Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Promoted as a safety feature to ensure they knew where the kids were and that they were ok. I was asked to go in with my brother and talk to them about it. They said it was all ok because that the actual fingerprints aren't stored on the system, only information derived from the fingerprints, the system wasn't costing them anything because some Edu-Tech company was paying for it as a test, no other persons had complained about the tech, not one, we were the first, and it's kind of weird that we are opposed to children's safety.
We asked that my nephew not participate in the trial and they agreed, though he reported after that he was often forced to be scanned anyway.
A couple years later I asked another parent about the fingerprint scanners and they didn't know what I was talking about, so either they were removed, or parents are simply not reading the notices they are sent home and often even asked to sign.
I hate this blatantly flawed reasoning. The data collection is the problem, and it doesn't matter if you store pictures of fingers/faces/irises/ids or just their post-process signatures, it's still data collection.
1. Look at all of the people throughout history who fought for education, e.g. blacks in America. Obviously they perceived some value in receiving an education and did not just have it imposed on them.
2. Look at the statements of educators and public education advocates throughout history. They speak broadly about the advantage to the individual and the ability to better oneself.
I could go on, but the reality is that you can always argue that something fundamentally comes down to "power." It's such a vague concept and so ever-present in the relations of social animals like humans that it isn't really separable from anything we do. You could argue basically every idea we have is just a collective illusion to foster social cohesion. That's the thesis of the book "Sapiens," for example. I think comparing public schools to "you are the product" things like Facebook is sort of facile and silly though.
Public education is hardly free. Parents are generally required by law to educate their children. Society has generally decided to do that collectively, sharing the cost via taxes. Attendance is one tool used in enforcing the education requirement.
Are patients in countries with nationalized healthcare the ‘product’.
If I recall correctly in the UK WWI comscription revealed a disturbingly large percentage were too unhealthy to serve in ways which could have been prevented with medical care. If it was actually altruistic or even optimality related it would have been addressed earlier for either humanitarian or productivity reasons.
Starting school at 7:30 has negative academic value, because half the students aren't even awake yet.
It's done because it's convenient for parents, who have to drop their kids off, who, for some reason, are 'incapable' of walking to school like their parents did.
A class of 32-35 students per teacher has no positive academic value. It is purely a cost-saving measure, that leaves everyone with a half-assed education.
Having to ask permission to piss, hall passes, limits on the number of students allowed to use the restroom at a time (typically 1/class) has more in common with a prison, or maybe boot camp, than a school. And, of course, there's no time in the 5-minute between class break for everyone who needs to, to both use the facilities, and get to their class, on time. It is done purely for social control reasons.
The expectation that teachers also do the job of social workers results in a lot of anti-academic outcomes. When your teacher, in a class of 30, is more concerned about how to deal with behaviour problems for a kid whose parents are, say, raging, shitty alcoholics, is not particularly conductive to the academic development of their peers. But that's not the school's, or the teacher's fault, so I can give that a pass.
AI essay grading (which is a more modern development, and works about as well as asking a monkey to grade essays) is the new thing that's popular to complain about. Negative academic value, but it saves time for teachers, who don't want to spend hours grading the hours of homework they assign. I don't blame them for preferring to have a 10-hour workday, instead of a 15-hour one, but still...
They're hoovering up PII that belongs to children and giving it to some company, and parents have to just trust that both the school and said company can keep it safe.
Safe, to be used later to build a profile of your child, and sell it to employers, insurance companies, the police, intelligence agencies, or anyone else willing to pay a few cents or send a subpoena.
I'm quite "privacy aware" and don't really have any problems with this. The schools act under GDPR, the data stored is just a hash of the fingerprint, and compared to the data held on the school management software, a fingerprint hash is pretty negligible.
My kid could pay in cash, but that introduces the possibility of losing it or having it stolen. They could use an ID card, which again can be lost and would still end up storing data.
It took about a week for them to learn their PIN (during which time they had a card with the number) when they started school but, several years later, it works fine and doesn't involve exposing their biometric or other PII data.
The other side is that children learn there is an intense adult response to certain topics. That may lead to excessive interest in that topic. Or ever more secretive behavior. Or an inability to challenge authority.
On one side of the balance is maybe a student's life. On the other is more students' mental health and autonomy. Life usually wins, but only history can judge whether that's wise.
The monitoring for safety argument is merely an excuse to eliminate the right to privacy and shift the power to a government entity. Never in the history of mankind has this power ever been abused.
If this were possible schools would already be doing it.
Meanwhile, the article is about third-party data slurpers sitting in between the school and the Chromebooks that are supplied to a captive audience of millions of minors. The tradeoff here isn't between security and freedom. It's between whatever security the third-party claims to deliver and the risks from what the third-party actually does with the data to turn a profit. We have to gain insight into that fundamental question before we can begin reflect on your point.
It's pretty amusing to me that I used to be the weird one connected to the internet all the time because I pretty much couldn't do anything else, and now that's a shared experience with the entire new generation.
When I grew up, during evenings weekends and holidays, kids ran around in the neighborhood with their friends from sunup to sundown. Outside of mealtimes, parents had no idea where we were.
A generation later and parents started to time-box everything their kids do, soccer practise, play dates etc.
I think this is what makes millenials so comfortable with online surveillance, they see it as benevolent and benign, just like their parents were.
1) Ambition for kids to get into the right preschool so they can get into Harvard or whatever, causing more parents to put their kids in 'enriching' scheduled activities.
2) Unreasonable fear fueled by the media. Ironically, stranger child abduction gas been declining steadily for decades and is at an all time low.
This has effectively removed more free range kids to the point now that if you wanted your kids to go play outside, they wouldn't find any other kids out there to play with.
This is why I call it a reverse network effect. The value in playing outside for a kid is now lower since there are fewer potential playmates out there.
Its not all doom and gloom, there's hope for things to go the other way, towards privacy and freedom.
I worry about the effect this near-real-time performance thing will have on them—it seems different, somehow, from just knowing your parents will see a graded paper come home in a week or two, to do it and immediately post it, where parents can comment and everything. It's creepy.
I guess as long as someone offers security - it’s ok to disregard privacy.
How is it monitoring searches done at home in the evening?
I worked in a school district for a couple years where we did this. Certain keywords in searches would prompt email notifications too.
if it's unreasonable to expect a child to clear this bar, then they are not yet responsible enough to be entrusted with their own computing device.
When do they get clearance to use their brains?
Are the users expected to store their machines in fort Knox under armed guard?
>if you are doing even the bare minimum to secure the computer, you should not be vulnerable to these kind of pranks from siblings/classmates.
This is a statement that reads to me like "implementation is left as an exercise for the reader" type proclamation of how easy it is to secure things. Followed up with a snide remark about children not being ready for the machines.
Adults are constantly getting their machines compromised so it really seems like you're just applying a greater standard to people with less experience
of course not, that's an incredibly uncharitable reading of "reasonable", not even an intelligence agency would set such an impossible standard.
keep in mind this whole thread started with a comment about "what if your brother googles something bad as a prank?" I'm literally just talking about setting a password that isn't "password" and locking the computer when you walk away from it. this will protect you from attacks by the vast majority of schoolchildren. if a child can't prevent their friends from misusing their school account, they really shouldn't have one. I'm not sure why this is considered snide or controversial at all.
Actual adults have terrible security practices. Are you seriously trying to hold kids, who had no choice in the matter, to the same security standards? They’re kids, and likely won’t even understand the gravity of the situation we’re discussing here.
These aren’t grown adults working at a company. They’re kids who had laptops foisted upon them.
> Actual adults have terrible security practices. Are you seriously trying to hold kids, who had no choice in the matter, to the same security standards? They’re kids, and likely won’t even understand the gravity of the situation we’re discussing here.
> These aren’t grown adults working at a company. They’re kids who had laptops foisted upon them.
this is my point. I'm not holding the kids to any standard; I'm just saying this is a fundamental precondition to being entrusted with an account at an organization. if it's not reasonable to expect this of them, the school should not be issuing computers/accounts. the ultimate responsibility absolutely lies with the school.
>if it's unreasonable to expect a child to clear this bar, then they are not yet responsible enough to be entrusted with their own computing device.
There is no English interpretation of this that comes across as you saying it's the schools responsibility. It 100% sounds like you put the onus on the children
I don't think most organizations would hold you at fault if someone stole your computer and used a hardware exploit to gain access to your account. but if you have a blatantly terrible password or just leave the machine unsecured in a cafe, they will probably hold you accountable for whatever happens. I know my employer would.
I know of at least one country in Eastern Europe where this is true. If someone steals your car and kills someone with it, you are in serious trouble. I do not agree with the law.
This makes sense in a corporate or military environment, but is simply not reasonable for home use. You're claiming that one can never allow anyone else to have unsupervised physical access to the machine (regardless of whether it's locked, powered off, etc)
Bring back Apple IIs in the classrooms. And the TV/VCR combo on the wheeled cart.
That is so unbelievably disgusting. This kind of abusive invasion of privacy should be a crime.
We locked the devices down so that student's couldn't get to certain kinds of apps, parts of the web, and had to be used with school issued Apple IDs. We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices. It's no different than monitoring what goes on in a school's computer lab, except the iPads are mobile devices.
Giving devices to kids is not saving on educational costs, and it's not making their backpacks any lighter. Books don't require tech support lines, chat bots, or surveillance tech to keep it all humming smoothly.
But worse of all, it's totally outside the proper purview of our education systems. Public schools don't implement, monitor, and protect a new mailbox on every student's property just for school-related mail delivery. Why should they be giving kids email addresses and expecting them to use those addresses?
School-issued Apple IDs? I cannot be the only one who reads that with extreme disgust and concern.
That something is 'government owned' is no excuse for such a disgusting violation of privacy. Services paid by taxes should serve, not act as means to control people.
> We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices.
Why?? By what legal theory?? If person A gives item X to person B, why would A be responsible for what B does with X? Maybe if B was a minor and did not get parental consent - but that was not the case, was it?
If you assume that for every decision they make the #1 concern is to make it as difficult as possible to personally blame them for anything, that'll be a good guide to understanding their behavior.
If the alarm is triggered at a higher level, the school direction will gasp and remove the program in a hurry for fear of being signaled as a conflictive place with low score. If not the disruption and massive lose of time and calling to annoyed parents would taint or nuke the stupid data collecting bussiness.
Obviously being watched all the time will cause distress and strange behaviour in students, something that psychologists will understand perfectly with just an innocent sad look.
The monitoring seems mostly limited to school laptops and cloud services, so presumably students who don't like it can use their phones if they have them. The companies all have more invasive home products but those report to the parents rather than the school.
The problem arises from immediate action on the part of the administrators, stemming from zero-tolerance policies that are usually present. Exercising restraint with respect to these tools would lead to better outcomes, in my opinion.
In fairness, there are a lot of laws out there that compel teachers, administrators, and school resource officers to take certain disciplinary actions without regard to their personal feelings on the matter. Zero Tolerance is like the whole Mandatory Minimum thing. A judge may know that it is asinine to sentence this pot dealing kid to 10 years in prison, but the law says that's the minimum, so what can the judge really do?
If a school resource officer sees something in the computer logs, or on security video, or wherever, I mean, they are police officers. They may have certain legal obligations that come with having reviewed that evidence. They accessed it, the system knows it was accessed. If something new happens and some other officer ends up reviewing all this information, the fact that the resource officer accessed it and had knowledge of previous offenses will cause trouble for that resource officer.
If you want them to show restraint, then you need to change the laws. Teachers, resource officers, etc, don't have the power to do that unilaterally. We would have to give power to ignore things to teachers, administrators, resource officers, coaches, etc.
Overrule the law, declare it unjust, be the balance to the legislative branch. Yeah, that comes with the possibility of appeals and having another judge change the ruling. But that's how the system should work.
You're absolutely right about school employees, though - they're required to act lest their lack of action affect their careers. What needs to change is that the accused student needs the same rights an adult would have: the right to have your day in "court" with the possibility that the decision is 'not guilty.'
As a member of society I, for one, appreciate their efforts to protect our collective privacy.
Fines dont always have to be about monetary compensation. You can make it criminal, then things would change. There are other ways other than money to act as detertent. Shutting down private schools could be one.
But go ahead, treat children like criminals. Perhaps some will even do a good old school shooting and you could finally be proud of yourselves that you have seen it coming. It would let the industry flourish like nothing else.
"Schools feel massive pressure to demonstrate that they’re doing something to keep kids safe" - No kidding...