Re: Is your kids' school forcing Zoom on them too?

[Ben Scott]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 8:49 PM Joshua Judson Rosen
 wrote:
> security- and privacy- [which I guess I have to remind people are *not* the 
> same thing...]

OK, I'll bite, how is privacy not part of security?

(I suspect what you mean is that "privacy" is security you care about,
while "security" is security that corrupt corporate executives care
about.  But that doesn't mean privacy isn't security, it's just whose
assets we're talking about securing varies.  (In the later case, *you*
are one of the assets.))

-- Ben
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Re: Is your kids' school forcing Zoom on them too?

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On 8/10/20 10:23 AM, r...@mrt4.com wrote:
> I don't have any kids, but my school district and other governments who claim 
> jurisdiction over me also require it.
> 
> Since Zoom had said before that it was secure and it turned out that it 
> wasn't, it certainly doesn't make since to trust them now. The way we do it 
> in the open source community is to have lots of eyeballs looking over the 
> code so we can verify it ourselves. So, where can I get copies of the sources 
> for Zoom's app and server?
> 
> Also, although the CEO of Zoom has become a U.S. citizen and they are 
> headquartered in the U.S., Zoom is essentially a Chinese-owned company. They 
> do whatever the Chinese government tells them to do including shutting down 
> the accounts of U.S. and Chinese human rights activists.

Yeah Though the `developed in China' aspect isn't necessarily a `red flag' 
by itself
(there are good people everywhere, and there have been some really great 
projects
that came out of China specifically--OpenMoko and Qi Hardware
come to mind for me--and IIRC I heard somewhere that Ubuntu/Canonical got
a lot of funding from China; and there's probably a lot of good things that I'm 
forgetting)...,
when taken together with the other symptoms _and_ the general patterns of 
`privacy tonedeafness'
and `what could they possibly hav been thinking when they decided doing that 
was a good idea',
it doesn't really help to shift the scales back in their favor

> There are at least a dozen alternatives:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_telecommunication_services_and_product_brands#Browser_based_-_does_not_require_software_downloads
> 
> https://techwiser.com/open-source-zoom-alternative/

Well..., the NH State Board of Education signed a deal a couple weeks ago to 
provide
BigBlueButton and a bunch of other hosted open-source services to every school 
in the state
for grades K-12 (the NH universities had already standardized on the same 
things a while ago...):


https://www.ilearnnh.org/sites/default/files/media/2020-07/doe-press-release-july-28-2020.pdf

So hopefully the schools will at least start taking up what the state is 
offering
instead of going it alone (even if the security- and privacy- [which I guess I 
have
to remind people are *not* the same thing...] arguments fall on deaf ears,
there's a pretty obvious *economic* "why are you using your funding for this 
instead of spending
everything you can on our kids and teachers" argument

(and if schools are using Zoom but *not* paying for a contract to ensure 
[supposed] FERPA compliance...,
  ummm...)

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Re: Is your kids' school forcing Zoom on them too?

[r270]

I don't have any kids, but my school district and other governments who claim 
jurisdiction over me also require it.

Since Zoom had said before that it was secure and it turned out that it wasn't, 
it certainly doesn't make since to trust them now. The way we do it in the open 
source community is to have lots of eyeballs looking over the code so we can 
verify it ourselves. So, where can I get copies of the sources for Zoom's app 
and server?

Also, although the CEO of Zoom has become a U.S. citizen and they are 
headquartered in the U.S., Zoom is essentially a Chinese-owned company. They do 
whatever the Chinese government tells them to do including shutting down the 
accounts of U.S. and Chinese human rights activists.


There are at least a dozen alternatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_telecommunication_services_and_product_brands#Browser_based_-_does_not_require_software_downloads

https://techwiser.com/open-source-zoom-alternative/



Ron
r...@mrt4.com



On Fri, 7 Aug 2020 17:50:11 -0400
Joshua Judson Rosen  wrote:

> So..., pandemic. That's still a thing, and school is about to start up.
> 
> I hear a lot of schools have decided to make everyone use Zoom,
> whether they're at school or remote. That's apparently what's happening at my 
> kid's school.
> 
> If you haven't heard..., Zoom has turned out to be a complete privacy- and 
> security-nightmare
> (the set of links out from the Wikipedia article is not even exhaustive, but 
> holy crap).
> Though I suspect that most of the people on this list know all about it.
> 
> How are you dealing with it?
> 
> We've been trying to talk to our school's administration ever since they sent 
> out an e-mail
> telling everyone to `expect to use a video-conferencing tool like Google Meet 
> or Zoom'),
> and finally managed to get a meeting with... the Assistant Principal (who 
> honestly is great, but powerless),
> and at this point have basically got a response of "wish you'd raised the 
> issue earlier, but we already bought Zoom"
> (which might not be _as_ frustrating if we hadn't actually first raised this 
> issue back in _March_...).
> 
> NH does make it fairly straightforward to just give up and homeschool if it 
> comes to that...,
> but must it really come to that?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Connect with me on the GNU social network! 
> 
> Not on the network? Ask me for more info!
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