The table in the ACLU report is kind of interesting. I mean, I was confused about the could be shared with law enforcement and the could be used to discipline my friends but then seeing the Could be used to identify trans/reproductive health makes those amounts completely understandable as well as the undocumented statement.
I always feel like I’m being watched 32%
How it could be used to discipline me or my friends 27%
What our school and companies they contract with do with the data (such as sell it, analyze it, etc.) 26%
How it limits what resources I feel I can access online 24%
Could be shared with law enforcement 22%
Could be used against me in the future by a college or an employer 21%
Could be used to identify students seeking reproductive health care (such as contraception or abortion care) 21%
Could be used to identify students seeking gender-affirming care (such as transgender students seeking hormones) 18%
Could be used against immigrant students, especially those who are undocumented 18%
How it limits what I say online 17%
Could be used to “out” LGBTQIA+ students 13%
I have no concerns regarding surveillance in my school 27%
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Source: YouGov. School Surveillance, fielded October 20-26, 2022. Commissioned by ACLU TABLE 1 Students’ Concerns About School Surveillance
Hell, I finished school over a decade ago now, but even as an adult, I feel like I'm being constantly watched. This kind of overreaching, omnipresent surveillance is genuinely not good for individuals and by extension, society at large. Human beings do not act naturally when they feel their every move is being watched. Anxiety, distrust, paranoia, depression, etc. can all manifest, and it scares me to know that this kind of "for your safety" surveillance has become so normalized.
It isn't normal. It is affecting the average person's mental health, even if they don't know it. It is affecting society at a very base level as a result. What a world...
Note: Found the one big thing I wanted in the ACLU stuff but I’m not reading through the Vice News report at this moment: As Vice News reported, “The few published studies looking into the impacts of [student surveillance] tools indicate that they may have the effect [of] breaking down trust relationships within schools and discouraging adolescents from reaching out for help.”83 Ironically, the same tools the EdTech Surveillance industry is promoting as a means for identifying students in need of help may actually be dis-couraging those students from reaching out to school officials and other adults for help when they need it.
Though access is limited, they do have the tech thanks to their friends to the north. I can’t find the link, but they have their own Great Firewall implementation
Lol this country has some of the best state sponsored hacking groups and the ability to build nuclear weapon. Its not like they are living under a rock technologically.
The government just doesn’t provide much of anything to its citizens as a form of control.
I’m not saying the expertise doesn’t exist. The point is that so much of our personal information is given up because of how technology is ingrained in our every day lives, so every move you make is recorded somewhere. If the general population doesn’t have that kind of access to technology, then you can’t record their every movement.
I did this for the longest time until I realised that because AdGuard works best as a virtual VPN, it is unable to run alongside an actual VPN. Luckily my VPN (and many others) support ad blocking too.
That’s not what I’m talking about. I meant to say that AdGuard on mobile (Android) runs by pretending to be a VPN in order to intercept all connections and filter the ads out of them. This works great to remove ads in apps, etc.
However, because it hooks into the VPN interface you can’t then run another VPN (for example Proton VPN) because Android only allows one VPN to run at any time.
Oh you’re talking about AdGuard VPN not solely the main AdGuard product. Definitely not ideal. It doesn’t offer the same level of features as my current VPN who offers ad blocking anyway. Not to mention a few suspicious quotes from their website:
AdGuard VPN protocol uses the most secure and fast encryption algorithm to date – AES-256
From the very outset, we resolved to develop and deploy an in-house VPN protocol instead of picking a canned solution — that’d be too easy
We are going to make our protocol implementation publicly available in the future. Sadly, right now we don’t have enough time to prepare the project
we collect data about how you interact with our services, how much traffic you’ve used, and for how long have you been using our services
ADGUARD SOFTWARE LIMITED is a company registered in Nicosia, Cyprus, registered office is at Klimentos 41-43, KLIMENTOS TOWER, Flat/Office 25, 1061, Nicosia, Cyprus and acts as the data controller when processing your data
Considering Cyprus telecommunications laws it doesn’t seem like the safest place to headquarter a telecommunications privacy company.
Adguard has been a trusted company in the adblocking space for a very long time, and their CEO and company is quite openly active in the privacy and cybersecurityrealm, so that’s important.
That said, their VPN is a really new product, so there’s a lot of room for improvement.
They do have the best adblocking solution, in my opinion, so if VPN is also needed, they give you something for that. The alternatives are often messy or not totally compatible.
For me, it works great for bypassing geo restrictions, but my threat model isn’t on the extreme end. I got a plan really cheap, so it saves me money over PIA and Windscribe, which i used previously (and sucked for streaming).
I do suggest that everyone find a solution that works for them, regardless of who they go with.
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