Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

Your answer sort of reads as if the choice of technology is the only friction people are currently dealing with. The situation isn't easy, even using some easy to use technology like zoom. Adding friction will only make things harder for people doing their best in already hard circumstances. It may well exceed their mental budget for friction.

I wish widely deployed privacy-respecting solutions were already deployed at scale, people trained in their use and a suitable curriculum available. But that's not where we are and putting more load on already well loaded people will not improve the situation.

I am prioritizing. During the present COVID-19 situation, my top two priorities are (1) maintain my health, including my mental health, and refrain from posing a health hazard to others, and (2) maintain my relationships with my students, colleagues, and collaborators.

As I see it, if I give some skeezy private company some personal information by accident, then I am making a personal sacrifice, and not all that big of one. I'm trying to worry about my duties to others first.

And I should add that I'm trying out MS Teams as an alternative. After six days, and multiple e-mails back and forth with our IT department, I think I've almost got it set up properly.

You're normalizing it and making your students use it though, so it's really not "it affects me, but I don't care enough", it affects others as well. And let's not kid ourselves: once it's established, nobody will switch to something else, because they'd have to explain and guide everyone they want to talk to to install another app etc.

If you're a Comp Sci or Engineering prof you really have an obligation to try harder. You have the capability to explain mitigation techniques (virtual machines, sandboxing, using temporary email addresses, VPNs).

Longer term I think we will see a host of Zoom competitors, because really there is nothing special in the client. Hangouts in particular could easily eclipse it with some work.

Also, I think the grid of faces approach is just awful. Many people have been working on VR meeting systems which have significant advantages for multiperson communication (i.e. discussion vs broadcast). Lecture/theatre VTC (which provides an aggregated feedback signal to the presenter) is completely unmet by Zoom. So once we're past the hump the field will broaden, and at that point the privacy requirements have to be enforced rigourously.

It asks the question "What is the point of a principle?"

I dont think calling privacy a principle is true if you are willing to give it up for something that "just works" - I believe covid is likely one of the biggest problems in the modern age, but during times of hardship we need to cling ever harder to our principles, or consider that maybe it isn't nearly as important to us as we thought.

Preface or not, it still reads like that. You're extolling one principle. I entirely agree that privacy is important but should be upheld. But there are other conflicting principles at work here - the list here is in no way complete.

    * The right to privacy.
    * The right of pupils to receive an education
    * The right of teachers to limit the amount of work and energy they need to put into their work.
    * The right of teachers and pupils (and the general public) to stay at home and evade infection.

And that's why your absolutism on one principle to me still reads flip - or at least ill considered - even if you preface it with "I don't want to be flip."

Or maybe people has different principle.

Your second point I disagree with; I think if people raise objections, encourage people to switch, and volunteer to shepherd others through the technical details -- then people will be agreeable, and we'll see a shift which will gradually become pervasive.

We haven't seen a Zoom log found in an open S3 bucket yet, or a leak via fb, but experience says that it is only a matter of time.

So if you're going to mandate Zoom, own the risk. Mitigation is possible: provide recorded streams for secured download (if safe/ethical/notified to record other participants!); provide a work laptop with a non-identifying config instead of a BYOD; many other options.

* The right of teachers to monitor their students activities during class.

(Also: Your list is unreadable due to the use of code no-wrap formatting. Please don't use code indents for blockquoted normal text.)

If you are going that way then likewise, there is always someone somewhere could die because the software doesn't work because they prioritize privacy.

Beside, The reason we have growing acceptance for the LGBT is because of the openness and transparency. That won't happen if we have perfect privacy.

Yes is true that leak is only matter of time, so its even more infeasible to maintain privacy. The solution should be to assume information is public as much as we can and fix the issue that arise from that.

This doesn't square with any experience I've ever had trying to get $alternative_technology adopted because of $principle in favor of $default_thing, and from what I've gleaned talking to others, and reading the experiences of others online, the problem isn't me.

Maybe post Cambridge Analytica the world has changed -- I at least don't get looked at like I have three heads when I tell people I'm not on Facebook anymore -- but if folks are still responding to complaints about privacy issues like this with what amounts to "meh, don't have the energy" then I'm skeptical. If zoom becomes "the standard," I don't think the inertia will be much easier to overcome.

The consequence of getting on a school bus can be life or death. The consequence of eating a peanut butter sandwich can be life or death.

If you’re a medical professional or psychiatrist, maybe you shouldn’t use zoom due it’s privacy record. But if you’re teaching a lecture on linked lists to your class of 30 kids, death via persecution should probably be very low on your considerations when choosing video conference tech.

It can change rapidly in small communities, e.g. you getting everyone in your department together, deciding on $goodAlternative and using that whenever possible (in addition to Zoom, because you'll still have to communicate with the outside world). But at large?

Accept it, and you'll be happier.

Yes, a rational person does. You're thinking of dogma. People don't give up their dogmas when the costs outweigh its reasonable benefits because holding onto their belief system is practically infinitely valuable.

Dogmas are hard boundaries. Principles are guiding factors. Sacrificing privacy as a principle in the midst of a global pandemic is perfectly fine in most cases. It's still a guiding factor, but it's of lower priority than competing interests.

Then why hasn't it, despite far more work and funding than Zoom, for over a decade? This is a "I could have invented Facebook" comment. Things are harder than you suggest.

I live in France. Overnight schools were closed and the existing school platforms are a joke.

Beside the fact that they crashed, there is no interactivity built in.

So as a parent of two children I would have been delighted if the teachers switched immediately to Zoom or Discord and I truly do not give a fuck (not that I do not care, I do not give a fuck) about privacy and whatnot when it comes to middle age history or derivatives.

This is this, or me having two jobs.

So except if the software keeps on spying after it is switched off (which would be unacceptable) they can use Zoom or whatever if the teaching process is maintained.

If the teacher asked me to install The Catholic Video Conferencing System my only question would be where to get the msi from. (again provided that there is no spying afterwards)

Frankly I find your comment dismissive of the real threats faced by women and minorities.

If you could post your real name, address, phone number, email, sexual orientation, religion, employment status, performance review, salary, hobbies, political viewpoints etc we can get started processing your revocation of privacy.

Oh you didn't realise your boss was having meetings with HR over Zoom? Sorry, we can't have different rules for some.

Oh and you'll start seeing ads for '5 step sobreity' now since we see you were in the local AA Zoom. Sorry about not getting that new job -- that company ticked the 'no addicts' flag in the selection matrix, and, well, the job market is kinda competitive now.

Is this actually better from a privacy perspective? Sounds like abandoning the frying pan for the fire...

Also I've done 300+ participant A/V conferencing systems, it isn't the client part that is hard, its the authentication, directory and latency that becomes difficult, and google already has that pretty well sorted.

From a technical perspective I don't think anything groundbreaking is required, it just wasn't a market segment earning money before now, because why not just walk down the hall, or have a conference etc? Noone is saying a Zoom meeting can replace that, it is just a stop gap.

As soon as something goes wrong with your solution - everyone goes, why aren't we using zoom. Literally totally non-techies - that will be their first bit of feedback (I tried to go with google hangouts).

Both in high school and college I used PLENTY of stuff that I didn't want to and was never provided "alternatives" if I didn't consent. Seriously, endpoint protection products centrally controlled with total system access control are not uncommon in these settings.

You are claiming I can opt out of all of this if it invades my privacy?

The school had a third party vendor that tracked every keycard access to every lock on campus - I'd def like to opt out of that!

Eventually yes, I would prefer that I don't have to keep secret of all of those information but I can't because not everyone is.

>Oh and you'll start seeing ads for '5 step sobreity' now since we see you were in the local AA Zoom. Sorry about not getting that new job -- that company ticked the 'no addicts' flag in the selection matrix, and, well, the job market is kinda competitive now

If a company choose not to hire addict than its their choice, its their lost.

Of course, if the schooling is voluntary; either private K-12 or any collegiate level, then you just have to play by their rules or go home. Someone could definitely bring the case against a state K-12 requiring Zoom use though, were they properly paranoid, motivated, and funded.

You are, of course, welcome to opt out, but there is -- as you suggest -- no requirement for a school or employer to provide an alternative.

https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/privacy-students

This is really kind of funny, because this exact thing happened literally less than a year ago. It was technically a vulnerability, but they refused to see it as such and fix it until it was disclosed publicly and they had a wave of negative PR. They literally allowed anyone to connect to the webcam on your computer through an always-on server which remained installed after you removed Zoom from your computer. https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-...

I can't believe everyone has forgotten this quickly. Zoom is not a trustworthy company.

I have actually voluntarily shared pretty much everything on your list publicly at some point. Even then the important part is that it was my choice to do so, and there’s still a number of things I will not freely share.

What they did is a shame. I do not know yet whether to attribute it to malice, sloppiness, immaturity, or a combination of the above.

I know math lectures don't seem a hot spot, but it's a slippery slope of adoption, and you might be surprised about the depth of harassment problems in the math community.