All posts tagged: digital surveillance.

The Risks of AI Recording Devices and Note-Taking Assistants in the Classroom

The Risks of AI Recording Devices and Note-Taking Assistants in the Classroom

Recently, US classrooms have dealt with several forms of authoritarian and dystopian policies, ranging from Texas A&M banning Plato to UNC Chapel Hill secretly filming faculty and students in the classroom. Now, they may be facing digital authoritarianism. Since 2023, students, faculty, and staff have integrated various Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) platforms into their day-to-day. In particular, they have increasingly adopted the use of AI note-taking apps like Otter.ai, as well as various recording devices like smart glasses. As a result, individuals are progressively recording faculty, staff, and students without consent or transparency, oftentimes targeting women, and students and faculty of color. Although many states like West Virginia are a one-party consent state, the increased and unchecked use of AI recording devices at universities poses serious safety risks for the campus communities across the United States. Academic freedom is essential for scholarly dialogue, and that comes with the reasonable expectation of the right to privacy in the classroom setting. Universities maintaining that right to privacy is even more crucial as Higher Ed in the United …

Holocaust survivor warns the West not to “sleepwalk into control” | UK | News

Holocaust survivor warns the West not to “sleepwalk into control” | UK | News

Erika Fabian (Image: Erika Fabian) A woman who survived both Hitler and Stalin says the warning signs of totalitarianism are flashing in the West once again. Erika Fabian was four years old when the Nazis came for her family in Budapest. Eight decades on, the Holocaust survivor and author says she recognises the early stages of authoritarianism – and fears Western democracies are repeating the mistakes Europe once paid for in blood. “I feel like a canary in the coal mine,” she said. “What my latest book, Liars’ Paradise, describes is the slow occupation of entire nations and deprivation of freedom, including America today.” Ms Fabian says her warning is grounded in lived experience – of how fear spreads, how people stop speaking up, and how democracies hollow out long before they collapse. It is a message shaped by a lifetime under tyranny – and one she believes Britain should take seriously. Ms Fabian is the mother of world-renowned eye surgeon Professor Dan Reinstein, whose London practice has treated figures including former Prime Minister Boris …