Re: chromebooks

[Óscar]

2020-11-06 19:15 GMT+01:00, Pedro Lucas Porcellis <porcellis@eletrotupi.com>:
> On Fri, Nov 06, 2020 at 12:00:28PM +0100, Óscar wrote:
>> Hi. Here a newbie!
>>
>> This is a inquiry about Chromebooks to the community.
>>
>> Recently, the public school that my 9-year-old daughter attends has
>> imposed on us the acquisition of a certain Chromebook.
>>
>> I have not found any articles or conversations about it, but I am
>> first concerned about the landing of the Google empire in public
>> schools with the support of public institutions. In this case, it is
>> an uncritical acceptance of the entire Google system, including the
>> teachers. They celebrate all the comforts the integrated package
>> offers. The use of free software does not even cross their minds.
>
> That's something pretty normal, actually. Here at South America, is kind
> of *default*, the convenience that Google offers have the weight of them
> using that data to whatever they want it to.
>
> There was going a survey here on this list, about what sort of
> priorities the FSF should point towards to, in terms of software If I'm
> not mistaken. You can see if there was something being discuss on that
> matter there.
>
>> Second, I am concerned about the tracking and acquisition of data and
>> metadata about the content that my daughter accesses throughout her
>> educational stage. Information that, I suppose, will be recorded on
>> some distant server and from which their knowledge, character,
>> mistakes, tastes and preferences, etc. can be inferred, thus creating
>> a very personal, precise and intimate profile from such an early age.
>
> That being said, you can organize and discuss that with other parents,
> and if you want you can search more about the term *surveillance
> capitalism*, which is something you can use to get some theory and
> evidence about that.

In fact, I am now gathering information to support this matter to the
school board and families. That is why I have turned to
libreplanet-discuss...

>
> It's always good to remember though, that in order to understand why
> surveillance capitalism is bad you need to understand what capitalism is
> about and how it operates. If you do, you'll not be so much surprised
> about the way things are, but it will help you to get the full picture.
> You'll also be more prepared to discuss that than the people behind that
> Netflix doc.
>
>> Maybe in the future the guys at Google will "not be evil.". But what
>> if they will be?
>
> They do evil already.
>
>> My questions to the community are: what do you think about it? Do you
>> think there is a compromised exposure of minors in their educational
>> stage? What sinister scenarios can you think of based on this data
>> collection? Do you know any specific case of abuse of privacy in
>> similar contexts?
>
> Again, you can start by looking up for surveillance capitalism. There
> are a LOT of research being done on this subject, at least here on my
> country. I don't know much more about how other "central" countries are
> dealing with it. Two names who comes up, is Laura Kalbag/Aral Balkan and
> Shoshana Zuboff, although I have some issues with the latter.
>

The truth is that I came to this from the books "El enemigo conoce el
sistema", by Marta Peirano, and "The new dark age" by James Bridle.
Also, I have seen some talk by Shoshana Zuboff, and I intend to read
her book.
Than you for your suggestions.

Óscar.