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A legal document

LEGAL UPDATE

A year ago, Mr. Erik Johnson filed a federal lawsuit against Proctorio. Yesterday, Mr. Johnson withdrew that lawsuit. A joint statement from Mr. Johnson and Proctorio in connection with the dismissal appears below. Joint Statement by Erik Johnson & Proctorio, Inc. Education is rapidly changing in the United States and around the world. Today, technology is an integral part of life and is being used in classrooms and by schools in ways that are both new and productive, but that also raise concerns for those most directly impacted—students and their family members. Proctorio, a leader in remote test proctoring software, understands these concerns and takes them seriously. Proctorio also hears the impassioned criticism about its technology. Proctorio welcomes all fair and honest critiques about its online proctoring technology and about this industry. Erik Johnson has been an important voice raising concerns about the online proctoring industry, and Proctorio has listened to and appreciated his perspective. Mr. Johnson understands that some of his comments about Proctorio were imprecise and presented without context. With this statement, we would like to set the record straight. We recognize that some face detection and gaze detection algorithms have higher error rates, or work less accurately, for people of color. These issues have long existed to some degree in all camera-based technology. Many passionate and talented people are devoted to finding and stamping out these disparities and working to stop them from happening in the first place. Both Proctorio and Mr. Johnson are proudly and publicly a part of this endeavor. Mr. Johnson's statement that Proctorio uses 'racist algorithms to detect faces'—which Mr. Johnson based on a flawed blog post that relied on an unrepresentative dataset without a single image taken by a webcam—created the misleading impression that Proctorio is not sensitive to these issues, when in fact Proctorio has made substantial efforts to address them. Proctorio is not a “racist” company, and its algorithm is not a 'racist' algorithm, just because it uses some camera-based technology. We both understand that a more nuanced discussion is required for the critical topic of proctoring software technology that affects so many. Likewise, students' needs and circumstances vary widely, as do the accommodations they may need when taking tests. While some face difficulties using remote proctoring, others are more comfortable taking tests online. Most importantly, any statements implying that Proctorio's executives have a prurient interest in teenagers, or any statements implying that the technology is used towards those ends, are completely false and tasteless. While Mr. Johnson did not make these statements himself, he regrets amplifying them. Proctorio would also like to correct the record on some other topics that Mr. Johnson has previously tweeted about: • Proctorio's software only collects and logs data during tests, not 24/7. • Proctorio's software doesn't route all of students' Chrome browsing traffic through Proctorio's servers. • Proctorio's software uses face detection technology, not face recognition. Through dialogue with Proctorio, Mr. Johnson has learned that Proctorio's executive did not ban Mr. Johnson's IP address from using the software. Rather, Mr. Johnson's investigations of the software triggered an automatic ban, and Proctorio contacted Mr. Johnson's university and offered to un-ban him soon after. Proctorio has also engaged in dialogue with Mr. Johnson over the past year, including removing a legacy and unused error screen message that Mr. Johnson called out as disrespectful to test-takers. We both are ready to work together and learn from each other moving forward. Mr. Johnson and Proctorio are working toward the same goals, and Proctorio has already taken meaningful steps to address concerns that exist in the industry. Proctorio, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Johnson's counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have agreed that, in the coming weeks, they will sit down together to constructively discuss Mr. Johnson's and EFF's concerns with online proctoring, and what Proctorio can do to continue to address legitimate concerns about this new frontier in education technology. This is an exciting opportunity for all of us, and we look forward to the results of our work together. Signed by Erik Johnson and Mike Olsen, Proctorio Founder & CEO

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