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The surveillance state – now even universities are at it

By Will Bickford Smith, Education Officer at the University of Nottingham Students’ Union

Fingerprint72 British universities are institutions which have stood the test of time based on their fundamental principles of academic freedom and the pursuit knowledge without fear of reprisal.

Therefore it should cause some alarm that Time Higher reports today that De Montfort University plans to monitor its students’ whereabouts using the University’s wi-fi network – a proposal so Orwellian that even the President of the National Union of Students has suggested that students will be feel like “inmates under surveillance”.

Many universities already have systems in place for students to register their attendance at seminars (and some for lectures), and universities argue that this is to ensure that students have been exposed to a required level of course content for them to be able to progress. However De Montfort plans to go a stage further, into unchartered territory, by using its wi-fi network to track the electronic chip in each student’s ID card.

And from 2012/13, students at De Montfort will have to fork out £9000 per year to pay for the privilege of being afforded the same freedom as a prisoner with a police tag.

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Online privacy
  • http://adrianshort.co.uk/ Adrian Short

    I think you’re getting slightly the wrong end of the stick.
    RFID attendance systems do not track people everywhere they go in a school/college. The readers are normally only fitted to classroom/lecture theatre doors and log when a student enters or exits. This is tallied against students’ schedules to compile attendance lists.
    If the system were designed to discard any data that did not relate to a student’s schedule it would be little different in principle to taking a register.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/bickfordsmith Will Bickford Smith

    Adrian – I take your points, but I object to any system in any institution which would seek to track an individual without their consent.
    Also, the ‘if’ is a big ‘if’. Who is going to control where the data goes? What if the University then decides that they are going to utilise the system to find students’ whereabouts to check they have spent sufficent hours in the library (and thus completed the prescribed hours of recommended reading for that course)? It may sound far fetched but it’s a very slippery slope as we all know.

  • http://adrianshort.co.uk/ Adrian Short

    Will,
    Your mobile phone tracks you wherever you go. I presume you either consent to that as a condition of service or you don’t have a mobile.
    You’re quite right that this kind of technology can suffer from scope creep (assuming a larger scope isn’t already designed in from the start, which it often is.) But that’s why you need to really get into the details. At its most minimal, this isn’t really different from taking a paper register. At worst, it could be horribly abused.
    The use of cashless payment systems for school lunches is a case in point. Originally introduced to shorten lunch queues and reduce admin/cash handling, they soon transformed into systems for monitoring/enforcing dietary habits, attendance management and all kinds of stuff.
    Use of the data would be regulated by the DPA. This also means that students could issue Subject Access Requests to see exactly what’s being held about them.

  • rights to privacy

    We can point out that some of us are being tracked by phones or whatever these days but that does not mean that it is right or indeed that people really understand what they are signing up to – the small print is very very small for good reason.
    Regulation by DPA – well ‘erm yes. Why should we all be put in the situation nowadays of having to contact many different organisations and companies trying to find out what data is held about us (often without consent or even against consent)? If more people made more subject access requests and found out the extent of data held about them that they are not necessarily aware of then or that they have not consented to then they might sit up and take notice. Unfortunately too many people just let it happen and this apathy means that we all end up suffering at the hands of those organisations storing, processing and storing our data without or against our consent.

  • Demeter

    Sorry, but I have to question the very idea of controlling/verifying (delete according to taste) folks’ attendance at lectures.
    If you submit all required course-work and attend examinations then what is this thing with coercing attendance at lectures ? Especially given that lectures are very often a minor component of a course.
    Is not a part of undertaking higher education the inculcation of the discipline of determining the need for a given information-stream, be that lectures, labs, reading, seminars, debates, essays, or whatever ?
    Or is it all just box-ticking these days ?

  • Nathaniel Smallarms

    whatever the reality of this discussion does anybody share my thoughts that we are living in very uncomfortable times.
    It is abhorent that data should be held on us without our consent.
    It is abhorent that we can be tracked by the use of simple, everyday things like phones or cards.
    Our government is taking a lead by calling for this and allowing others to do it – without our consent.
    This country has not been a democracy ever and it is now becoming a fascist, all controlling state.
    The only way out is to die but even then they will harrass you for tax or unpaid bills.
    No wonder there are terrorists out ther….

  • http://www.thefinancesblog.com/ Happiness

    Not content with scamming students out of their money, £9000 for a worthless degree, they are going to monitor your movements on campus, while scamming you as well.
    Ridiculous.

  • Chris

    Universities these days have a legal duty to report to the Home Office UK Border Agency if a student with a visa is absent for more than 2 consecutive weeks.
    The way this is done is to take registers for everyone, just like school.
    Lecturers have now been turned into immigration officers in the “fight against terrorism” and adult students are turned into pupils once more.
    Sad times.

  • http://www.qashoes.com MBT Shoes

    Good stuff as per usual, thanks. I do hope this kind of thing gets more exposure.