to ask, why would someone try this? Would it be worth the effort?

    So, basically: if any of what you’ve read above worries you, try investigating some alternatives (available in the sources). If you don’t think what you’re doing would tempt any bad actors, then it’s your call.

    Sources & Resources

    “Privacy Policy”. Zoom, 3/29/2020. https://zoom.us/privacy

    “Zoom Security: Here’s What Zoom Is Doing To Make Its Service Safer”, O’Flaherty, Katie. Forbes, 4/10/2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/04/10/zoom-security-heres-what-zoom-is-doing-to-make-its-service-safer/#6329003630fc

    “Private messages sent to Zoom meeting hosts could appear in their transcript”, O’Rourke, Ciara. Politifact, 4/13/2020. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/13/viral-image/private-messages-sent-zoom-meeting-hosts-could-app/

    “Is It Safe to Use Zoom?”, Feldman, Brian. New York Magazine, 4/9/2020. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/the-zoom-app-has-a-lot-of-security-problems.html

    “Zoom privacy and security issues: Here’s everything that’s wrong (so far)”, Wagenseil, Paul. Tom’s Guide, 4/28/2020. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/zoom-security-privacy-woes

    “10 free Zoom alternative apps for video chats”, CNet, 4/6/2020. https://www.cnet.com/news/10-free-zoom-alternative-apps-for-video-chats/

    “Top 5 video conferencing services to use with remote employees”, Reese, Hope. Tech Republic, 2/19/2020. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/top-5-video-conferencing-services-to-use-with-remote-employees/

    “Zoom security issues: Zoom could be vulnerable to foreign surveillance, intel report says”, Hodge, Rae. CNet, 4/28/2020. https://www.cnet.com/news/zoom-security-issues-zoom-could-be-vulnerable-to-foreign-surveillance-intel-report-says/

    “Using Zoom while working from home? Here are the privacy risks to watch out for”, Hodge, Rae. CNet, 4/2/2020. https://www.cnet.com/news/using-zoom-while-working-from-home-here-are-the-privacy-risks-to-watch-out-for/

    “Worried about Zoom’s privacy problems? A guide to your video-conferencing options”, Paul, Kari. The Guardian, 4/9/2020. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/08/zoom-privacy-video-chat-alternatives

    “How to Keep Your Zoom Chats Private and Secure”, Nield, David. Wired, 4/5/2020. https://www.wired.com/story/keep-zoom-chats-private-secure/

    “Is Zoom Safe and Is Your Privacy at Risk? Video Calling App Explained After Hacking Vulnerabilities Exposed”, Murdock, Jason. Newsweek, 4/2/20. https://www.newsweek.com/zoom-safe-privacy-risks-explained-video-calling-app-hacking-vulnerabilities-coronavirus-1495728

    “Is Zoom safe to use? Here’s what you need to know”, Hussain, Suhauna. The Los Angeles Times, 4/13/2020. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-04-13/is-zoom-safe-to-use-heres-what-you-need-to-know

    “Ethics Week 3: What’s the CCPA?”, Irwin, Pilot. Carleton DS Interns, 1/24/2020. https://ds.interns.sites.carleton.edu/digital-ethics/ethics-week-3-whats-the-ccpa/

  • Working from Home? Hardly Working.

    So now there’s this.

    Carleton has moved online-only for the rest of the year. All academics and most staff activities are taking place over the internet, which means most of the Carleton population is now, in one way or another, working from home.

    Luckily, one of my long-term projects this year has been organization and time management. In the interest of digital ethics, I’m putting together a little compilation guide of What You Need To Know. There are three main steps: figure out what kind of problem you have, figure out what tools you have, and figure out how you want to tackle something.

    Two quick disclaimers: don’t try everything on this list at once. Seriously, just… just try one or two at first, okay? Also, if none of this works for you, you’re not allowed to blame me.

    What’s the problem?

    Start simple: you either have a tech problem, or you have a people problem. This is an important distinction! Tech can be used to aid people problems. It’s not a magic bullet. It can’t fix them altogether.

    A tech problem is exactly what it sounds like: any problem with the tech you are using to do your job. Some quick examples: Zoom isn’t working! You can’t log into your Google account! Your hard drive crashed!

    I can’t solve tech problems for you. ITS is working remotely these days. Try calling them!

    People problems are everything else – anything that results from you or anyone else being a human person, with human needs. If you keep getting distracted, that’s a people problem. If you’re overwhelmed and can’t get organized, that’s a people problem. If you’re feeling lonely, that’s a people problem. If you’ve been on Zoom for 37 hours straight and you hate everyone, that’s a people problem.

    The good news is, once you’ve identified a people problem, you can figure out the tools you need to solve them.

    What tools do you have?

    Let’s tackle a couple different areas: focus, organization, and socialization.

    Focus

    What helps you focus is different for every person. Some people need total quiet. Some people need background noise. Some people need to cut out visual clutter. Some people can go for hours. Some people work better in sprints.

    So, in keeping with that, here’s a list of random tools and tips that might work for you, in no particular order.

    • Noisli: A customizable background noise generator that lets you pick from various non-intrusive sounds, mix them together, and save custom playlists. You need an account for the free version, which gets you 1.5 hours per day, 16 sounds, and 3 basic mixes. Also has a built-in Pomodoro timer (limited functionality while free).
      • Alternatives: A Soft Murmur (fewer sounds, no time limit), MyNoise (pick from a variety of options, no cross-mixing)
      • Alternately, if you hate noise, try earplugs or headphones. It won’t fix everything, but maybe it’ll help.
    • Do you have a to-do list? If so, keep it to a maximum of five items. Yes, I know, you have so many things to do– write them down somewhere else to remember later. When you’ve done the five things on your list, you can migrate some new ones. Five things at a time. That’s all you need to do right now.
    • Put stuff where you need it. If you don’t need it, put it somewhere else. Put it in a box. I don’t care where it goes. On my desk, there is a coaster, some photos, old pens, my drumsticks– wait, no, let’s not use me as an example. The point is: if you know what you’ll need, keep it where it’s needed, and if you can’t find it under the stuff you never use, put that stuff somewhere else.
    • Color-code. Things in bright colors stand out. If you can’t see it, you might miss it.
    • Take breaks, and use your breaks for something that could not possibly become work. Moving around is really good. Literally everyone says this. It sounds stupid. I don’t care. Set an alarm or something, get up, and windmill your arms in circles. Touch your toes. Shadowbox and swear at your imaginary opponent. Walk around the room. Blast a song that makes you want to dance.
    • Figure out when works for you. I would love to work in the morning. I cannot do it. I work in the afternoons and evenings, when my brain has gotten with the program. Don’t force yourself to do things that don’t work for you. But! And this is important. Get enough sleep, and keep track of how long you’ve been working. Don’t force yourself. A non-standard schedule doesn’t mean you have to work longer or be guilty about what you’re doing.

    There are going to be more time management tips at the bottom. These ones are, hopefully, specifically geared to help you focus. Everything else comes later.

    Organization

    Over the past term, I’ve compiled and annotated a short list of organizational tools – to-do lists, project management, etc. Check these out and see what sounds good to you.

    Small note: everything here except the bullet journals requires an account. All of them are, to one degree or another, free.

    • Bullet Journals
      • PROS:
        • You’re not connected to the cloud, which means you know your data is safe.
        • Super customizable (Youtube has a ton of tutorials to make them fancy, but I didn’t use them; just figure out what you need to write down, and do it however works).
        • You’re not beholden to any company about what a system “should” look like.
      • CONS:
        • You’re not connected to the cloud, which means there’s no team sync, no automatic reminders, and no backups.
        • If you lose stuff easily, you might have trouble with this one.
        • Because it’s customized to you, if you’re not feeling it or you don’t know what you want, you might have a rough time keeping up the habit.
    • Google Keep
      • PROS:
        • It has a widget in Google Calendar, so you can keep it right next to your schedule for easy time planning.
        • Comes with a phone app, and you can color-code every note, pin the important things, set alerts, and more.
        • Technically meant as a note-taking app, but I find it makes better to-do lists than Google Tasks!
      • CONS:
        • One day Google will swallow the sun and we will thank it for the sweet relief of darkness.
        • Also, it’s very hard to manage indentations (very important for sub-tasks on a to-do list), and full customization functionality requires either a browser plug-in or going to the dedicated Keep page, meaning you can’t do it from your Calendar.
        • On a personal note, I hate the way it resolves completed tasks (they’re completed, I don’t want to see them anymore!
    • Trello
      • PROS:
        • Really, really good for team work and project management – we use it for the Digital Scholarship and Digital Humanities teams all the time.
        • Lots of integrated functions. You can comment, make checklists, separate tasks, separate lists of tasks, attach documents, schedule alerts… the list goes on.
      • CONS:
        • It’s best for teams, honestly. You can use it solo, but a lot of the functionality is aimed at keeping a group in communication and working toegether.
        • Recently got bought by Atlassian. I have no idea what that means for future development or privacy concerns.
        • There are extensions that help with readability and color-coding, but the ones that work best seem to be only available on Chrome.
    • Wunderlist
      • PROS:
        • Really good at readability and organization. Set my standards for how to-do checklists ought to behave.
        • Very easy to make subtasks, add notes, schedule things, etc. A lot of good functionality.
        • Very easy to organize — you can put your checklists into folders, and your folders into folders, and your folders into folders into folders…
      • CONS:
        • I hesitated to include Wunderlist because, here’s the kicker: it got bought by Microsoft, and they’re ending support for it in May. The team will be working on Microsoft’s To-Do application, and hopefully they’ll bring some good features to it, but right now… ehhhhh?
        • You can’t visually customize it at all. If you’re big into color-coding and visual organization, pick literally anything else on this list.

    Socialization

    I’m not really going to use this section to rate and review different softwares for staying in touch. Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype and Discord all have varying levels of video function and voice calling; Discord, Slack and Skype can host your messaging and keep it (somewhat) organized. Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Slack are professional. Skype is kind of professional. Discord is for hanging with your friends.

    There’s a bunch of stuff out there about making sure you’re still talking to people. That’s fine. That’s good. I encourage talking to people. I also encourage checking in with yourself. If you’re spending five hours a day in meetings or talking to people, and at the end of the day your friends want to chat for another two hours? That’s a lot of time.

    On the other hand, don’t be afraid to be the first person to message, or call, or whatever. People can be shy, or not know how to ask for support. Communicate. If you’re having problems at work, or you need some extra support, tell your colleagues. Tell your friends. They can’t see you. They don’t get any signals beyond what you give them.

    So, socialize, but not too much. Take care of yourself, but make sure to reach out to people. I don’t know what to tell you. Being human is a messy contradiction.

    How are you going to tackle this problem?

    So. You know what problem you’re having. You know what tools are at your disposal. You have, hopefully, a vague idea of what needs doing.

    BUT HOW THOUGH.

    There are only so many hours in a day, and yet there are so many hours in a day. You need a way to manage your time.

    Time Management Systems

    • Use your phone. I have every activity of mine plugged into my Google Calendar, which is plugged into an alert system on my phone. This one is less about getting things done and more about not forgetting what you have to do, though…
    • The Pomodoro Method. Twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off. Repeat four times. After four “Pomodoros”, you get a fifteen minute break. There are tons of timers for this stuff online. Just make sure whatever you’re using is noisy enough to get your attention.
    • Eisenhower Decision Matrix. Make a box with four sections: urgent/not urgent, important/not important. Write down all your stuff wherever it needs to go. Urgent & important = right away. Everything else, you can work on, delegate*, or ditch.
      • *President Eisenhower could delegate. I have no idea whether you can.
    • Kanban. Three sections: to-do, doing, done. Put your tasks on sticky notes, or use push pins, or get an app. Put whatever needs doing wherever it goes, and revel in the ability to move things across the board.
    • Ivy Lee. At the end of the day, write down the six things you absolutely must do tomorrow, in order of importance. When you start tomorrow, do those things in order. Then you can do whatever else is left. If there’s anything on the list that hasn’t been finished by the end of the day, that’s okay – it’s the end of the day, and it’s time to make a new list.

    But most importantly…

    Be kind to yourself. Seriously. There’s a lot going on right now, and everything’s stressful, and even at the best of times it’s really hard to be perfect. This is not the best of times. You don’t have to be perfect.

    I’m serious. I’ve missed the same meeting two weeks in a row for two different reasons, and I have spent the last year getting organized enough to write this blog post. I’ve forgotten so many different things this week. It happens.

    If you’re tired, there’s a reason for that. If you’re frustrated, there’s a reason for that. If you’re sad, or angry, or jittery, there’s a reason for that.

    This stuff can (maybe) give you a jumping off point. But here’s the deal – be generous to yourself, just like you would be to your friends and family. And don’t beat yourself up, okay?

    Sources & Resources

  • Ethics Week 8: What Do You Do with Academic Software?

    So this week (and the past couple weeks, actually) I’ve been doing some reading on the legal policies of a company called Gradescope. While this isn’t a full write-up, more an extension of some annotation I’ve been doing lately, I thought it would make a good blog post.

    So, Gradescope. What is it? Who is it? What does it mean for us?

    What is Gradescope?

    Gradescope is a web-based subscription software that allows educators to organize and delegate the collection and grading of assignments, in order to allow them to better focus on the needs of their students.

    Or, simply put: it’s like Moodle (turn in your assignments online) but it also grades stuff if you ask it to and tell it how.

    They’re not giving it to humans to grade, either — they’re grading algorithmically, based on a rubric.

    It’s aimed primarily at STEM, econ and business classes, which makes sense, since quantitative classes would be easier to grade consistently by machine. But their website does boast that it handles papers, even if it’s a little unclear on what aspects of the papers it handles (collection, maybe grammar) vs what aspects are handed to the educator (style and content, hopefully).

    Who is Gradescope?

    Well, as of October 2018, Turnitin owns Gradescope. Turnitin is another web-based software company, this one oriented towards catching plagiarism and determining authorship of papers. They partner with large databases, including Crossref, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, IEEE and Taylor & Francis, in order to check what percentage of a paper matches with other papers out there. In fact, they claim their content database includes “70 billion current and archived webpages”.

    But their plagiarism checker is a little concerning, missing 44% of plagiarized sources in a 2015 experiment at UT-Austin. Penn State University, in their online guide to Turnitin, outlined various ways to get false positives, none of which inspire confidence in Turnitin’s algorithms.

    • Any rough draft stored in Turnitin’s repository could come up as a false positive when the final draft is submitted.
    • Any copies of the paper submitted to Turnitin to check for plagiarism before the paper is officially turned in for class will be stored in the repository – which can generate a false positive.
    • Turnitin doesn’t check whether a student’s original work is being plagiarized, just whether their work matches with another source in the repository.
    • A paper that expands on/includes material from a previous paper on the same topic can also generate a false positive.

    It’s remarkably hard to find any information on Gradescope’s own effectiveness or practices, incidentally. Their terms of service and privacy policy mention third-party partners and third-party recruiters, but decline to elaborate on either. One can sign in with Google, making Google a third-party partner with access to their data, but I can’t find any clear indication of what recruiters might be present on Gradescope’s site.

    Additionally, though their privacy policy claims to comply with GDPR and Privacy Shield (an opt-in U.S.-E.U. and U.S.-Switzerland privacy rubric that allows members certain privileges), their terms of service were last updated in November 2014 — which means they predate GDPR (adopted April 2016), Privacy Shield (July 2016) and the CCPA (fall 2019), a California-based privacy law which they are also subject to. Their privacy policy was last updated in June of 2018.

    What does it mean for Carleton?

    At present, not much. I haven’t heard of any courses that use either Gradescope or Turnitin, which are subscription-based models that would need to be funded by whatever department chose to use them (or by the college at large).

    While Gradescope’s privacy policy and terms of service are mostly standard legal jargon, there are a couple of things I tend to sideeye – like, what happens if your account is deleted due to a false positive?

    The first of my major issues is that they’re not publicly forthcoming with their revenue streams. Of course they charge for subscriptions from the schools they work with, and their client base is obviously private, but as I said above, I can’t find out what third-party recruiters have access to their site. Nor can I find out how these recruiters get access — do they pay for it? Does Gradescope seek them out, or do they contact Gradescope? What sort of data do they get to look at, and how can users manage their privacy?

    The second is their grading methods. Since they’re owned by Turnitin, it’s very likely they use Turnitin’s plagiarism checker — which, as we know, is faulty, despite its wide access to databases.

    Which brings me to my third point: Gradescope keeps student work, and makes it accessible to the third-party partners they use to do their work (like, for example, Turnitin). Turnitin keeps student work and adds it to their databases so they can check for plagiarism more expansively. This is a feature schools pay for.

    Or, put another way: schools pay for Gradescope and Turnitin to make money from other schools off of their students’ work.

    Gradescope has policies in place that comply with GDPR – meaning, any user has the right to be forgotten. You can write to Gradescope, ask them what information they have on you, and tell them to delete it, and they will do it (with a few caveats related to anonymized and group data).

    But, at the same time, their terms of service are six years out of date. Their privacy policy doesn’t mention the California Consumer Privacy act, and I haven’t been able to find any official statements from Gradescope on the topic. And, possibly most worryingly, it is very unclear whether their partners have the same policies in place. And even if they do, would requesting that Gradescope delete your information would extend to any party with whom they’ve shared that information?

    Sources

    “Turnitin Acquires Gradescope”, Zeligs Hand, Amanda, Turnitin, 3 October 2018. https://www.turnitin.com/press/turnitin-acquires-gradescope

    “Database Content”, Turnitin. https://www.turnitin.com/about/content

    “How Much Do You Know About Turnitin’s Content?”, Lee, Christine, Turnitin, 30 May 2019. https://www.turnitin.com/blog/how-much-do-you-know-about-turnitins-content

    “Optimizing the Originality Report”, Penn State University. https://turnitin.psu.edu/bestpractices/usingreports/

    “UT-Austin test results for Turnitin”, Schorn, Susan, University of Texas — Austin. https://utexas.instructure.com/courses/633028/pages/ut-austin-test-results-for-turnitin

    “Privacy Policy”, Gradescope, 25 June 2018. https://www.gradescope.com/privacy

    “Terms of Use”, Gradescope, 3 November 2014. https://www.gradescope.com/tos

  • Ethics Week 7: The New Travel Ban

    So. The travel ban.

    It’s not strictly digital humanities, but it’s definitely ethics and it’s definitely relevant to Carleton. So that’s my blog post for today: what’s happening, what does it mean, and how is it going to impact us?

    What’s happening?

    Basically, the Trump administration is expanding their limitations on visas for immigration into the United States. This policy was announced at the end of January, and it’s taking effect on February 21st, 2020. Spot check: that’s tomorrow.

    Up until now, there have been restrictions on immigration from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Citizens from those countries can’t obtain visas at all. With the new policy, there will also be limitations on Myanmar/Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, and Eritrea. Citizens from these countries aren’t barred from visiting the States entirely, but they mostly won’t be able to get permanent residency.

    What does it mean?

    The Trump administration is calling this a national security measure, though the effectiveness of the policy is in doubt. Critics are calling it out for racist policies — specifically, the appearance of four African nations on the list of newly-restricted countries after many remarks by President Trump denigrating African countries has caused a backlash.

    Legally, there are a variety of visas the United States offers. They are divided into two main categories: Nonimmigrant Visas, and Immigrant Visas. This new update to the travel ban focuses primarily on immigrant visas, which include sponsorship by a spouse or family member, sponsorship by an employer, diversity visas, and returning residents.

    The updated ban bars citizens from the affected countries (Myanmar/Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Eritrea) from the diversity visa lottery, and only citizens from Tanzania and Sudan will be able to gain visas that would let them immigrate to the US. There are other specific restrictions of varying sorts on different countries related to which types of visas can be obtained (there are 34 varieties of nonimmigrant visa that I found, and 30 varieties which might apply to citizens of the affected countries).

    What does this mean for Carleton?

    This is going to hit Carleton specifically with regards to international students and faculty. Those who already have visas aren’t going to have them revoked, and student visas are among the nonimmigrant visas which aren’t going to be restricted, but students might think twice about applying to United States schools if they’re unlikely to be able to gain long-term residency in the country.

    Additionally, faculty visas seem to be a bit of a gray area. Employer-sponsored visas fall into the immigrant visa category, which the travel ban is restricting, but there is a non-immigrant visa called “Professor, scholar, teacher (exchange visitor)”, which is a J-visa. J-visas are specifically for individuals who are part of exchange visitor programs, which is unlikely to help with long-term employees of the college.

    The takeaway is… I’m not sure, honestly. The political science department hosts an off-campus studies program travelling to Thailand and Myanmar. International students may still be able to get visas, but it will likely be difficult and may lower the desire to attend Carleton. And employees of the college currently on an employer-sponsored visa shouldn’t have theirs revoked, but it’s unclear whether they’ll be able to renew it once it expires.

    Sources:

  • Ethics Week 5: Let’s Talk About Iowa

    My post this week was going to be about how people use libraries and the information they contain.

    Then Iowa happened.

    So this week, we’re summarizing the technological debacle that was Monday’s Iowa caucus. What happened? Did anyone expect it? How did this come about?

    A quick overview

    In brief: in the Iowa caucus, people go to their precinct and vote for the candidate they want. The precinct then reports the totals in, so they can be counted up and people can figure out who got the most votes. In the past, the totals have been reported over the phone lines, but this year, the Iowa Democratic Party decided to commission a phone app from the tech company Shadow, Inc. to report the results. The Nevada Democratic Party also helped pay for the app’s development, hoping to use it for their upcoming caucus on February 22nd (this plan has since been scrapped).

    Some important things to note, first and foremost: this project was commissioned by the Iowa Democratic Party, not the Democratic National Committee; the app was for reporting caucus results, not for voting electronically; and, while there were security concerns, the primary issues were with the app’s performance.

    The app, whose name I can’t find (various sources call it ‘the Shadow app’, ‘the app’, or ‘the app from Shadow, Inc.’), was still in development this past weekend — meaning, days before the primary. In the tech world, this might not be too unusual: it’s pretty standard for games and apps to release patches in the early days after their release date. But for voting technology, that’s not an acceptable practice.

    So what’s the problem?

    Security was the obvious concern with the app, and has been since at least mid-January, when NPR put out a piece on the app’s development. It’s hard to get a general impression of the app’s security features, because the chairman of the Iowa State Party, Troy Price, declined to give any details on tests it might have undergone, companies that might have checked it, or issues they might have found. His goal was to avoid leaking information that might entice hackers, but many cybersecurity experts say that “security through obscurity” isn’t actually an effective countermeasure against hacking.

    That said, while the app’s poor performance definitely raised security concerns (it was meant to be used on the personal devices of the volunteers running the caucus), the main issue was just that: poor performance. The app was apparently hard to find, difficult to download, and glitchy.

    While the Iowa Democratic Party claimed it would have backup procedures in place, they weren’t prepared for the volume of failures. When caucus organizers gave up on the app and decided to report results the old-fashioned way, over the phone lines, the sheer volume of calls blocked most people from getting through, which contributed to the delay in results.

    So what now?

    Well, Nevada’s not going to be using the app. Iowa’s results have been checked against a paper trail, which was pretty foreseeable given the scrutiny this incident has caused.

    There are some upsides: Iowa was considering implementing smartphone voting for this caucus, but nixed that idea a while ago. The question of election security is also front and central, and hopefully people will be more cautious of tech’s place in the democratic process going forward.

    Also, just in case you were worried about what this incident means for the company behind the app, Shadow, Inc. released a tweet stating that they “regret the delay… and the uncertainty it caused” and that “[they] will apply the lessons learned in the future”.

    And as always, XKCD has a comic for this.

    Sources

    “Iowa’s caucus app was a disaster waiting to happen”, Zach Whittaker, TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-disaster/

    “Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App”, Kate Payne and Miles Parks, NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/795906732/despite-election-security-fears-iowa-caucuses-will-use-new-smartphone-app

    “The Shoestring App Developer Behind the Iowa Caucus Debacle”, Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman, and Alexa Corse, The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-shoestring-app-developer-behind-the-iowa-caucus-debacle-11580904037

    “What We Know About The App That Delayed Iowa’s Caucus Results”, Avie Schneider, NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/04/802583844/what-we-know-about-the-app-that-delayed-iowas-caucus-results

    Shadow, Inc.’s Twitter Statement: https://twitter.com/ShadowIncHQ/status/1224773796307050497

    “Voting Software”, Randall Munroe, XKCD. https://xkcd.com/2030/

  • Ethics Week 3: What’s the CCPA?

    This week I’ve been following up on looking into the CCPA, or California Consumer Privacy Act. Quick intro: the CCPA is a law that came into effect in California on January 1st, 2020, which addresses data security with regards to companies that collect and sell user data. There is a cheatsheet provided by the California government which summarizes the law, available at the end of this post.

    Essentially, what it boils down to is pretty similar to the GDPR, the European Union’s data privacy regulation which took effect in May of 2018. California consumers have the right to know what data is being collected, the right to have that data removed from records, the right to know what sorts of companies are buying their information, the right to tell people not to sell their data, and the right to not be retaliated against for exercising any other rights granted by the CCPA.

    The laws also only apply to certain businesses (specifically, ones that meet certain thresholds for revenue or user traffic), and they only apply to the sale of data. That’s caused some concern, since companies like Google and Facebook technically don’t sell their users’ data: they sell access to their users, based on the data they have on file.

    The laws also only apply to for-profit businesses, which means that non-profits which operate in California and might otherwise meet the CCPA’s criteria are not subject to those regulations; however, if they do business with for-profit institutions that involves user data, they may still have to comply with the CCPA.

    While I looked into the CCPA’s effect on for-profit institutions that work with higher education, such as ProQuest and Elseviere, I couldn’t find an official statement from those companies. I did, however, find a cybersecurity law report published by Elseviere. This report mostly touches on those facts already stated earlier, but also makes a point of emphasizing that the CCPA has defined ‘personal information’ in a much broader way than the GDPR, or any other current privacy regulation.

    Going forward, it’s not clear what the ramifications of the CCPA will be. Some people claim it goes too far; others are worried that restricting only the sale of personal information doesn’t go far enough, and won’t actually protect people’s privacy. California tends to be a trendsetter where state legislature is concerned, however, so I’ll be looking into other potential privacy bills and seeing where we’ll be going from here.

    References:

  • UXPA 2019 Reflections

    The theme for UXPA 2019 was, as far as I could tell, empathy. Empathy, caring and careful design, came up in as a refrain frequently, and when it wasn’t mentioned outright, it was implicit. This focus on thoughtfulness extended both within and without, which I found very interesting. I would expect a conference for UX Design to be, necessarily, concerned with the experience of others; I anticipated less the theme of kindness to oneself.

    SPEAKER SUMMARIES

    Keynote speaker Vivianne Castillo gave a talk titled “The Siren Call of Self-Neglect”, where she talked about the potential for burnout, and the necessity of self-care. While traffic meant we arrived partway through, I did manage to note down her focus on communication. She made two key points. Firstly, managers should make it clear that team members can be vulnerable with them, encouraging communication not just when things are going well but also when things are going poorly. Support systems can’t be built after they’re needed. Secondly, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel on discussions of ethics and other relevant fields. Those working in UX should explore other disciplines and talk to people working in those areas. Castillo also shared a Google Drive folder full of resources on self care and mindfulness, as well as some resources for white people who wish to educate themselves on racial privilege without burdening people of color. This folder is available in the supplemental materials below.

    Abby Bajuniemi’s talk, “I don’t talk like that! Research Methods and Ethics for Natural Language Interaction”, was less an exploration of digital design and more an examination of experimental ethics and how we communicate. The speaker touched on the fact that language, despite being an arbitrary social construct, is still a factor in discrimination and can be used to uphold ideologies of race, gender, and other identities. She then went on to discuss the ethics of experimental design, particularly in conveying information about the experiment to the participants and in eliciting usable data without infringing on the subjects’ privacy rights. While Bajuniemi did not have strict recommendations regarding these ethical questions, she was firm in her policies: make it clear to participants what is being collected, how it will be stored, and how it can be accessed/who will have access. She suggested hiring an interpreter or translator if there is doubt that the participants will understand the experimenter fully. Her appearance on a linguistics podcast, also mentioned in her presentation, is included in the supplemental materials.

    “Interruptions: Living in a World of Divided Attention” was the third presentation, given by Molly Hillstrom. Hillstrom outlined the cost of distractions in the workplace and in people’s personal lives, citing statistics regarding quality of work and mental health. This topic was integrated with the idea of design when Hillstrom called on designers to be careful, compassionate, and sparing in their use of notifications, to stop using features like autoplay and infinite scroll which make it easy for people to get ‘sucked in’, and to make it easy for people to adjust preferences which will help them not get distracted. There were no supplemental materials.

    Ellen Lucast presented “Opportunities and Challenges in the Voice Interaction Space”, which discussed the potential work required for true voice interaction (creating conversations, rather than programs like Alexa and Siri which have designated responses for specific statements). Much of this presentation was theoretical, and went over my head in regards to its technical aspects, but my primary takeaway was what Lucast called Grice’s Maxims, a set of rules for communication. In quick, simplified summary, they are: be truthful; give the right amount of information; be relevant; be brief and orderly. These rules were interesting to me because of the tension they suggest between usefulness and kindness. Grice’s Maxims seem, on the surface, designed to facilitate useful communication, but they also seem to allow for conversations which are trustworthy, interesting, thoughtful and intelligible. While they are good design principles for practical reasons, they also continue the theme of thinking about users as people. No supplemental materials were included in the presentation.

    McLean Donnelly’s presentation, “An Accessibility Case Study: Expedia”, outlined the initiative Donnelly took to help Expedia make its website more accessible. He gave a series of steps, which touched on initial proposals, research, an internal audit of the system, and the feedback and design cycle, among other aspects. These steps gave transparency and a good model to people who might wish to undertake similar initiatives at their own workplace. Donnelly’s work was a practical expression of the design philosophies at play throughout UXPA. He included multiple recommended resources to help practice and learn about accessible design, and recommended people draft accessibility policies for their organization as well as practicing skills-based volunteerism. His resources are listed in the supplemental materials.

    Liz Tupper’s talk, “Empowering People through Tech”, discussed human-centric/empathetic design, and a design initiative that centered the needs of the users. She emphasized the need to listen to feedback given during the testing phases, and outlined four steps for empathetic design. First, engage with people in their own space; facilitate collaborative creativity; test and get feedback from the people you seek to help; and organize a support structure for the tech and for the people the tech is supposed to exist. This talk, like Donnelly’s, gave very practical examples of design steps and brainstorming practices, but these examples were centered more around getting ideas from the users the product was intended for. Tupper did not include supplemental materials, though her design exercises may be part of a future blog post.

    Beth McKeever presented a talk called “Symbiotic Product Relationships”, which, rather than exploring empathy for the user or empathy for the self, discussed the ways in which UX designers can foster good working relationships with their coworkers, particularly their product managers. Her advice once more came down to communication. Knowing each others’ strengths and weaknesses, attending meetings together in order to facilitate detailed discussion, gaining comfort disagreeing with each other, and constructively talking about office culture were all things McKeever considered vital to a working relationship. In fact, she recommended overcommunicating when building a new relationship, in order to set up that foundation of openness. McKeever also mentioned a book on developing a culture, included in the supplemental materials.

    The closing talk was given by Jeff Sussna, titled “Beyond the Designer as Auteur”. In contrast to some prior speakers, Sussna’s consideration for the user’s experience framed the experience as an ongoing service, rather than as a one-time consumable product. The example he gave was of food: a candy bar not only fills you up and tastes nice, but it also gives you energy that you take with you throughout your day. Ultimately, Sussna stated that design was less about features and more about outcomes. He also discussed complex/emergent systems, the potential for failure, and the need to lean into chaos and learning from a) system failures and b) the creative/unintentional uses consumers find for a product. My favorite part of this presentation was a quote of Sussna’s which I found both evocative and lovely: “What problems might our solutions create?” Sussna also recommended several books, which are listed in the supplemental materials.

    PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS:

    UXPA 2019 was a challenge for me to condense down to a few words on the ethics of UX. In part this was due to the fact that each speaker’s talk touched on ethics, but some did so obliquely or veiled through a different topic. The conference was less concerned with setting out specific ethical principles or guidelines, and more concerned with exploring the ways in which we treat people with respect and dignity. At the core, this is what designing experience should be: carefully considering the feelings, needs and rights of the person whose experience is being designed. While the nature of the conference placed emphasis on interaction through questions, I am looking forward to investigating the exercises and resources recommended by presenters which merge empathy with UX design.

    SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS:

    Vivianne Castillo:

    “Vivianne’s UX Self-Care Resources”: bit.ly/uxselfcare

    Abby Bajuniemi:

    The Vocal Fries podcast, “Bilingualism isn’t Just for White Kids”: https://vocalfriespod.com/2019/04/16/episode-37-bilingualism-isnt-just-for-white-kids-shownotes/

    McLean Donnelly:

    Accessibility for Everyone, by Laura Kalbag: https://laurakalbag.com/book/

    “UX Accessibility”, by Doug Collins through Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/UX-Design-For-Accessibility/166696059

    The Makery Group’s Accessibility Policy: https://www.themakerygroup.com/accessibility-policy.html

    Beth McKeever:

    The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle: http://danielcoyle.com/the-culture-code/

    Jeff Sussna:

    Design for Dasein, by Thomas Wendt: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Dasein-Understanding-Experiences/dp/1506166539/

    How Do Committees Invent?, by Melvin E. Conway: http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html

    Drift Into Failure, by Sidney Dekker: https://www.amazon.com/Drift-into-Failure-Sidney-Dekker/dp/1409422216

    Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna: https://www.sussna-associates.com/book

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