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> I bought him a Chromebook for schoolwork, but also for other private things. When we logged in... This is why you need to pay attention to the technology cho

> I bought him a Chromebook for schoolwork, but also for other private things. When we logged in... This is why you need to pay attention to the technology choices that you make, and that your schools make. Chromebooks are designed from the ground up to be locked-down dystopian spyware once you "log in" to them with a specific Google account. For heaven's sake stop buying any more Chromebooks. The correct solution here is not technological at all. Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Emphasize stories of previous data breaches involving educational companies [1], and show officials that they are putting students' sensitive data at risk. (Edit: See the important point in the reply from 'n8cpdx below about the correct tone to use in your comments – don't repeat my words verbatim!) The technical details don't matter too much to educational officials – as soon as the "Chromebook = bad spyware" label sticks and they think that a fuck-up here could cost them them bad press, they will allow their IT department to make more privacy-respecting technology choices even when those choices cost a little more. If no one speaks up, it's a race to the bottom driving us closer to the fiction in The Right to Read [2]. ---------------------------------------- [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/22/smarterselect-exposed-millions-student-data/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/22/smarterselect-exposed-mill... [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

girvo 5y ago
Sadly, my cousins' school forces them to have Chromebooks. Its required. So I ensured they know to never use it for their personal stuff, it's purely a school work device. Such a waste, but oh well. I gave them both Pi 400s for them to use for personal things instead
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
It's also worth noting that Google is almost undoubtably violating childrens privacy laws, and other states are already investigating this... it's very possible what CPS is doing here isn't even legal. There's a lot of reason that the agreements schools are making to bring Google's platform in should be dragged out into the light. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145698/google-student-privacy-lawsuit-education-schools-chromebooks-new-mexico-balderas https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145698/google-student-p...
- voakbasda 5y ago
  If they activate the microphone and pick up a background conversation, they could be found in violation of state or federal wiretap laws. At least one party must be aware that they are being recorded. I hope everyone involved gets held responsible and prosecuted.
spamizbad 5y ago
CPS does not really have a traditional school board and it’s not elected either (appointed by one of several mayors who ran on an elected school board and then reneged). OP can shout their complaints out over Lake Michigan for the same effect.
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  A few minutes of Googling showed me this upcoming meeting https://www.cpsboe.org/meetings/details/2329 https://www.cpsboe.org/meetings/details/2329 on April 27th, 2022. It seems to be a Chicago Board of Education meeting, and seems to have options for public participation. Do I have this wrong? I'm not from Chicago or Illinois, so that's quite possible.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Clearly you missed all of the people at city council meetings trying to prove vaccines made them magnetic. None of those individuals were taken away and talked to by the FBI. They probably should have been taken away in white coats that secure from the back haha hehe, but they don't need FBI involvement.
    - quadrifoliate 5y ago
      Sorry, but that's fearmongering bullshit that doesn't seem to match reality. Concerned parents often call into school board meetings for all sorts of reasons. It should go without saying that you should be courteous and reasonable while presenting your concerns.
      - _dain_ 5y ago
        comment is alluding to this incident: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/national-school-board-groups-apology-for-domestic-terrorism-letter-may-not-quell-uproar/2021/10 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/national-school-board...
n8cpdx 5y ago
> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Just some comments on the political aspect of this, since the HN crowd tends to not be so good at that part: - Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment or the original post will make you look/sound crazy. School boards (government boards in general) are used to seeing vocal, crazy people and are good at not taking crazy people seriously. - “spyware” is not something non-technical understand. Just invoking spyware is going to make people think you’re crazy, not motivate them to fix the problem. - Normal people do understand things like ownership and consent (approximately, anyway). It might be better to highlight the fact that you own the laptop, your child cannot possibly consent to such monitoring/software being installed, and that you weren’t notified. - Normal people understand things like subscription costs - why should the school district be paying a third-party service to monitor a device that they don’t manage. By installing management software on your child’s device, are they assuming ownership and _liability_ for how that device is used outside of school? - The whole chromebook=spyware doesn’t really make sense unless the only comparison is Linux; and if your kid doesn’t understand privacy issues on a chromebook, they definitely won’t have a good time with Linux. The IT department could have just as easily installed similar spyware for Windows or macOS. Realistically what probably happened here is they have slightly clueless people who installed standard-issue software without thinking to check if the student actually owned the chromebook, because they probably dealt with a hundred other District-issued devices that day. When you run into that kind of bad outcome from human frailty, it is better to treat it as such rather than complain to the board that the sky is falling.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  Use examples that help non-technical parents understand e.g. anonymous spyware employees can now potentially spy on your children while they’re getting dressed.
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  I agree one hundred percent with this commenter. They are absolutely right – don't use the tone that I'm using on HN! I did not structure my HN comment from the point of view of how to present it for public comment; and the tone if used verbatim will mark you down as "tinfoil hat crazy person who we should ignore", as the parent correctly points out. Definitely don't use the term "spyware". Try to assume the persona of a reasonable, slightly conservative, and concerned person who is worried about data privacy why public money is being spent on subscriptions to companies who collect a lot of it, but are not local or accountable. Highlight that you understand that choices are difficult, but that the school needs to do better and be more accountable to parents and students, especially in an age where personal data has become so important.
op00to 5y ago
Please don't follow this advice. Frothing at the mouth about spyware on your kids computer will immediately be dismissed as insane ravings, and possibly get a visit from your local child safety organization. I recommend reaching out to your child's teacher, and ask to get connected with the IT team at the school to explain what's going on.
- serf 5y ago
  >Please don't follow this advice. Frothing at the mouth about spyware on your kids computer will immediately be dismissed as insane ravings, and possibly get a visit from your local child safety organization. I don't think parent described 'frothing at the mouth', and furthermore the concept of "I shouldn't speak out otherwise I may paint myself as a target for child protective services" is so subversive and nu-speak like that I don't think I can ever support it. CPS is supposed to be a social service for the support of children; not a society control and opinion-steering organization. If parent did something publicly that'd warrant the visit, sure; but creating public awareness of the situation for the parents can be done in an orderly and respectful way -- no one suggested otherwise.
  - op00to 5y ago
    Speaking out is not something that puts you at risk. Showing unstable behavior by escalating a simple technical support issue into a rant about ‘spyware’ at some board of Ed meeting tends to raise eyebrows though. Asking “Does anyone know how to refer these people to law enforcement for prosecution?” regarding a technical support issue is not respectful or orderly behavior.
    - car_analogy 5y ago
      Calling unremovable* spyware (the term is accurate, no matter how insane you think it sounds) a "technical support issue" is like calling surveillance cameras installed in your home an "improper furnishing issue". *Edit: sokoloff may be correct, and the spyware is not unremovable. Still, the analogy holds.
mdmglr 5y ago
> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Emphasize stories of previous data breaches involving educational companies [1], This is some bad advice. No need to escalate the situation. Simply contact the sons school and find out who the technologist is and ask them for help. Explain to them the situation and I'm sure they will understand. The computer is personal so they don't want it under mobile device management. I have some experience with schools. The school is not intentionally installing spyware. Further most public K12 organizations have IT departments are not going to be as well staffed/knowledgable as your average silicon valley tech company. So they may not know exactly how to rectify this situation. No need to berate the school board over "spyware."
- evilDagmar 5y ago
  Oh no, there's no way the school system didn't know they were installing monitoring software. It would be fairly reasonable for them to require that in the context of students logging in to access and use school resources (i.e. lessons) and to keep them from just goofing off. What is not reasonable is the very real possibility that they might have overstepped and made these policies active for all logins on the device, or that they failed to properly disclose what exactly happens when the user uses the domain login. That would then make what's been installed very worthy of the term "spyware" and would probably make both GoGuardian and Google upset with them because it's unnecessarily heavy-handed and pretty much guaranteed to bring bad press. Part of the reason these things are so locked down is so that management policies can be applied to ONLY the logins that require them without impacting the entire device all the time. If someone tries to sidestep that by grabbing root access and messing with the trusted environment, when the user logs into the managed domain the machine is going to report that its environment has been tampered with and that should pretty immediately bring use of any domain-managed accounts to a halt. You wind up actually jumping through the same hoops (although more discretely and without involving logging/reporting of browser history) when you use your bank's banking app or have Microsoft Teams/Outlook installed on your phone. Both of these things absolutely require their data be kept separate from the rest of the user's data, and very carefully protected from the other apps on the device.
evilDagmar 5y ago
> Chromebooks are designed from the ground up to be locked-down dystopian spyware once you "log in" to them with a specific Google account. Nonsense. They were designed to implement required policies when someone logs into a managed domain. Unless you're logging into something like that (where disclosures have been made and consent has been obtained) then there's no "dystopian spyware" involved. Absent any domain management policies, Chromebook are basically fancy thin clients that make efficient use of web-based services. That having been said, the OP either conspicuously failed to mention that such disclosures were made, or (and this I find to be much more likely) the school was dumb enough to think they don't need to disclose anything because like a lot of school systems, they have gotten the curious idea that they basically own the kids and that the kids have no rights whatsoever. Should that be the case I hope a judge spanks them soundly for it because yeah, they absolutely do need to disclose this stuff to the students or the first time there's a serious problem due to abuse of the monitoring system the school is likely to get very, very pantsed for facilitating child abuse.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  One solution could be to setup the laptop with a personal email account and configure the school email address to forward everything.
  - eru 5y ago
    Not really applicable with the Chromebook, but in general I guess the safest thing is to log in to the school stuff only from a VM? (At least that way the damage is limited.)
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - SamBam 5y ago
    If the student needs to use a Chromebook for school, that won't work. On my daughter's Chromebook, every app and website is tied to the account. It's not just a question of forwarding email.
footlose_3815 5y ago
[dead]
coding123 5y ago
Drop the school and homeschool the shit out of him. Go off book and teach him solar panel installation, plants and anything you can find in prepper books.
JJMcJ 5y ago
The Chicago Public Schools is an immense agency. Good luck getting anyone to pay attention, even at a school board meeting. And referring for prosecution is really going to go nowhere. Best bet, contact the public service operation for one of the TV stations, maybe a newspaper, and maybe your city council member, to wake up somebody, either at your school or at headquarters downtown. Prepare to be disappointed.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
This just seems so over the top. Whole point of Chromebooks is that they are minimal devices that can easily be adopted for school work. What I find strange is that OP had to buy their own machine. Anyway even if you somehow convinced the school to change to a Windows based laptops all you'd achieve would be a tier more expensive machines for the kids to use. The school would still require same "spyware" to be installed.
dachryn 5y ago
to be fair microsoft does exactly the same thing. I have intune on my personal ipad. And the idiots from our IT department accidentally wiped the entire thing. Just because I wanted to be able to read outlook mails. My iCloud was even blocked for a day or so. Despite their claims they can only manage the app itself and despite my protests that the fine print clearly indicates they could do so and that they should change their configuration. At least I got an apology letter, but all these devices are desigend to be locked down by centralized IT departmens. Be it ChromeOs, iOS or Windows
shapefrog 5y ago
> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. I remember not so long ago when people were using this advice on health care issues; Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is injecting your children with 5G mind control vaccines. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this.
throwawaybner3 5y ago
RMS(Richard Stallman) was way ahead. Like him or not. He is right.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
You’re deeply overestimating how much schools and administrators understand stuff. They are paying for this spyware and want it installed because they think it’s necessary.
maxerickson 5y ago
Be prepared for the possibility that majority of parents are fine with it.

girvo 5y ago

Sadly, my cousins' school forces them to have Chromebooks. Its required. So I ensured they know to never use it for their personal stuff, it's purely a school work device. Such a waste, but oh well. I gave them both Pi 400s for them to use for personal things instead

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

It's also worth noting that Google is almost undoubtably violating childrens privacy laws, and other states are already investigating this... it's very possible what CPS is doing here isn't even legal. There's a lot of reason that the agreements schools are making to bring Google's platform in should be dragged out into the light. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145698/google-student-privacy-lawsuit-education-schools-chromebooks-new-mexico-balderas https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145698/google-student-p...

voakbasda 5y ago
If they activate the microphone and pick up a background conversation, they could be found in violation of state or federal wiretap laws. At least one party must be aware that they are being recorded. I hope everyone involved gets held responsible and prosecuted.

spamizbad 5y ago

CPS does not really have a traditional school board and it’s not elected either (appointed by one of several mayors who ran on an elected school board and then reneged). OP can shout their complaints out over Lake Michigan for the same effect.

quadrifoliate 5y ago
A few minutes of Googling showed me this upcoming meeting https://www.cpsboe.org/meetings/details/2329 https://www.cpsboe.org/meetings/details/2329 on April 27th, 2022. It seems to be a Chicago Board of Education meeting, and seems to have options for public participation. Do I have this wrong? I'm not from Chicago or Illinois, so that's quite possible.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Clearly you missed all of the people at city council meetings trying to prove vaccines made them magnetic. None of those individuals were taken away and talked to by the FBI. They probably should have been taken away in white coats that secure from the back haha hehe, but they don't need FBI involvement.
  - quadrifoliate 5y ago
    Sorry, but that's fearmongering bullshit that doesn't seem to match reality. Concerned parents often call into school board meetings for all sorts of reasons. It should go without saying that you should be courteous and reasonable while presenting your concerns.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      comment is alluding to this incident: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/national-school-board-groups-apology-for-domestic-terrorism-letter-may-not-quell-uproar/2021/10 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/national-school-board...

n8cpdx 5y ago

> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Just some comments on the political aspect of this, since the HN crowd tends to not be so good at that part: - Following this advice and using a tone that even resembles the tone of the comment or the original post will make you look/sound crazy. School boards (government boards in general) are used to seeing vocal, crazy people and are good at not taking crazy people seriously. - “spyware” is not something non-technical understand. Just invoking spyware is going to make people think you’re crazy, not motivate them to fix the problem. - Normal people do understand things like ownership and consent (approximately, anyway). It might be better to highlight the fact that you own the laptop, your child cannot possibly consent to such monitoring/software being installed, and that you weren’t notified. - Normal people understand things like subscription costs - why should the school district be paying a third-party service to monitor a device that they don’t manage. By installing management software on your child’s device, are they assuming ownership and _liability_ for how that device is used outside of school? - The whole chromebook=spyware doesn’t really make sense unless the only comparison is Linux; and if your kid doesn’t understand privacy issues on a chromebook, they definitely won’t have a good time with Linux. The IT department could have just as easily installed similar spyware for Windows or macOS. Realistically what probably happened here is they have slightly clueless people who installed standard-issue software without thinking to check if the student actually owned the chromebook, because they probably dealt with a hundred other District-issued devices that day. When you run into that kind of bad outcome from human frailty, it is better to treat it as such rather than complain to the board that the sky is falling.

chaostheory 5y ago
Use examples that help non-technical parents understand e.g. anonymous spyware employees can now potentially spy on your children while they’re getting dressed.
quadrifoliate 5y ago
I agree one hundred percent with this commenter. They are absolutely right – don't use the tone that I'm using on HN! I did not structure my HN comment from the point of view of how to present it for public comment; and the tone if used verbatim will mark you down as "tinfoil hat crazy person who we should ignore", as the parent correctly points out. Definitely don't use the term "spyware". Try to assume the persona of a reasonable, slightly conservative, and concerned person who is worried about data privacy why public money is being spent on subscriptions to companies who collect a lot of it, but are not local or accountable. Highlight that you understand that choices are difficult, but that the school needs to do better and be more accountable to parents and students, especially in an age where personal data has become so important.

op00to 5y ago

Please don't follow this advice. Frothing at the mouth about spyware on your kids computer will immediately be dismissed as insane ravings, and possibly get a visit from your local child safety organization. I recommend reaching out to your child's teacher, and ask to get connected with the IT team at the school to explain what's going on.

serf 5y ago
>Please don't follow this advice. Frothing at the mouth about spyware on your kids computer will immediately be dismissed as insane ravings, and possibly get a visit from your local child safety organization. I don't think parent described 'frothing at the mouth', and furthermore the concept of "I shouldn't speak out otherwise I may paint myself as a target for child protective services" is so subversive and nu-speak like that I don't think I can ever support it. CPS is supposed to be a social service for the support of children; not a society control and opinion-steering organization. If parent did something publicly that'd warrant the visit, sure; but creating public awareness of the situation for the parents can be done in an orderly and respectful way -- no one suggested otherwise.
- op00to 5y ago
  Speaking out is not something that puts you at risk. Showing unstable behavior by escalating a simple technical support issue into a rant about ‘spyware’ at some board of Ed meeting tends to raise eyebrows though. Asking “Does anyone know how to refer these people to law enforcement for prosecution?” regarding a technical support issue is not respectful or orderly behavior.
  - car_analogy 5y ago
    Calling unremovable* spyware (the term is accurate, no matter how insane you think it sounds) a "technical support issue" is like calling surveillance cameras installed in your home an "improper furnishing issue". *Edit: sokoloff may be correct, and the spyware is not unremovable. Still, the analogy holds.

mdmglr 5y ago

> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. Emphasize stories of previous data breaches involving educational companies [1], This is some bad advice. No need to escalate the situation. Simply contact the sons school and find out who the technologist is and ask them for help. Explain to them the situation and I'm sure they will understand. The computer is personal so they don't want it under mobile device management. I have some experience with schools. The school is not intentionally installing spyware. Further most public K12 organizations have IT departments are not going to be as well staffed/knowledgable as your average silicon valley tech company. So they may not know exactly how to rectify this situation. No need to berate the school board over "spyware."

evilDagmar 5y ago
Oh no, there's no way the school system didn't know they were installing monitoring software. It would be fairly reasonable for them to require that in the context of students logging in to access and use school resources (i.e. lessons) and to keep them from just goofing off. What is not reasonable is the very real possibility that they might have overstepped and made these policies active for all logins on the device, or that they failed to properly disclose what exactly happens when the user uses the domain login. That would then make what's been installed very worthy of the term "spyware" and would probably make both GoGuardian and Google upset with them because it's unnecessarily heavy-handed and pretty much guaranteed to bring bad press. Part of the reason these things are so locked down is so that management policies can be applied to ONLY the logins that require them without impacting the entire device all the time. If someone tries to sidestep that by grabbing root access and messing with the trusted environment, when the user logs into the managed domain the machine is going to report that its environment has been tampered with and that should pretty immediately bring use of any domain-managed accounts to a halt. You wind up actually jumping through the same hoops (although more discretely and without involving logging/reporting of browser history) when you use your bank's banking app or have Microsoft Teams/Outlook installed on your phone. Both of these things absolutely require their data be kept separate from the rest of the user's data, and very carefully protected from the other apps on the device.

evilDagmar 5y ago

> Chromebooks are designed from the ground up to be locked-down dystopian spyware once you "log in" to them with a specific Google account. Nonsense. They were designed to implement required policies when someone logs into a managed domain. Unless you're logging into something like that (where disclosures have been made and consent has been obtained) then there's no "dystopian spyware" involved. Absent any domain management policies, Chromebook are basically fancy thin clients that make efficient use of web-based services. That having been said, the OP either conspicuously failed to mention that such disclosures were made, or (and this I find to be much more likely) the school was dumb enough to think they don't need to disclose anything because like a lot of school systems, they have gotten the curious idea that they basically own the kids and that the kids have no rights whatsoever. Should that be the case I hope a judge spanks them soundly for it because yeah, they absolutely do need to disclose this stuff to the students or the first time there's a serious problem due to abuse of the monitoring system the school is likely to get very, very pantsed for facilitating child abuse.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
One solution could be to setup the laptop with a personal email account and configure the school email address to forward everything.
- eru 5y ago
  Not really applicable with the Chromebook, but in general I guess the safest thing is to log in to the school stuff only from a VM? (At least that way the damage is limited.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- SamBam 5y ago
  If the student needs to use a Chromebook for school, that won't work. On my daughter's Chromebook, every app and website is tied to the account. It's not just a question of forwarding email.

footlose_3815 5y ago

[dead]

coding123 5y ago

Drop the school and homeschool the shit out of him. Go off book and teach him solar panel installation, plants and anything you can find in prepper books.

JJMcJ 5y ago

The Chicago Public Schools is an immense agency. Good luck getting anyone to pay attention, even at a school board meeting. And referring for prosecution is really going to go nowhere. Best bet, contact the public service operation for one of the TV stations, maybe a newspaper, and maybe your city council member, to wake up somebody, either at your school or at headquarters downtown. Prepare to be disappointed.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

This just seems so over the top. Whole point of Chromebooks is that they are minimal devices that can easily be adopted for school work. What I find strange is that OP had to buy their own machine. Anyway even if you somehow convinced the school to change to a Windows based laptops all you'd achieve would be a tier more expensive machines for the kids to use. The school would still require same "spyware" to be installed.

dachryn 5y ago

to be fair microsoft does exactly the same thing. I have intune on my personal ipad. And the idiots from our IT department accidentally wiped the entire thing. Just because I wanted to be able to read outlook mails. My iCloud was even blocked for a day or so. Despite their claims they can only manage the app itself and despite my protests that the fine print clearly indicates they could do so and that they should change their configuration. At least I got an apology letter, but all these devices are desigend to be locked down by centralized IT departmens. Be it ChromeOs, iOS or Windows

shapefrog 5y ago

> Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is installing spyware on students' Chromebooks. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this. I remember not so long ago when people were using this advice on health care issues; Call into the school's board meeting during public comment, and make it loud and clear that the school is injecting your children with 5G mind control vaccines. Share your technical credentials and the method by which you found this.

throwawaybner3 5y ago

RMS(Richard Stallman) was way ahead. Like him or not. He is right.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

You’re deeply overestimating how much schools and administrators understand stuff. They are paying for this spyware and want it installed because they think it’s necessary.

maxerickson 5y ago

Be prepared for the possibility that majority of parents are fine with it.