15 ms·

Privacy for Students: Surveillance Self-Defense

211 points by sonograph 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ElViajero 5y ago
> “If authority figures for youth say constant surveillance is OK, what happens when a romantic partner wants access to every message on their phone? Or an employer wants your social media password? Invasive monitoring isn’t acceptable, no matter who tries to do it, and personal privacy matters.” I think that it is even worse than that. In a decade or two, we are going to learn the many cases of sexual abuse that this surveillance facilitated. To give such an absolute power to adults over other people's children never ends well. And the kind of person that wants to spy on kids and teenagers 24/7 is the kind of person that should not be allowed to work with them.
- commoner 5y ago
  Certainly already happening: > Over the next 15 days, the school district captured at least 210 webcam photos and 218 screenshots. They included photos inside his home of Robbins sleeping and of him partially undressed, as well as photos of his father. The district also snapped images of Robbins' instant messages and video chats with his friends, and sent them to its servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School... > "Many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress," the lawsuit charges. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/20100218_Lower_Merion_School_District_sued_for_cyber_spying_on_students.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/20100218_Lower...
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Wow... they are one (or two) horny kid(s) away from a child porn charge and the confiscation of their servers.
    - emptyparadise 5y ago
      They'll just get the kids arrested for child porn instead.
      - loup-vaillant 5y ago
        Some may try, but that won't fly if the kids didn't produce the images (not their cameras), didn't store them (not their servers), and didn't share or publish them (not their network. A more plausible scenario is trying to sue the kids for indecency or similar.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Wow! That is full batshit crazy.
- zelphirkalt 5y ago
  I agree with your point, however, I think the majority of teachers and even lecturers are simply uneducated, when it comes to avoiding surveillance of their students. When presented these issues, most shrugg it off, because they fear having to actually do something about it themselves. They carelessly throw away privacy of their students by suggesting to use the usual suspects for voice and video chat. In my opinion in this age of technology, getting educated about the issues here should be a mandatory aspect of the training of all people, who want to be teachers. Then there is this illusion, of setting up something oneself, as an institution, being super difficult. Schools could easily rent a decent server, costing something like 40-80 dollar/euro per month and protect their students. They do have an computer/IT/informatics teacher, who studied computer stuff, hopefully. If not, they could hire someone to do it, the country / state could finance it, or they could even get a talented student to set it up for them. The setup itself is really not that difficult and takes an afternoon or without much prior knowledge perhaps 2 days. And really, if it is a money question, just ask parents to donate and the school will be covered. No unsolvable problem at all. Universities easily have the cash to rent servers and usually have IT people in employment as well, who manage all sorts of stuff. It should be an easy task for them to set up a privacy preserving text, voice and video chat. Then you have the problem, that I experienced myself, when I wanted to make it happen for schools, contacting someone I know at a school: There is bureaucracy in the way, which demands a uniform solution for schools. Which results in using a centralized service provider, because the whole country (!) does not manage to set up the infrastructure for its students. Just imagine that. A whole country, incapable of setting up privacy preserving solutions for students, all the while everyone is whining about bad online teaching during the pandemic. Somehow this makes me doubt their motivation and willingness to solve the problem. Unfortunately most people are not informed about the issues and choose to continue being uninformed that way. They do not want to deal with ethical questions and rather want to throw money at the problem, by purchasing licenses for surveillance products. All it takes is people caring.
amelius 5y ago
Reads like this is about some highly guarded prison in a dystopian future.
ddingus 5y ago
Looks like I will be a parent in this mess! My own kids are done, but I have my granddaughter to raise. (Rough, but she is great and will probably make me live longer, so no worries.) This is going to be a fight! That level of surveillance is unacceptable. I have no plan yet, but will in a year or so. Guess it is wake up call time. Seriously, I look back at my upbringing and what I was able to do for my kids, and shudder. I cannot imagine this ends well. Can you? Seriously. Anyone want to talk me down, or just talk?
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  The best thing you can do, unfortunately, is teach them yourself. It is hard, but the real root of this problem is that people expect schools, and therefore the state, to not only teach their children math and history but raise them. As a result of this, people who actually want to raise their own kids get saddled with restrictive practices designed to raise your kids for you. The only way to opt out of it is to forego institutionalized education entirely, or at least if it hasn't gone quite that far yet, it will. School the institution was not a very good place when I was there. It was not actually conducive to learning, peer influences were in general negative, authority figures were often abusive or at the very least ambivalent, and a sense of silent acquiescence to any authoritative demand was ingrained to the point that it takes young people years of their early adulthood to break this and begin building their own lives how they want them. Many of my peers went into massive debt on the presupposition that authority figures know what's best and that the institutional structure will look out for them, and I believe this is the direct result of the basically authoritarian environment they were raised in. And this, all I had to deal with were grainy cameras in the halls and police writing children tickets. From what I hear from people younger than me, it is much worse now.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Yeah. That's a hard scenario for us right now, but I think your overall take on this is the right one. We have much work to do. A lot of what you said, is what my own kids said. It's amazing how much it has degraded.
  - 5y ago
an_opabinia 5y ago
Surveillance in schools is a symptom, not a cause. To keep it focused on technology though, schools are super interesting - physical security is routinely violated. The iPhone really needs a dual-password mode, or some similar strategy, to protect its users.
mips_avatar 5y ago
I feel like educators watched Ferris Bueller’s day off, and decided they would crush that spirit with totalitarian tactics. What’s the point of this level of control?
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  If you’re talking about teaching staff, they almost certainly have no part in purchasing or deploying these systems.
  - Wistar 5y ago
    I am married to a teacher who works in a district with absurd, heavy-handed IT policies imposed with no nuance or regard for the needs of the teachers. Simply researching curriculum on the school network has become very difficult in the past few years. Places where teachers often post collections of links to lesson topics, Pinterest and others, have been made unreachable.
  - mips_avatar 5y ago
    Given that it’s almost impossible to get fired as a teacher I think they need to show a little bravery and push back against this damage being inflicted.
    - fn-mote 5y ago
      The most direct avenue for change on this front is probably through school board elections. Everyone can help solve the problem. Schools I am familiar with are managed in a very top-down way, so it's hard to see at what point teachers could push effectively. They are not likely to be involved in purchasing the hardware, selecting the software, or choosing (surveillance) vendors. You could argue that the teacher's union could be spearheading the pro-privacy push. I would support that, but it might be kind of far from the "core business" of the union. There are areas with a greater and clearer short-term impact my city's local teacher's union has choosen (e.g., internet access for low-income students).
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
goatinaboat 5y ago
The one sort of surveillance schools need is live webcams so parents can monitor lesson content
- iJohnDoe 5y ago
  This actually isn’t such a bad idea. Parents being able to see their children and what they are encountering during the day. I would even say that the schools shouldn’t be allowed to see this. Only the parents.
darknavi 5y ago
Why do people (schools) care? What's the goal here? How does tracking everything a student does help them and how can they justify wasting time and money on this?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Schools are tasked with trying to solve all manner of social problems. Kids didn't show up? Blame the school for not dragging them in. Kids cheat? The administrator has to deal with it. Kids are fat? Must be that the school isn't managing their lunches. This is what they have come up with.
  - stretchwithme 5y ago
    And people say young people have no initiative now. Wait until this surveillance system is done with them.
- fn-mote 5y ago
  Personally, I think surveillance tech provides another way to exfiltrate dollars from the school system while at the same time providing rear-end cover. Look to see if the vendor is either (1) barely competent but policitically connected or (2) a startup cashing in...
prepend 5y ago
My schools tried to require school owned apple equipment that both restricted actions (couldn’t message with parents or email) and monitored all activity, even when used from home. I forced my own equipment and they tried to install and reinstall various spyware throughout the year. It seems like rather than proposing a basic system of assignments and material and grades, they are trying to treat as a wholly owned ecosystem. This is also one of the things that frustrates me about “work computers” but at least they have a bit more claim since work computers are tools for work while school should be about learning.
- peterburkimsher 5y ago
  I was the kid in school who told people about rebooting to single-user mode and creating hidden root user accounts :-D Some people got in trouble for having learned about it and misusing it though >_<
  - SteveNuts 5y ago
    Your school used Linux computers?
    - fordsmith 5y ago
      I would say more likely apple. I did this when I was younger as well
  - alt228562 5y ago
    I am the kid in school who tells people about jailbreaking their ipads and overriding dns records :-)
- chasil 5y ago
  Surprising that schools are requiring additional certs to be added a a device for internet access. This enables "keybridging" mitm attacks on any TLS connection that trusts the cert. Best load a 3rd-party browser and install it locally, rather than compromise the whole device. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ssl-certificate-fiasco-what-happened-and-what-happens-next/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ss...
brighton36 5y ago
Aren't the parents the ones to blame,here?
gherkinnn 5y ago
I don’t have a bucket large enough for me to throw up in. Disgusting. Ever increasing spyware, tracking this, recognition that, useless recommendations, ads everywhere I look. This stuff is eating me up.
- majjam 5y ago
  Me too - im so worried about it. Most recently Im preoccupied with the loss of cash / establishment of the cashless society. All purchases can be tracked and all require pre-approval without cash. Really worries me.
motohagiography 5y ago
Spying on kids outrageous. The sad state of things is that the most valuable tool kids could learn now is that it's not strangers but authorities who are predatory and self interested, and you need to learn how to manage authorities and rules, which means, how do you extract value from them without being pulled in and subordinated to or hustled by them. Respect does not mean obedience, it means maintaining clear boundaries for something and recognizing what's safe and what isn't. Respect for authority today means treating it like fire or heavy machinery. Raising kids being spied on is going to create a generation of spiritual fugitives and compromised, sadistic adult administrators. I could see home schooling being the next big tech platform trend, like a Montessori system with a way for parents to co-ordinate.
- spodek 5y ago
  Schools and districts serve the bureaucracy more than the students, teachers, or parents, it seems to me. Not sure when the transition happened. Probably generations ago.
parsecs 5y ago
This sucks. My school district used a bunch of money to buy every student chromebooks. I remember just a few years ago, back when I was in middle school, I helped unbox all the chromebooks that were shipped to the school - about 2500 of them. Just for one middle school. Every student having access to these laptops made some thing a lot easier, like using Canvas to submit work done on Google Docs. However, this is in fact a real problem. Our district forced very obtrusive monitoring and blocking software, as well as literal bloat to be installed on the chromebooks - there's like 20 browser extensions that cannot even be turned off, making the already low performing chromebooks so laggy that it's hard to use. Obvious "bad sites" like pirate bay, porn, and etc are understandably blocked, but they also block access to "social media" like reddit and discord. This doesn't sound that bad yet. The problem comes when students use their own devices instead of the school provided ones. Some sites and services are still blocked at the internet level, but can by bypassed easily. This means that, students with own laptops could communicate with each other using services that chromebook students cannot access. This means that students from families with lower income or with more siblings literally get blocked out of friend groups, with access only to heavily monitored google chat. During distance learning, this problem has only been made worse. Additionally, district chromebooks are absolutely no less distracting with the various censorship and monitoring and bloat - kids would still much rather browse the limited internet than pay much attention in class. I think there was some study that showed laptops drastically reduced student's academic performance on average. (Though I think access to computer is really powerful for learning how to access internet resources and developing actual knowledge.) TLDR my opinion and experience on technology + kids
- pabs3 5y ago
  I wonder if the Chromebooks could dual-boot with regular Linux.
  - fn-mote 5y ago
    They can but they need to be dis-enrolled in enterprise management, so students cannot do this themselves. At least at the time I looked at it, there was no reasonable workaround.
scrose 5y ago
What makes this even scarier is the amount of technological incompetence the people have who are monitoring these things. As far as I know, there’s no legal equivalent to HIPAA(which itself only scratches the surface of things) for ensuring the data and logs of these invasive systems stays under tight supervision. Now add in the fact that the people monitoring these systems may have an infinite amount of their own selfish agendas in mind for what to do with the information they gather… well, this will end poorly.
- OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
  FERPA is the regulatory framework that governs how student records are handled. To the best of my knowledge it's similar to HIPAA but not as strong as it only applies to public schools. There may be additional state laws about it as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_...
- bnj 5y ago
  In the United States one of the HIPAA correlates in the Education space is FERPA (Federal Educational Records Protection Act), but it doesn’t have the same teeth that HIPAA does.
peterburkimsher 5y ago
Surveillance in schools is nothing new. The library computers back in the early 2000s had MasterEye, so that teachers could see whether students were using the PCs for homework or games, and block accounts accordingly. I thought it would get better when I got older, but company Internet is also monitored and controlled through a proxy (ZScaler). More egregious spying does frustrate me, because it breaks down trust (e.g. my mum reading my emails, or ex-girlfriend lying about having read my emails despite web history proving otherwise). It does cause a chilling effect, especially when discipline is involved (punishment at a volunteer group for a humorous social media post means I don't post much online any more). I can't install a local web server on the company PC, and didn't even get admin privileges by default. Therefore my creativity has shifted towards hardware, because it's less restrictive. These policies are not new, they're supported by management/HR/ICT who (perhaps correctly) assume that most people don't know what they're doing, and try to keep people "safe". There are causes worth fighting for, but privacy on other peoples' computers is a privilege that I've given up hope about changing.
seastonATccs 5y ago
Schools in the US are usually required by state law to provide a baseline level of content filtering and auditing on any school operated network, device and accounts. The school district has the right to choose which proxy service to use, but not wether to uses one or not. To get this fixed it has to be done at the state legislative level.
- cartoonworld 5y ago
  its hard to see how that requirement extends to audio/video surveillance, MITMing TLS streams, scrutinizing social media with automated software. But, it may indeed have to be addressed at the legislative level. I have dim hopes for US legislation forcing anybody to un-spy on innocent people.
mLuby 5y ago
I'm fine with school equipment and software being fully locked down, but the facial recognition and automated behavior detection (let alone correction) is way beyond the line. Why are kids, the ones we're supposed to protect, being used as lab rats here? (Rhetorical—it's because they have no agency and the parents are kept at arm's length. Near-perfect conditions for abuse of power, however well-intentioned.) What if the student government could declare no confidence in the school administration and have them removed? Would at the very least get more kids interested in civics.
bargle0 5y ago
Spying off hours is unacceptable, but during class teachers should be able to see what students are doing on district-provided equipment.
- katbyte 5y ago
  Why? Like seriously - grade them on their work and tests and who cares what they do else wise
  - bargle0 5y ago
    That only works for some students. Others will simply fail. Fifth grade is far too young to condemn a student just because they’re too young to understand the consequences of their inaction and come from a shitty household incapable of teaching that lesson. That being said, it’s only acceptable IMO when: 1. It’s only on school-issued equipment. 2. It’s only during hours when the school is responsible for the pupil. 3. What’s being monitored and recorded is stated explicitly in and limited to a document that is distributed to students and parents when the equipment is issued. 4. When screen grabbers or Remote Desktop are used, the student is given some kind of obvious on-screen warning that they are being surveiled in real time.
dang 5y ago
We changed the URL from https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-students-students-can-fight-back https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-studen..., which points to this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
siraben 5y ago
Gen Z-er here. I really appreciate that the EFF is writing a guide aimed at students. I was in high school only a few years ago, we were provided MacBook Pros (13-inch, mid-2012), which for me also served as my personal laptop (my own MBP had a failing hard drive). After a few weeks of using it in classes, I realized that none of the class activities required exotic software I couldn't figure out how to obtain, so I formatted the disk and reinstalled macOS (even though we had admin, I booted into recovery instead). For my younger sibling, who was in middle school at the time, they did not have admin access and there was a surveillance software that allowed the teacher to view their screen (and god knows what else), I decided to protect their privacy as well and reinstall the OS. This got me into a bit of trouble (for modifying "someone else's computer"), but to no long-term harm, and when they reinstalled the OS with the software I removed it again anyway. EDIT: I also randomized my MAC address while using the school network using a script I wrote during a free period[0] The worrying bit is that most gen-Zers have a radically different and weakened view of digital privacy. They are more than happy to use services with bad privacy track records just because "their friends are on it", network effects trump everything else. They self-censor constantly and mistakenly think that perceived impermanence (e.g. Snapchats, or Instagram stories) means things would be deleted forever. They happily share passwords with romantic partners, even viewing grades (!) (despite constant stories of blackmailing after breaking up), constantly reuse passwords, don't have TFA, the list goes on. Out of convenience, secondary schools use services like GSuite, but in doing so they condition the next generation of people to increasingly give up their privacy. At one point I tried to deactivate my Facebook account, but the day after, ran into problems because my clubs were using it as a proto-Slack platform, so I bit the bullet and continued using it. Now that many of us are in university, the surveillance gets more ridiculous, especially in a pandemic. Most notably, I've heard friends complain of software that tracks your eye and body movement, audio, video and screen while taking a test. Fortunately for me the most I've had to do is join a Zoom call while the (human) professor proctors. More hacker culture-minded types take more precautions, but it is sadly an extremely minority opinion, IME. [0] https://gist.github.com/siraben/c3133b39e470d1aed16fd71f42b8f273 https://gist.github.com/siraben/c3133b39e470d1aed16fd71f42b8...
srean 5y ago
One way I try to influence my friends with teenage kids is to gift their kids or their parents Doctorow's Little Brother. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/30142 https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/30142 Perhaps I date myself with that recommendation, but I consider it an important reading.
- gcthomas 5y ago
  I've set that book as a reading task for my high school students - it goes down rather well.
cik 5y ago
What bothers me most about this, is how there's even a debate about privacy. While we (western world we) acknowledge the need for privacy and anonymity when it applies to sources in corrupt regimes, depending on politics and time of the day, that same respect for privacy seems fleeting. Children are always likely to learn something about themselves that displeases their parents. This can be anywhere from sexual orientation to religious inclinations. As a society we can and should enable this exploration - it only makes for a better outcome. Any society that can ongoingly say that critical thinking has led to the desired outcome is like (IMHO) to succeed and grow. I fail to understand how we've moved from free speech to lack of privacy in such a short period of time. Today in many places, people are arrested for covering their faces in public - though not in the winter where such gear is warranted. People are arrested for expressing views (frequently violently, but not always) that are aligned with many, and abhorrent to others. Privacy would and should allow such exploration. To me this is fundamental we ought be teaching, much like basic finance. Bother are important to get through life, and the ripple effects will be enormous. Clearly I have a bias.
- voiper1 5y ago
  "Myth #1. “If you did nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." The US supposedly already decided on this in the 4th amendment: "Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." It's apparent how authoritarian regimes can abuse this, and it's becoming more common that incompetence or hacking can allow all this information to become public.
  - karlkloss 5y ago
    Millions of Germans thought that they had nothing to hide, back in 1930. Until they had. I usually reply to the Myth #1 with "BECAUSE IT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!" Really guys, you don't have to know my age, gender, religion, browsing history and klick behavior to sell me a bottle of soda. And for reading a government website or browsing a catalog of goods, you don't need to know aything about me.
tomcooks 5y ago
I wouldn't expect most students to be able to follow this, if they want to enjoy their youth. The problem is the school system, and people with a patronising ideal of what the State or affiliated companies should be able to do. More and more happy to be living in the EU where this kind of surveillance nonsense can't be implemented as easily as in other parts of the world, thanks to privacy laws.
kwere 5y ago
I believe we should accept mass surveillance in our lives as a public utility and heavely regulate/democratize it. Mass surveillance is too tempting for any organization to be fought effectively. In the case of youth education i see a strong case of publicly streaming kindegarten activities delayed of few second with a software that obscure facial traits and personal names in the audio (unfiltered version can be requested by police). This is a cheap way to keep accountable child carer while protecting childs privacy
raxxorrax 5y ago
This will be controversial, but an awesome form of self-defense is wrong information. Flood information infrastructures with spam, rumors and fake news. We should teach kids to game these systems. Eventually they would do so anyway. The surveillance abuse that already happened is just a small example of what future pupils have to content with.
mariyaadems 5y ago
I read something interesting here https://www.clickssl.net/blog/watch-out-for-privacy-issues-before-having-wearable-devices https://www.clickssl.net/blog/watch-out-for-privacy-issues-b...

211 points by sonograph 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

> “If authority figures for youth say constant surveillance is OK, what happens when a romantic partner wants access to every message on their phone? Or an employer wants your social media password? Invasive monitoring isn’t acceptable, no matter who tries to do it, and personal privacy matters.” I think that it is even worse than that. In a decade or two, we are going to learn the many cases of sexual abuse that this surveillance facilitated. To give such an absolute power to adults over other people's children never ends well. And the kind of person that wants to spy on kids and teenagers 24/7 is the kind of person that should not be allowed to work with them.

commoner 5y ago
Certainly already happening: > Over the next 15 days, the school district captured at least 210 webcam photos and 218 screenshots. They included photos inside his home of Robbins sleeping and of him partially undressed, as well as photos of his father. The district also snapped images of Robbins' instant messages and video chats with his friends, and sent them to its servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School... > "Many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress," the lawsuit charges. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/20100218_Lower_Merion_School_District_sued_for_cyber_spying_on_students.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/homepage/20100218_Lower...
- kurthr 5y ago
  Wow... they are one (or two) horny kid(s) away from a child porn charge and the confiscation of their servers.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    They'll just get the kids arrested for child porn instead.
    - loup-vaillant 5y ago
      Some may try, but that won't fly if the kids didn't produce the images (not their cameras), didn't store them (not their servers), and didn't share or publish them (not their network. A more plausible scenario is trying to sue the kids for indecency or similar.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Wow! That is full batshit crazy.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
I agree with your point, however, I think the majority of teachers and even lecturers are simply uneducated, when it comes to avoiding surveillance of their students. When presented these issues, most shrugg it off, because they fear having to actually do something about it themselves. They carelessly throw away privacy of their students by suggesting to use the usual suspects for voice and video chat. In my opinion in this age of technology, getting educated about the issues here should be a mandatory aspect of the training of all people, who want to be teachers. Then there is this illusion, of setting up something oneself, as an institution, being super difficult. Schools could easily rent a decent server, costing something like 40-80 dollar/euro per month and protect their students. They do have an computer/IT/informatics teacher, who studied computer stuff, hopefully. If not, they could hire someone to do it, the country / state could finance it, or they could even get a talented student to set it up for them. The setup itself is really not that difficult and takes an afternoon or without much prior knowledge perhaps 2 days. And really, if it is a money question, just ask parents to donate and the school will be covered. No unsolvable problem at all. Universities easily have the cash to rent servers and usually have IT people in employment as well, who manage all sorts of stuff. It should be an easy task for them to set up a privacy preserving text, voice and video chat. Then you have the problem, that I experienced myself, when I wanted to make it happen for schools, contacting someone I know at a school: There is bureaucracy in the way, which demands a uniform solution for schools. Which results in using a centralized service provider, because the whole country (!) does not manage to set up the infrastructure for its students. Just imagine that. A whole country, incapable of setting up privacy preserving solutions for students, all the while everyone is whining about bad online teaching during the pandemic. Somehow this makes me doubt their motivation and willingness to solve the problem. Unfortunately most people are not informed about the issues and choose to continue being uninformed that way. They do not want to deal with ethical questions and rather want to throw money at the problem, by purchasing licenses for surveillance products. All it takes is people caring.

amelius 5y ago

Reads like this is about some highly guarded prison in a dystopian future.

ddingus 5y ago

Looks like I will be a parent in this mess! My own kids are done, but I have my granddaughter to raise. (Rough, but she is great and will probably make me live longer, so no worries.) This is going to be a fight! That level of surveillance is unacceptable. I have no plan yet, but will in a year or so. Guess it is wake up call time. Seriously, I look back at my upbringing and what I was able to do for my kids, and shudder. I cannot imagine this ends well. Can you? Seriously. Anyone want to talk me down, or just talk?

betwixthewires 5y ago
The best thing you can do, unfortunately, is teach them yourself. It is hard, but the real root of this problem is that people expect schools, and therefore the state, to not only teach their children math and history but raise them. As a result of this, people who actually want to raise their own kids get saddled with restrictive practices designed to raise your kids for you. The only way to opt out of it is to forego institutionalized education entirely, or at least if it hasn't gone quite that far yet, it will. School the institution was not a very good place when I was there. It was not actually conducive to learning, peer influences were in general negative, authority figures were often abusive or at the very least ambivalent, and a sense of silent acquiescence to any authoritative demand was ingrained to the point that it takes young people years of their early adulthood to break this and begin building their own lives how they want them. Many of my peers went into massive debt on the presupposition that authority figures know what's best and that the institutional structure will look out for them, and I believe this is the direct result of the basically authoritarian environment they were raised in. And this, all I had to deal with were grainy cameras in the halls and police writing children tickets. From what I hear from people younger than me, it is much worse now.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Yeah. That's a hard scenario for us right now, but I think your overall take on this is the right one. We have much work to do. A lot of what you said, is what my own kids said. It's amazing how much it has degraded.
- 5y ago

an_opabinia 5y ago

Surveillance in schools is a symptom, not a cause. To keep it focused on technology though, schools are super interesting - physical security is routinely violated. The iPhone really needs a dual-password mode, or some similar strategy, to protect its users.

mips_avatar 5y ago

I feel like educators watched Ferris Bueller’s day off, and decided they would crush that spirit with totalitarian tactics. What’s the point of this level of control?

germinalphrase 5y ago
If you’re talking about teaching staff, they almost certainly have no part in purchasing or deploying these systems.
- Wistar 5y ago
  I am married to a teacher who works in a district with absurd, heavy-handed IT policies imposed with no nuance or regard for the needs of the teachers. Simply researching curriculum on the school network has become very difficult in the past few years. Places where teachers often post collections of links to lesson topics, Pinterest and others, have been made unreachable.
- mips_avatar 5y ago
  Given that it’s almost impossible to get fired as a teacher I think they need to show a little bravery and push back against this damage being inflicted.
  - fn-mote 5y ago
    The most direct avenue for change on this front is probably through school board elections. Everyone can help solve the problem. Schools I am familiar with are managed in a very top-down way, so it's hard to see at what point teachers could push effectively. They are not likely to be involved in purchasing the hardware, selecting the software, or choosing (surveillance) vendors. You could argue that the teacher's union could be spearheading the pro-privacy push. I would support that, but it might be kind of far from the "core business" of the union. There are areas with a greater and clearer short-term impact my city's local teacher's union has choosen (e.g., internet access for low-income students).
  - germinalphrase 5y ago

goatinaboat 5y ago

The one sort of surveillance schools need is live webcams so parents can monitor lesson content

iJohnDoe 5y ago
This actually isn’t such a bad idea. Parents being able to see their children and what they are encountering during the day. I would even say that the schools shouldn’t be allowed to see this. Only the parents.

darknavi 5y ago

Why do people (schools) care? What's the goal here? How does tracking everything a student does help them and how can they justify wasting time and money on this?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Schools are tasked with trying to solve all manner of social problems. Kids didn't show up? Blame the school for not dragging them in. Kids cheat? The administrator has to deal with it. Kids are fat? Must be that the school isn't managing their lunches. This is what they have come up with.
- stretchwithme 5y ago
  And people say young people have no initiative now. Wait until this surveillance system is done with them.
fn-mote 5y ago
Personally, I think surveillance tech provides another way to exfiltrate dollars from the school system while at the same time providing rear-end cover. Look to see if the vendor is either (1) barely competent but policitically connected or (2) a startup cashing in...

prepend 5y ago

My schools tried to require school owned apple equipment that both restricted actions (couldn’t message with parents or email) and monitored all activity, even when used from home. I forced my own equipment and they tried to install and reinstall various spyware throughout the year. It seems like rather than proposing a basic system of assignments and material and grades, they are trying to treat as a wholly owned ecosystem. This is also one of the things that frustrates me about “work computers” but at least they have a bit more claim since work computers are tools for work while school should be about learning.

peterburkimsher 5y ago
I was the kid in school who told people about rebooting to single-user mode and creating hidden root user accounts :-D Some people got in trouble for having learned about it and misusing it though >_<
- SteveNuts 5y ago
  Your school used Linux computers?
  - fordsmith 5y ago
    I would say more likely apple. I did this when I was younger as well
- alt228562 5y ago
  I am the kid in school who tells people about jailbreaking their ipads and overriding dns records :-)
chasil 5y ago
Surprising that schools are requiring additional certs to be added a a device for internet access. This enables "keybridging" mitm attacks on any TLS connection that trusts the cert. Best load a 3rd-party browser and install it locally, rather than compromise the whole device. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ssl-certificate-fiasco-what-happened-and-what-happens-next/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ss...

brighton36 5y ago

Aren't the parents the ones to blame,here?

gherkinnn 5y ago

I don’t have a bucket large enough for me to throw up in. Disgusting. Ever increasing spyware, tracking this, recognition that, useless recommendations, ads everywhere I look. This stuff is eating me up.

majjam 5y ago
Me too - im so worried about it. Most recently Im preoccupied with the loss of cash / establishment of the cashless society. All purchases can be tracked and all require pre-approval without cash. Really worries me.

motohagiography 5y ago

Spying on kids outrageous. The sad state of things is that the most valuable tool kids could learn now is that it's not strangers but authorities who are predatory and self interested, and you need to learn how to manage authorities and rules, which means, how do you extract value from them without being pulled in and subordinated to or hustled by them. Respect does not mean obedience, it means maintaining clear boundaries for something and recognizing what's safe and what isn't. Respect for authority today means treating it like fire or heavy machinery. Raising kids being spied on is going to create a generation of spiritual fugitives and compromised, sadistic adult administrators. I could see home schooling being the next big tech platform trend, like a Montessori system with a way for parents to co-ordinate.

spodek 5y ago
Schools and districts serve the bureaucracy more than the students, teachers, or parents, it seems to me. Not sure when the transition happened. Probably generations ago.

parsecs 5y ago

This sucks. My school district used a bunch of money to buy every student chromebooks. I remember just a few years ago, back when I was in middle school, I helped unbox all the chromebooks that were shipped to the school - about 2500 of them. Just for one middle school. Every student having access to these laptops made some thing a lot easier, like using Canvas to submit work done on Google Docs. However, this is in fact a real problem. Our district forced very obtrusive monitoring and blocking software, as well as literal bloat to be installed on the chromebooks - there's like 20 browser extensions that cannot even be turned off, making the already low performing chromebooks so laggy that it's hard to use. Obvious "bad sites" like pirate bay, porn, and etc are understandably blocked, but they also block access to "social media" like reddit and discord. This doesn't sound that bad yet. The problem comes when students use their own devices instead of the school provided ones. Some sites and services are still blocked at the internet level, but can by bypassed easily. This means that, students with own laptops could communicate with each other using services that chromebook students cannot access. This means that students from families with lower income or with more siblings literally get blocked out of friend groups, with access only to heavily monitored google chat. During distance learning, this problem has only been made worse. Additionally, district chromebooks are absolutely no less distracting with the various censorship and monitoring and bloat - kids would still much rather browse the limited internet than pay much attention in class. I think there was some study that showed laptops drastically reduced student's academic performance on average. (Though I think access to computer is really powerful for learning how to access internet resources and developing actual knowledge.) TLDR my opinion and experience on technology + kids

pabs3 5y ago
I wonder if the Chromebooks could dual-boot with regular Linux.
- fn-mote 5y ago
  They can but they need to be dis-enrolled in enterprise management, so students cannot do this themselves. At least at the time I looked at it, there was no reasonable workaround.

scrose 5y ago

What makes this even scarier is the amount of technological incompetence the people have who are monitoring these things. As far as I know, there’s no legal equivalent to HIPAA(which itself only scratches the surface of things) for ensuring the data and logs of these invasive systems stays under tight supervision. Now add in the fact that the people monitoring these systems may have an infinite amount of their own selfish agendas in mind for what to do with the information they gather… well, this will end poorly.

OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
FERPA is the regulatory framework that governs how student records are handled. To the best of my knowledge it's similar to HIPAA but not as strong as it only applies to public schools. There may be additional state laws about it as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_...
bnj 5y ago
In the United States one of the HIPAA correlates in the Education space is FERPA (Federal Educational Records Protection Act), but it doesn’t have the same teeth that HIPAA does.

peterburkimsher 5y ago

Surveillance in schools is nothing new. The library computers back in the early 2000s had MasterEye, so that teachers could see whether students were using the PCs for homework or games, and block accounts accordingly. I thought it would get better when I got older, but company Internet is also monitored and controlled through a proxy (ZScaler). More egregious spying does frustrate me, because it breaks down trust (e.g. my mum reading my emails, or ex-girlfriend lying about having read my emails despite web history proving otherwise). It does cause a chilling effect, especially when discipline is involved (punishment at a volunteer group for a humorous social media post means I don't post much online any more). I can't install a local web server on the company PC, and didn't even get admin privileges by default. Therefore my creativity has shifted towards hardware, because it's less restrictive. These policies are not new, they're supported by management/HR/ICT who (perhaps correctly) assume that most people don't know what they're doing, and try to keep people "safe". There are causes worth fighting for, but privacy on other peoples' computers is a privilege that I've given up hope about changing.

seastonATccs 5y ago

Schools in the US are usually required by state law to provide a baseline level of content filtering and auditing on any school operated network, device and accounts. The school district has the right to choose which proxy service to use, but not wether to uses one or not. To get this fixed it has to be done at the state legislative level.

cartoonworld 5y ago
its hard to see how that requirement extends to audio/video surveillance, MITMing TLS streams, scrutinizing social media with automated software. But, it may indeed have to be addressed at the legislative level. I have dim hopes for US legislation forcing anybody to un-spy on innocent people.

mLuby 5y ago

I'm fine with school equipment and software being fully locked down, but the facial recognition and automated behavior detection (let alone correction) is way beyond the line. Why are kids, the ones we're supposed to protect, being used as lab rats here? (Rhetorical—it's because they have no agency and the parents are kept at arm's length. Near-perfect conditions for abuse of power, however well-intentioned.) What if the student government could declare no confidence in the school administration and have them removed? Would at the very least get more kids interested in civics.

bargle0 5y ago

Spying off hours is unacceptable, but during class teachers should be able to see what students are doing on district-provided equipment.

katbyte 5y ago
Why? Like seriously - grade them on their work and tests and who cares what they do else wise
- bargle0 5y ago
  That only works for some students. Others will simply fail. Fifth grade is far too young to condemn a student just because they’re too young to understand the consequences of their inaction and come from a shitty household incapable of teaching that lesson. That being said, it’s only acceptable IMO when: 1. It’s only on school-issued equipment. 2. It’s only during hours when the school is responsible for the pupil. 3. What’s being monitored and recorded is stated explicitly in and limited to a document that is distributed to students and parents when the equipment is issued. 4. When screen grabbers or Remote Desktop are used, the student is given some kind of obvious on-screen warning that they are being surveiled in real time.

dang 5y ago

We changed the URL from https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-students-students-can-fight-back https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-studen..., which points to this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

siraben 5y ago

Gen Z-er here. I really appreciate that the EFF is writing a guide aimed at students. I was in high school only a few years ago, we were provided MacBook Pros (13-inch, mid-2012), which for me also served as my personal laptop (my own MBP had a failing hard drive). After a few weeks of using it in classes, I realized that none of the class activities required exotic software I couldn't figure out how to obtain, so I formatted the disk and reinstalled macOS (even though we had admin, I booted into recovery instead). For my younger sibling, who was in middle school at the time, they did not have admin access and there was a surveillance software that allowed the teacher to view their screen (and god knows what else), I decided to protect their privacy as well and reinstall the OS. This got me into a bit of trouble (for modifying "someone else's computer"), but to no long-term harm, and when they reinstalled the OS with the software I removed it again anyway. EDIT: I also randomized my MAC address while using the school network using a script I wrote during a free period[0] The worrying bit is that most gen-Zers have a radically different and weakened view of digital privacy. They are more than happy to use services with bad privacy track records just because "their friends are on it", network effects trump everything else. They self-censor constantly and mistakenly think that perceived impermanence (e.g. Snapchats, or Instagram stories) means things would be deleted forever. They happily share passwords with romantic partners, even viewing grades (!) (despite constant stories of blackmailing after breaking up), constantly reuse passwords, don't have TFA, the list goes on. Out of convenience, secondary schools use services like GSuite, but in doing so they condition the next generation of people to increasingly give up their privacy. At one point I tried to deactivate my Facebook account, but the day after, ran into problems because my clubs were using it as a proto-Slack platform, so I bit the bullet and continued using it. Now that many of us are in university, the surveillance gets more ridiculous, especially in a pandemic. Most notably, I've heard friends complain of software that tracks your eye and body movement, audio, video and screen while taking a test. Fortunately for me the most I've had to do is join a Zoom call while the (human) professor proctors. More hacker culture-minded types take more precautions, but it is sadly an extremely minority opinion, IME. [0] https://gist.github.com/siraben/c3133b39e470d1aed16fd71f42b8f273 https://gist.github.com/siraben/c3133b39e470d1aed16fd71f42b8...

srean 5y ago

One way I try to influence my friends with teenage kids is to gift their kids or their parents Doctorow's Little Brother. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/30142 https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/30142 Perhaps I date myself with that recommendation, but I consider it an important reading.

gcthomas 5y ago
I've set that book as a reading task for my high school students - it goes down rather well.

cik 5y ago

What bothers me most about this, is how there's even a debate about privacy. While we (western world we) acknowledge the need for privacy and anonymity when it applies to sources in corrupt regimes, depending on politics and time of the day, that same respect for privacy seems fleeting. Children are always likely to learn something about themselves that displeases their parents. This can be anywhere from sexual orientation to religious inclinations. As a society we can and should enable this exploration - it only makes for a better outcome. Any society that can ongoingly say that critical thinking has led to the desired outcome is like (IMHO) to succeed and grow. I fail to understand how we've moved from free speech to lack of privacy in such a short period of time. Today in many places, people are arrested for covering their faces in public - though not in the winter where such gear is warranted. People are arrested for expressing views (frequently violently, but not always) that are aligned with many, and abhorrent to others. Privacy would and should allow such exploration. To me this is fundamental we ought be teaching, much like basic finance. Bother are important to get through life, and the ripple effects will be enormous. Clearly I have a bias.

voiper1 5y ago
"Myth #1. “If you did nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." The US supposedly already decided on this in the 4th amendment: "Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." It's apparent how authoritarian regimes can abuse this, and it's becoming more common that incompetence or hacking can allow all this information to become public.
- karlkloss 5y ago
  Millions of Germans thought that they had nothing to hide, back in 1930. Until they had. I usually reply to the Myth #1 with "BECAUSE IT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!" Really guys, you don't have to know my age, gender, religion, browsing history and klick behavior to sell me a bottle of soda. And for reading a government website or browsing a catalog of goods, you don't need to know aything about me.

tomcooks 5y ago

I wouldn't expect most students to be able to follow this, if they want to enjoy their youth. The problem is the school system, and people with a patronising ideal of what the State or affiliated companies should be able to do. More and more happy to be living in the EU where this kind of surveillance nonsense can't be implemented as easily as in other parts of the world, thanks to privacy laws.

kwere 5y ago

I believe we should accept mass surveillance in our lives as a public utility and heavely regulate/democratize it. Mass surveillance is too tempting for any organization to be fought effectively. In the case of youth education i see a strong case of publicly streaming kindegarten activities delayed of few second with a software that obscure facial traits and personal names in the audio (unfiltered version can be requested by police). This is a cheap way to keep accountable child carer while protecting childs privacy

raxxorrax 5y ago

This will be controversial, but an awesome form of self-defense is wrong information. Flood information infrastructures with spam, rumors and fake news. We should teach kids to game these systems. Eventually they would do so anyway. The surveillance abuse that already happened is just a small example of what future pupils have to content with.

mariyaadems 5y ago

I read something interesting here https://www.clickssl.net/blog/watch-out-for-privacy-issues-before-having-wearable-devices https://www.clickssl.net/blog/watch-out-for-privacy-issues-b...