Unscrupulous uses of portable technology ======================================== (c) 2000 Andrew Garrard http://www.fluppet.demon.co.uk/ Werner Habel recently posted some guidelines for people wishing to use an onHand as a cheating aid in exams. This article caused substantial dissent in the community which uses programmable wrist-based computers, on the grounds that it was inappropriate for such activities to be condoned in a manner which implied the assent of the members of that community. In response, Werner proposed that someone should write a complementary article to set the record straight. It actually seemed to me to be appropriate to write two articles, one to discuss the effects that technology such as the onHand have on morally dubious activities, and one to discuss more morally acceptable uses for the technology. This is the first of those articles, and I should stress at the start that all opinions contained herein are my own and should not be considered to be those of other contributors to this forum. I will endeavour to provide the second article shortly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Because Werner's original article applied to cheating in exams, I'll be concentrating on that field, but I'll touch on other related areas. Portable technology has been useful for hiding information pretty much since its invention. Students have cheated in exams since the concept of an examination began. In the past (and indeed today) students hid crib notes about their person, in stationery, and anywhere they could get at it during the exam. Illicit collaboration between students through whispers, passed notes, and merely copying from neighbours has gone on since time immemorial. Examiners have been obliged to insure that this does not take place; finding notes, overhearing whispers and suchlike are evidence of cheating, and obviously the cheater can go to devious extents to avoid detection. Technology has made it harder to find a crib if you don't know what to look for. Spying used to rely on microdots to hide information; similarly data can be hidden in the less visible portions of electronic data nowadays (which is how digital watermarking works). This use of technology is distinct from the field of cryptanalysis because normally suspicion of cheating is adequate to annul an exam result. It's always been possible to take an encrypted crib sheet into an exam - and many means of encryption exist that can be decoded in one's head. It is, however, hard to make any such crib look like anything other than a crib. Many exams require, for example, a transparent pencil case, so that a crib would be visible. For that reason, personal digital assistants (the equivalent of a note pad) are of no interest to someone who is cheating in an exam. If you're seen reading one in an exam, it can be assumed that you're cheating. In many exams, it is appropriate and necessary to have an electronic calculator available. At the stage when this became common practice, a new development took place: programmable calculators became available. With varying degrees of sophistication, these can be used to store cribs while it appears that the student is using the device legitimately. At least in my native England this rapidly lead to a sequence of rules: 'You may not take a programmable calculator into an exam'. This was a problem because it normally meant a graphical calculator; there are a number of programmable calculators ont he market with only a normal numeric (or alphanumeric) display. 'You may take only this brand of nonprogrammable calculator into an exam'. Some establishments provide 'approved' labels for calculators. The problem, of course, is that the calculators get out of date quickly. 'You may take only this brand of programmable calculator into an exam'. I have been on a course which required a specific brand of programmable calculator. The teachers then knew how to reset the calculator and remove any information stored in it. This requires some training for teachers, and has the same problem that the facilities available to the calculator may be less than leading edge, but it does get around the programmability limitation. The situation is made more complex by watches that store data. I should stress that this isn't a new thing; Casio data bank watches have been around since the 1980s, and while they couldn't store much information, they could still be a sensible crib. There have even been programmable watches (that ran BASIC, as I recall) around since that time. It is, of course, reasonable for a student to want access to a watch during an exam. The difference is possibly that modern wrist computing devices can actually hold quite a lot of information, and can even do sensible amounts of calculation. The additional functionality makes the capabilities of the watch less obvious. It's plain that taking a calculator watch into an exam in which calculators are banned is going to get it removed (I have sat exams in which all digital watches were banned, presumably for this reason). However, it's far from clear to anyone who isn't used to the device that an onHand or Ruputer is a perfectly capable calculator. Even more so a DataLink. Recent developments make matters worse. Casio's wrist camera would allow a large number of pages of notes to be captured and reviewed, without the functionality being obvious and without much effort on the cheater's behalf. Watches with cellphone SMS capability will extend to exams the problems already seen in lessons, where PDAs and cell phones can be used to pass information. Exams are normally sat in a more restricted environment where such behaviour would be detected. Another emergent technology is bluetooth; if in-ear headphones become wireless, an MP3 watch (or even a player in a bag) could be used to narrate notes at the examinee. Beyond the educational arena, Casio's camera watch is effectively a consumer version of a spy camera. While it's not truly hidden, it's certainly possible to use it for industrial espionage. The same would be true of a future MP3 watch if it contained a microphone - or, indeed, a cellphone. All of these involve little innovation beyond the intended use of the technology. Indeed, Werner merely used the note-taking facility of his device, and made trivial efforts to stop it looking as though he was cheating. In some places (for example for a university exam) I would expect his measures to be inappropriate; if he was seen playing with his watch and the invigilator was suspicious, I would expect the device to be confiscated and examined until it was entirely clear that no illicit data was contained. In an internal school exam, the teacher may just confiscate the device until the end of the exam (which, of course, holds a moral: if you must cheat, don't rely on cheating). The future trends of technology are, perhaps, more interesting to this forum. For example, when watches with SMS and WAP capabilities become available, it would be possible to use the entire web as a crib. A bluetooth link to a laptop or PDA held in a bag would have similar consequences. Pens with built-in intelligence are coming, and they will have similar consequences. There are more novel approaches to cheating. It's perfectly possible to have a dither pattern on a transparent pencil case that, when lined up, reveals a crib. Storing a crib as a sequence of names in a data bank would do well to hide it. Approaches exist that are no doubt less prone to arising suspicion than prodding an onHand unduly. What is the recourse to this? It's unreasonable for teachers to be expected to be expert enough in all technologies to be able to detect a crib on a watch. This behaviour will continue until a significant proportion of students use these devices to cheat; fortunately at the moment wrist computers tend to be devices loved by geeks and technophiles (I speak for myself), who tend to be the more studious type. When the cheating becomes an issue, the only recourse will be for examiners to invalidate a result if any suspicious behaviour takes place. Typically in my experience someone who is suspected of cheating will be invigilated individually, so that their every move is watched and cheating will be obvious. It may also be the case that high technology devices will be banned from exams, to substantial inconvenience for those who wish to use them legitimately. On the plus side, deviousness and intelligence are related, and those who need to cheat will often be less capable of doing so effectively than would on average be the case. The long term alternative is a 'big brother' approach. Electronic supervision will, before long, be able to flag suspicious behaviour to teachers - at least in as much as peering at a watch goes. I don't welcome this future. Exams can be intimidating enough. It has to be said that, in some sense, technology does facilitate cheating. This is perhaps a natural consequence if it facilitating other aspects of life. I don't want to see exams become another case for the RIP bill currently undergoing review in the UK. On behalf of those of us who would like some slack to make legitimate use of technology, I can only appeal to those who consider cheating to be aware of the consequences. However, this can be said for all the consequences of cheating (espionage, or whatever) and presumably this appeal will therefore fall on deaf ears. Can the rest of us do anything about it? Probably not. But it's not the misuse of the technology that is most harmful - it's the harm that that use does to the technology advocates. The internet is starting to overcome that, by being useful, after years of adverse publicity from those claiming that it was used only for disseminating pornography and for terrorist activity. Actually only a small proportion of the online community is in any way involved with either, but the reputations of all of us were damaged by the publicity of the few. The anarchists' cookbook is a case in point. Can we do anything about this? Very little. All we can do is present a good first impression, try to show the respectable face of the technology we use, and show how much it improves our lifestyles. Misuse make it harder to get the technology accepted (and, therefore, produced). That is what we need to counter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I repeat that all views contained in this document are my own, and I do not necessarily speak for the wrist computing community.