Summary: Welcome to episode 195 ("Search History Overreach'") of the EdTech Situation Room from October 21, 2020, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed privacy-violating subpoenas Google is now complying with, which provide identifying information about ALL people in a certain context who are searching for particular terms online. Historically, accessing knowledge (like checking out or reading particular library books) has not been something to which law enforcement officials in the United States have NOT had ready access. Our conversations touched on privacy issues involving VPNs, the TOR browser, how TCP/IP header packets include identifying MAC address information for the device(s) people use to access the Internet, and more. Additional topics discussed included surveillance capitalism, revelations that antivirus company AVAST secretly sold user data, Cory Doctorow's decision to write less dystopian SciFi, and a new competitor to Zoom in the academic videoconferencing market: Engageli. On the Google / ChromeOS front, Google's decision to extend the supported life of ChromeOS on many Chromebooks (to 9-10 years), Acer's forthcoming Chromebook with Snapdragon chips, and the overall arc of computer processors to use smartphone chips were discussed. The U.S. Department of Justice's newly announced anti-trust case against Google for alleged monopolistic behavior in maintaining its global dominance in Internet search, as well as an outstanding Renee DiResta (@noupside) article in the Atlantic about the rise and continued influence of QAnon and conspiracy groups to push conspiracy theories into mainstream media was also highlighted. Geeks of the Week included a YouTube Creators' tutorial about editing videos in the YouTube Studio interface, an outstanding Sway podcast interview with Elon Musk, and the cellular alternative provider, Visible. Our show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com, and compressed to a smaller video version (about 100MB) on AmazonS3 using Handbrake software. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights (normally) if you can at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC. All shownotes are available on http://edtechSR.com/links.
