5 ms·

Schools Are Spending Millions on High-Tech Surveillance of Kids

80 points by joeyespo 9y ago

bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
Any parent that thinks schools won't end up abusing their newfound surveillance powers is deluding themselves. Look at the example of WebcamGate at Lower Merion High School in 2010. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School
- LurkersWillLurk 9y ago
  Here's a more specific article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_Scho...
- Digital-Citizen 9y ago
  Mass surveillance is an abuse. One could go further in exploring additional abuses by looking into what is done with the data (Where is the data stored? Who else has access? What do they do with the data? Is any of this knowable?) but indiscriminately collecting information on people in the hope it will somehow prove useful is nothing but a cover for seeding people with the notion that it's right and proper to have no privacy. Consider this excerpt from the article: "“Schools are justified in thinking about safety, both in terms of gun violence and other possible hazards,” Rachel Levinson, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Gizmodo. “At the same time, these technologies do not exist in a vacuum; we know, for instance, that facial recognition is less accurate for women and people of color, and also that school discipline is imposed more harshly on children of color.”" Everything Levinson says here is vague and remarkably inarticulate. Being concerned is insufficient and a better written article would have asked Levinson further questions to clarify these claims. Precisely how is a bunch of data like this going to curb gun violence? What other hazards are you referring to, exactly? Why should we be concerned about the details of accuracy of the collected information while we're questioning whether it was ethical and useful to collect this data in the first place? Which school situations where "discipline is imposed more harshly on children of color" will be resolved by watching surveillance footage or examining location data? All the more reason why people should get their own computers, never use school-issued computers, and make sure that their own computers run only a free software OS, and install nothing but free software on top of that. Also everyone (not just parents and students) need to politically organize to let students use privacy respecting books and (only if strictly needed) computer education that can be used from any computer OS.
ourmandave 9y ago
I don't think I would allow my daughter to have a laptop where the spyware comes pre-installed. Assuming the school district doesn't abuse it (like webcamgate) what's to stop every hacker from here to Moscow in this day and age?
- shostack 9y ago
  Do parents have rights when it comes to this? What if the only way to compete school work is with a school issued laptop?
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Change schools, or if public school get involved with the school board and make a stink.
  - lwhalen 9y ago
    Home-schooling, and/or private schooling
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    Private schools can set their own rules. With a public school you could just start shouting about the 4th amendment.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  Its issued for the purpose of doing schoolwork. What do you care if some Russian hackers gets their hands on your child's science fair project? That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone.
  - tzs 9y ago
    > That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone For the camera, I can see it (pun intended) as electrical tape is usually opaque to visible light. But the microphone? All electrical tape should do over the microphone is lower the input level slightly.
mLuby 9y ago
Obligatory Black Mirror reference: S4E2 "Arkangel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8
blattimwind 9y ago
Land of the Free ⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾⁽³⁾ ⁽¹⁾ No jaywalking ⁽²⁾ Permit 38A required to hold children outside areas designated safe per § 477e of title XVI ⁽³⁾ Civil rights temporarily suspended
dkoubsky 9y ago
At my high school - a private prep school - we are required to have iPads. All of us were required to install a monitoring program that has access to most of what we do on the iPads (internet searches, messages, etc.). To my knowledge, it hasn't been used to incriminate anyone but it still makes me wary.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  There will be an entire generation of kids for whom spying on everything they do on their computer till age18 will have been normalized. What happens when they start participating in denocracy. It's hard to imagine they'll have the same expectations of personal privacy after that.
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    I grew up with the knowledge that everything I did was monitored, given the nature of my parents employment. All it led to was a lifetime of learning how to improve my opsec and now I work in the field myself. Continuous improvement!
  - eikenberry 9y ago
    This is just their school issued Ipad. They'd hopefully have a personal computing device of some sort that they'd be free to do what they want on. Assuming they don't have helicopter parents who have to control every aspect of their kids lives, then they're just screwed.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Right -- it's the school's iPad, and they can set the terms of use. Do schools still have libraries? They did when I went, and you can be sure they curated the set of books in the catalog and kept records of who checked out which ones.
      - jstarfish 9y ago
        Even the public libraries started disclosing checkout history to agencies with the advent of the PATRIOT act.
psyc 9y ago
Today I learned about Social Sentinel[0], since both right-twitter and left-twitter are condemning it today. Kind of heartwarming to see everyone (except LE and opportunistic entrepreneurs) agree on something for a change. Anyway, seems the idea is to analyze kids' social media accounts and send minority reports to the police. All too easy to spin it like "nothing to see here" too. Interesting that this company has been around for 4 years and I can't find a single testimonial about any attacks it prevented. [0] https://www.socialsentinel.com https://www.socialsentinel.com
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  Eventually one of the parties will oppose it more strongly than the other one, at which point the other one will be forced to support it. I believe this is known as "spontaneous symmetry breaking". Also for what it's worth "minority report" was the term in the film for when one of the precogs disagreed with the other two, so it's not really applicable here. You'd be forgiven for forgetting this fact though, because the plot doesn't actually feature one.
  - psyc 9y ago
    It was a play on words.
- gruez 9y ago
  >Today I learned about Social Sentinel[0], since both right-twitter and left-twitter are condemning it today. Why? Just skimming the page, it seems to be monitoring public social media posts for threats. Am I missing something? It's not like they're forcing students to grant access to their social media accounts so they can be monitored.
  - psyc 9y ago
    Because it’s a misguided idea, more likely to result in false-positive hassles, chilling effects, and general paranoia, than to actually prevent crimes.
John_KZ 9y ago
Do the parents know about this? I can't imaging this happening in my country without massive, nation-wide action to stop it and fire/punish those that tried to implement the system.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  I'm curious, which country? I'm in Norway and I think would cause an outcry here too.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Feniks 9y ago
Amusing how the education system in the US is chronically underfunded and underperforming yet there's money for THIS. Hire more councillors. I bet it will actually be cheaper in the long run.

80 points by joeyespo 9y ago

Any parent that thinks schools won't end up abusing their newfound surveillance powers is deluding themselves. Look at the example of WebcamGate at Lower Merion High School in 2010. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School

LurkersWillLurk 9y ago
Here's a more specific article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_Scho...
Digital-Citizen 9y ago
Mass surveillance is an abuse. One could go further in exploring additional abuses by looking into what is done with the data (Where is the data stored? Who else has access? What do they do with the data? Is any of this knowable?) but indiscriminately collecting information on people in the hope it will somehow prove useful is nothing but a cover for seeding people with the notion that it's right and proper to have no privacy. Consider this excerpt from the article: "“Schools are justified in thinking about safety, both in terms of gun violence and other possible hazards,” Rachel Levinson, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Gizmodo. “At the same time, these technologies do not exist in a vacuum; we know, for instance, that facial recognition is less accurate for women and people of color, and also that school discipline is imposed more harshly on children of color.”" Everything Levinson says here is vague and remarkably inarticulate. Being concerned is insufficient and a better written article would have asked Levinson further questions to clarify these claims. Precisely how is a bunch of data like this going to curb gun violence? What other hazards are you referring to, exactly? Why should we be concerned about the details of accuracy of the collected information while we're questioning whether it was ethical and useful to collect this data in the first place? Which school situations where "discipline is imposed more harshly on children of color" will be resolved by watching surveillance footage or examining location data? All the more reason why people should get their own computers, never use school-issued computers, and make sure that their own computers run only a free software OS, and install nothing but free software on top of that. Also everyone (not just parents and students) need to politically organize to let students use privacy respecting books and (only if strictly needed) computer education that can be used from any computer OS.

ourmandave 9y ago

I don't think I would allow my daughter to have a laptop where the spyware comes pre-installed. Assuming the school district doesn't abuse it (like webcamgate) what's to stop every hacker from here to Moscow in this day and age?

shostack 9y ago
Do parents have rights when it comes to this? What if the only way to compete school work is with a school issued laptop?
- ams6110 9y ago
  Change schools, or if public school get involved with the school board and make a stink.
- lwhalen 9y ago
  Home-schooling, and/or private schooling
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Private schools can set their own rules. With a public school you could just start shouting about the 4th amendment.
jstarfish 9y ago
Its issued for the purpose of doing schoolwork. What do you care if some Russian hackers gets their hands on your child's science fair project? That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone.
- tzs 9y ago
  > That said, do put electrical tape over the webcam and microphone For the camera, I can see it (pun intended) as electrical tape is usually opaque to visible light. But the microphone? All electrical tape should do over the microphone is lower the input level slightly.

mLuby 9y ago

Obligatory Black Mirror reference: S4E2 "Arkangel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8

blattimwind 9y ago

Land of the Free ⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾⁽³⁾ ⁽¹⁾ No jaywalking ⁽²⁾ Permit 38A required to hold children outside areas designated safe per § 477e of title XVI ⁽³⁾ Civil rights temporarily suspended

dkoubsky 9y ago

At my high school - a private prep school - we are required to have iPads. All of us were required to install a monitoring program that has access to most of what we do on the iPads (internet searches, messages, etc.). To my knowledge, it hasn't been used to incriminate anyone but it still makes me wary.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
There will be an entire generation of kids for whom spying on everything they do on their computer till age18 will have been normalized. What happens when they start participating in denocracy. It's hard to imagine they'll have the same expectations of personal privacy after that.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  I grew up with the knowledge that everything I did was monitored, given the nature of my parents employment. All it led to was a lifetime of learning how to improve my opsec and now I work in the field myself. Continuous improvement!
- eikenberry 9y ago
  This is just their school issued Ipad. They'd hopefully have a personal computing device of some sort that they'd be free to do what they want on. Assuming they don't have helicopter parents who have to control every aspect of their kids lives, then they're just screwed.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Right -- it's the school's iPad, and they can set the terms of use. Do schools still have libraries? They did when I went, and you can be sure they curated the set of books in the catalog and kept records of who checked out which ones.
    - jstarfish 9y ago
      Even the public libraries started disclosing checkout history to agencies with the advent of the PATRIOT act.

psyc 9y ago

Today I learned about Social Sentinel[0], since both right-twitter and left-twitter are condemning it today. Kind of heartwarming to see everyone (except LE and opportunistic entrepreneurs) agree on something for a change. Anyway, seems the idea is to analyze kids' social media accounts and send minority reports to the police. All too easy to spin it like "nothing to see here" too. Interesting that this company has been around for 4 years and I can't find a single testimonial about any attacks it prevented. [0] https://www.socialsentinel.com https://www.socialsentinel.com

OscarCunningham 9y ago
Eventually one of the parties will oppose it more strongly than the other one, at which point the other one will be forced to support it. I believe this is known as "spontaneous symmetry breaking". Also for what it's worth "minority report" was the term in the film for when one of the precogs disagreed with the other two, so it's not really applicable here. You'd be forgiven for forgetting this fact though, because the plot doesn't actually feature one.
- psyc 9y ago
  It was a play on words.
gruez 9y ago
>Today I learned about Social Sentinel[0], since both right-twitter and left-twitter are condemning it today. Why? Just skimming the page, it seems to be monitoring public social media posts for threats. Am I missing something? It's not like they're forcing students to grant access to their social media accounts so they can be monitored.
- psyc 9y ago
  Because it’s a misguided idea, more likely to result in false-positive hassles, chilling effects, and general paranoia, than to actually prevent crimes.

John_KZ 9y ago

Do the parents know about this? I can't imaging this happening in my country without massive, nation-wide action to stop it and fire/punish those that tried to implement the system.

kwhitefoot 9y ago
I'm curious, which country? I'm in Norway and I think would cause an outcry here too.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Feniks 9y ago

Amusing how the education system in the US is chronically underfunded and underperforming yet there's money for THIS. Hire more councillors. I bet it will actually be cheaper in the long run.