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Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:51:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (this-is-a-tor-exit-node---keywebtor3.artikel5ev.de [87.118.122.51]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: jahoti@envs.net) by mail.envs.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA; Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:51:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: On Free Software, Education in China and the COVID-19 Pandemic To: Andrew Yu , libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org References: <20211023022002.bw3fv7wy37cgsypj@andrewyu.org> Message-ID: <87ff465b-4dfc-cc12-d3df-8b926c2afc07@envs.net> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:51:00 +0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20211023022002.bw3fv7wy37cgsypj@andrewyu.org> Received-SPF: pass client-ip=5.199.136.28; envelope-from=jahoti@envs.net; helo=mail.envs.net X-Spam_score_int: -20 X-Spam_score: -2.1 X-Spam_bar: -- X-Spam_report: (-2.1 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-Mailman-Approved-At: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 12:07:11 -0400 X-BeenThere: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , From: jahoti via libreplanet-discuss Reply-To: jahoti Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6332964178923054249==" Errors-To: libreplanet-discuss-bounces+e=80x24.org@libreplanet.org Sender: "libreplanet-discuss" This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156) --===============6332964178923054249== Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="GIWYftnuwOI0ZtkQy01kInRIBBl6XAm3l" This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156) --GIWYftnuwOI0ZtkQy01kInRIBBl6XAm3l Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="eXTK8JRe6beZgRt6k5cyNidA7ElPb0BNc"; protected-headers="v1" From: jahoti To: Andrew Yu , libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org Message-ID: <87ff465b-4dfc-cc12-d3df-8b926c2afc07@envs.net> Subject: Re: On Free Software, Education in China and the COVID-19 Pandemic References: <20211023022002.bw3fv7wy37cgsypj@andrewyu.org> In-Reply-To: <20211023022002.bw3fv7wy37cgsypj@andrewyu.org> --eXTK8JRe6beZgRt6k5cyNidA7ElPb0BNc Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 10/23/21 2:20 AM, Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss wrote: > I am a secondary school student from Shanghai, China. This email > discusses the problems I discovered in the Chinese educational system, > in terms of students' right to freedom in computing and options to > control the COVID-19 pandemic from the standpoint of a person living in= > China. Thank you for your very interesting and insightful piece on the topic!=20 It's nice to hear the personal perspective of someone inside China too,=20 being the unfortunate rarity it is. > When COVID-19 broke out in 2020, students were required to watch lectur= e > videos produced by the city's education department for twenty minutes, > then join the Tencent Meetings room to discuss in their own class for > 10--15 minutes. >=20 > Watching the videos wasn't an issue for me. Our apartment has cable TV= , > where the videos are broadcast; there was also a website that played th= e > livestream without JavaScript. However, Tencent Meetings presented a > problem to me. >=20 > At the time, I run Arch Linux. (Currently, I run Hyperbola > GNU/Linux-libre, a Free Software-only distribution, which would have > made this even harder.) Tencnet Meetings, claiming to support "all > operating systems and platforms", only supports Windows and macOS. (I > wonder how they passed the resolution to display that statement, I > believe that they have many programmers who use GNU/Linux.) (As of > October 2021, a classmate noted that there is a "Linux versuon".) Schoo= l > required Tencent Meetings, therefore I went through a hard proccess to > setup QEMU running a Windows 7 virtural machine---I believed that 7 > would be slightly better than 10 in terms of privacy, though as always > with nonfree software, I can't really know for sure. It was slightly > unstable, which is an annoyance, for example the connection from the > Windows audio server to pulseaudio would stop working from time to time= , > but it was acceptable. Though my setup was okay (in the perspective of= > my school), it left me in a psycological crisis about education and > freedom. More on that later. You're unfortunately not alone in this; the way educational institutions = (and no doubt corporations) the world over made such sudden changes,=20 even if it was understandable, is doubly traumatic for those of us whose = perspectives were never considered.The only option I could come up with=20 for my classes was to not go- and I took a whole year off just trying to = reverse engineer the necessary software! > Offline classes resumed in May 2020, as most of China has minimal cases= > of COVID-19. This freed me from using a proprietary > non-privacy-respecting bloated piece of software in a virtual machine, > but it did not free me from teachers' requirement to use WeChat (think > of it as the equiv of WhatsApp in China), Xiaoheiban (A proprietary > classroom information distribution system), or other pieces of nonfree > software. >=20 > Similar to the beliefs stated in the GNU Education project, I believe > that schools and educaion are a means of sharing information and > knowledge. I understand that meeting software and lesson management > software are used as means of distributing knowledge, rather than the > knowledge being distributed themselves. However, I believe this doesn'= t > lead to the argument that the mandate of proprietary software usage is > just, for three reasons as below. >=20 > 1. There are always going to be curious students who wonder how the > trchnology works. Proprietary software denies them this right. >=20 > 2. The usage of proprietary software when young may implant dependence > on it in the future. >=20 > 3. Education is a right and a responsility. Mandating nonfree software= > in education adds unjust responsibilities on students. >=20 > Point 1 and 2 are explained well in the Education section of the GNU > website, therefore I am not going to focus on them. Focusing on the > third point: >=20 > Under laws of almost all countries, citizens have the right to an > education. Traditionally, this involves going to school, meeting > teachers and classmates, listening to classes, taking notes, passing > exams (I have strong opinions that exam systems ought to change to > better represent individual talents, but this is out of scope of this > memo.) and finishing homework. Students loose a slight bit of their > time and freedom of movement (as in, it's not easy to move to a house > 100 miles away from school), in exchange for being educated. >=20 > However, with schools requiring the use of nonfree software, in effect > students are required to give up their privacy, and digital freedom, > both crucial rights in modern society, as the effect of needing to use > nonfree software. The right to education has effectively turned into a= n > exchange for other basic rights. This is not acceptable. >=20 > Furthermore, in countries like China, 9 years of education is mandatory= > for children. I understand this law as a means to the goal of creating= > a knowledgeble and educated society, which is good. However, when > mandatory edication mandates nonfree software, it deduces to "children > are required to use nonfree software". So, being a child here is prett= y > unlucky, because there goes your right to privacy, your independence, > and your freedom, because of a law that's supposed to help society. >=20 > We need to stop using nonfree software in education. I completely agree- the fact that non-free software is required to meet=20 legal obligations, let alone standard expectations, is completely=20 unacceptable! However, speaking more broadly, using software in education is itself up = for debate. That's not to say computers should be banned from classrooms = or that schools shouldn't teach computing skills; rather, some uses seem = to be less about genuine evidence of educational value and more about=20 schools' (or governments', or technology companies') lust for novelty.=20 Some prudence might improve education, save money, and make using free=20 software a more viable option for students (and even teachers). For that matter (as a slightly off-topic personal grievance), using=20 software well would be a huge improvement. Digital signatures have been=20 around for more than 20 years, yet they have still not made it into=20 mainstream use, and in fact some websites implement support for *written = signatures*! > In th beginning of this email, I mentioned COVID-19. You might be > wondering how China fully put the pandemic under control in just 5 > months, which is seemingly impossible if all you know is how the US > dealt with this situation. >=20 > The answer is that China is implementing strict contact tracing. This > is extremely easy because of the prevaliance of survillance. Many woul= d > argue that this is a benefit of survillance, which I believe to be true= =2E > However, no comparisons were given between losing privacy and increasin= g > the risk or infection. Briefly inspecting this idea in my head, it's > really hard to think about---privacy and freedom is important in the > long term, at the cost of many lives in the pandemic. The lives of > these dead are gone---they lose not only privacy and computing freedom,= > they lose their lives, which costs them their oppurtunity to persue > their dreams in this world, and they have no freedom of choice, speech,= > etc as they aren't alive. Once again, this is hard to wrap my mind > around, therefore I would especially like to invite the community to > discuss this. Indeed, any weighting of freedom against death is going to be a deeply=20 uneasy one. For what it's worth, I would eschew a simple dichotomy to introduce a=20 third option: providing tools and encouraging citizens to log location=20 data for themselves, which then helps them help contact tracers. In=20 countries where authorities are trusted and can easily reach their=20 citizens, this seems like a very fair balance; civil liberties are=20 respected without significantly hampering disease control efforts. Of course, if distrust is widespread or mass media are ineffective, this = doesn't work, and in that case I'd argue limited surveillance=20 requirements would be warranted. The key word, however, if limited:=20 under absolutely no circumstances must even a single data entry be=20 available to the police, or marketers, or the venue a person entered, or = anyone except contact tracers working with the individual whose record=20 it is if they are confirmed to be infected. It must also not include any = data except that which can reliably be used to significantly improve=20 tracing efforts- simply the fact that something could be mildly useful=20 is not, in my opinion, an excuse for capturing it and putting it in a=20 database. Of course, it must also be deleted once it is no longer=20 potentially useful. It's worth noting the irony that those areas were violating civil=20 liberties would be least acceptable are also the kind that would have=20 been more willing to do so. > The contact tracing system used is not Free Software. At first I didn'= t > understand why (except for the explanation that they want to profit fro= m > harming citizens), but I noticed that the authenticity and accuracy of > the system may be affected if users are allowed to modify their > software. This seems to be the core of some problems with regards to > software freedom---here, the user is not running software to complete > their tasks. Rather, it's the government's way to maintain public > safety, therefore I believe that whether users should be able to modify= > software in these conditions is up to discussion. Back to the point, > since a green-code proof from the system is needed to get in a lot of > places, a person basically needs to use proprietary software to live a > normal life (to get into coffee shops, for example). This is indeed a double injustice- as well as proprietary software,=20 constant possession of a digital device (probably a tracking one) is=20 made a prerequisite for many common activities as well. In relation to the right to modify contact tracing software, there is=20 definitely a discussion to be had! Personally I see no reason to=20 restrict that right; relying heavily on the validity of the data such=20 systems produce seems doomed to fail for other reasons anyway, and=20 fabricating a plausible dataset is far harder than just "forgetting your = phone at home". > In America and other countries, things aren't that good either. For on= e, > the pandemic isn't controlled well. As a consequence, a lot of places > require negative COVID tests to do stuff. A thread on the LibrePlanet > mailing list discusses this issue, as a lot of these tests require > nonfree software on users' phones. Note that this thread spans several= > months long, as it is a hot discussion, so look in the september and > october archives too. The thread explains the implications clearly, th= us > I am not discussing it here. >=20 > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-08/msg00008= =2Ehtml >=20 > Additionally, I heard that some US courts require ZOOM for online cases= , > therefore it seems that a person' right to judicial justice comes at th= e > cost of digital freedom. I can't confirm this, but if that's true, I'm= > truely disappointed at the judicial system, even though I'm not a US > citizen. >=20 > I am looking foward to a freer society, or at least one where the above= > problems get solved. Definitely- let us hope that these measures die with the emergency they=20 were a response to, and the others can be fought off successfully. > Sincerely, > Andrew Yu >=20 > Verbatim redistribution of this memo is allowed worldwide, but > changing it is not allowed, as this is not a technical memo, rather, > a politicol-philosophical opinion paper. >=20 > _______________________________________________ > libreplanet-discuss mailing list > libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss >=20 --eXTK8JRe6beZgRt6k5cyNidA7ElPb0BNc-- --GIWYftnuwOI0ZtkQy01kInRIBBl6XAm3l Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="OpenPGP_signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="OpenPGP_signature" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- wsF5BAABCAAjFiEEOJ7723DUo6cHAvZpb/fnLrKu8LQFAmF3UQgFAwAAAAAACgkQb/fnLrKu8LSI 7w/+K5WkSlry3AKXTterKeu5nOteRT9AJgsbnDPxNYGPdw8bPamwFG/194ar+antdgT4Z2Acbwbl tprLJWFFaXIAa6ZkAqbKinet+s/Qr897SsZNHY0hKXFbAX/brvj/jYtJh9R38LekLYcRdx62Q2EE UOr4p60Cm2E2FXOKQxiZaO44Gz/nh4qbWIKZ+kU8F2DFVquutizUknStBJqLgrnmPuND/B6bEn1b 1d/liwihjI2Hy/XjPeaVf+8nMVsD7vxB7F3CCA042nG3dqZiAXzktSxAz2QN7UkHVFqdFyHESU9r Izcp+bnuOFPhIWHdM6UMgRyAoC74m1CsZYUpEVF2ERHli1wX+CiyOKkrwI/ueRmOfb6WSnbKHG1G 4jRdhwe2ZjuwrWV3yhBqZ1glmJUP1Rgc6/Jlk0qEUJRcVpqW+ccYMkZ4E3G7pmUytvVeD5oLSglJ lmH2GmsPN0Wz5GT9oB3ZGf3ZpQNS9ffS+CNSb8zAl1bXCZ15+8JRhqYVpft3ZmW560G9d5sEO5di bxnDC9kNUHMs0haP9569Srdzir/gJW5Jr1ucJscOKaMIfbYnvrrIImxGBWb/MCWPbNkTn+AvxkHe uVhBSojImUYs71/XU1YDTLISM/SF0MrpNXe3Okmpbk4J4Zr20b5Xqa1J9GyrkBQK5fhAGdusDSXt lQk= =+D1g -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --GIWYftnuwOI0ZtkQy01kInRIBBl6XAm3l-- --===============6332964178923054249== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: inline X19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX19fX18KbGlicmVwbGFu ZXQtZGlzY3VzcyBtYWlsaW5nIGxpc3QKbGlicmVwbGFuZXQtZGlzY3Vzc0BsaWJyZXBsYW5ldC5v cmcKaHR0cHM6Ly9saXN0cy5saWJyZXBsYW5ldC5vcmcvbWFpbG1hbi9saXN0aW5mby9saWJyZXBs YW5ldC1kaXNjdXNz --===============6332964178923054249==--