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The title made it sound like the schools were installing malware on students' devices, but as far as I can tell this is just a central database bringing togethe

The title made it sound like the schools were installing malware on students' devices, but as far as I can tell this is just a central database bringing together data from different government agencies. I'm not sure I see the problem with schools getting an update that a kid was arrested by police or that their family is on food aid or something. Schools in my area need to know which kids are living in poverty because they send home backpacks of food with them over the summer.

hef19898 3y ago
I am not sure any of that is any of a schools business. Not even sure something like that would be legal over here.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
  In the UK it's absolutely common for schools to be involved in family welfare simply because the other arms of the state have withered away to uselessness. In theory there's a concept of "Team Around The Child" where the various agencies - school, social services, social housing, sometimes even police - can come together to help the child through the rough circumstances they're in. In practice, the only one of those that isn't entirely dysfunctional is the school, and so you'll often find school headteachers or SENCOs basically acting as the sole champion of a kid from a troubled family.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    If that is what it is, more power to teacher caring that much abozt their students. Not sure if covert data collection at scale helps those teachers so.
  - ChoHag 3y ago
    [dead]
ballenf 3y ago
Maybe the real problem is that there exists a system design to allow querying a person's family connections to police interactions. This isn't even just convictions, but basically any accusations or investigations. The wording is kind of vague, but I think this framing is supported by the article. The existence of such a system just seems dystopian. Seems entirely reasonable that issues of domestic violence should be known to schools, but this goes way beyond that. It's only a matter of time before more public institutions manufacture reasons to use the same system. Surely the NIH should know about your police interactions before treating you.
- pera 3y ago
  The council provides a data flow diagram showing the source of the data: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/5972-insight-bristol-data-flow-indicator-list-and-legal-gateways/file https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/5972-insight-bris...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - msla 3y ago
    Health data, including mental health data, is fed into the system.
  - robaato 3y ago
    Scary. Just having an EHCP (Educational Health Care Plan) is an indicator...
  - bmsleight_ 3y ago
    Bloody hell - until I looked at the digram, I did no realise - this is pure profiling. What has benefit data got to do with a child at risk. As per Housing - this is profile of people because they live on the 'wrong' estate. "Accessing Out of Work benefits" is saying the child may be at risk. "Teenage Parent" is used as an indicator.
    - 3y ago
fullspectrumdev 3y ago
Nah the spyware is sold by a different company - for example, Impero.
vharuck 3y ago
>Schools in my area need to know which kids are living in poverty because they send home backpacks of food with them over the summer. What's wrong with just asking the parents?
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Not all parents will respond, and of those that do, not all parents respond honestly. But the child still needs to be fed, whether the parent thinks they need to be fed or not.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    It shouldn't be the responsibility of teachers or the school to provide food, but if there's a real need, then why don't they offer the food to those that want it and just cut out the secret database crap?
    - notahacker 3y ago
      You're going to need some sort of database to record who wants the food sending to them...
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Why? Gather together a big pile of food and let the kids know where it is with instructions to only take what they need for the next couple of days or so. Why go to the bother of sending the food out, when the kids are already there. Also, the parents/carers may feel insulted if they are thought to be receiving "charity", so it'd be a better idea to allow the kids to obtain extra food without involving the rest of the family.
        notahacker 3y ago
        The kids aren't already there during the summer. As the GP pointed out.
lolinder 3y ago
> just a central database bringing together data from different government agencies I realize this is a US perspective, but this actually sets off more alarm bells in my head than a school overreaching by installing spyware. The latter can be addressed by direct parental action pretty easily. Government agencies systematically sharing data is a lot harder to solve and if anything is more dangerous. Just because a family gets welfare aid from one agency doesn't automatically mean that they want their kid's school to know about it. Maybe they got enough and want their child to not have to feel different from the other kids by getting special treatment at school. Why not just let the family self-report their need to the school? More alarming is the idea of reporting interactions with police. A conviction is one thing, but an arrest could very easily be a mistake, and propagating that information explicitly in the name of child protection is a recipe for turning that mistake into a tragedy when a school overreacts.
- candiodari 3y ago
  But social care agencies have a serious problem. They don't take good care of kids, which leads to them having a very bad reputation, which leads to child abuse (and many other crimes) not getting reported. Why? Simple: kids are treated far worse "in the system" than at home, even in abuse situations. But if CPS doesn't get kids reported, they don't get money. They don't want to fix this by taking better care of kids (“generational squeeze” on public finances, as the article puts it), so they must find other solutions. And the solutions they're going with are simple: get everyone to report everything on kids, in a format that can be easily used in court. In 6 months, expect a message that a teacher got beaten up for, probably unknowingly, causing a kid to be forcibly placed into "care".
- pydry 3y ago
  This is the kind of thing where it might be ask for a panopticon where the parents can see precisely what kind of queries are run on their data, by whom and why, with a time limited ability to keep query data secret for police investigations and such. Fighting against this type of data sharing on principle will probably fail because there are some legitimate use cases to Keep the Children Safe for this type of data. It'll be hard, however, to push back a request that all data access requests are logged with justifications because, after all it helps to Keep the Children Safe. You might also discover that the appetite for this data might wane entirely if they can't access it without being monitored and without having to justify themselves.
SoftTalker 3y ago
> Schools in my area need to know which kids are living in poverty because they send home backpacks of food with them over the summer. This is the sort of thing that sounds good at first but ends up with these big brother databases. Really, why is it the responsibility of the school to send home food with a child? Schools should teach. That's it. If there is a need to send food to some family, there are agencies and charities that are specifically created and empowered to do that job. Using schools as conduits for all sorts of unrelated social services is why our schools are so fucked up. Instead of just being focused on teaching, they are now responsible for psychological services, food distribution to the needy, substance abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse intervention, mandatory reporting of any number of other concerns, all of which contributes to the need to monitor everything and centrally catalog and track as much information as you can about kids and their families. It was one thing when this kind of stuff might be a note in a file folder, but now it's online, probably poorly secured, and will never be deleted.
- merpnderp 3y ago
  Man I totally agree with you, but you have to understand how bad meth has made things. The schools used to send home coats and clothing too, but the parents would sell them. In a just world the state would throw those piece of shit parents in rehab and have a wonderful place for the kids to stay until their parents either straightened up or lost custody. But it is what it is and we do what we can.
- ChoHag 3y ago
  [dead]
didntcheck 3y ago
I wish people would stop calling any website/networked service an "app". That's just the interface

hef19898 3y ago

I am not sure any of that is any of a schools business. Not even sure something like that would be legal over here.

Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
In the UK it's absolutely common for schools to be involved in family welfare simply because the other arms of the state have withered away to uselessness. In theory there's a concept of "Team Around The Child" where the various agencies - school, social services, social housing, sometimes even police - can come together to help the child through the rough circumstances they're in. In practice, the only one of those that isn't entirely dysfunctional is the school, and so you'll often find school headteachers or SENCOs basically acting as the sole champion of a kid from a troubled family.
- hef19898 3y ago
  If that is what it is, more power to teacher caring that much abozt their students. Not sure if covert data collection at scale helps those teachers so.
- ChoHag 3y ago
  [dead]

ballenf 3y ago

Maybe the real problem is that there exists a system design to allow querying a person's family connections to police interactions. This isn't even just convictions, but basically any accusations or investigations. The wording is kind of vague, but I think this framing is supported by the article. The existence of such a system just seems dystopian. Seems entirely reasonable that issues of domestic violence should be known to schools, but this goes way beyond that. It's only a matter of time before more public institutions manufacture reasons to use the same system. Surely the NIH should know about your police interactions before treating you.

pera 3y ago
The council provides a data flow diagram showing the source of the data: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/5972-insight-bristol-data-flow-indicator-list-and-legal-gateways/file https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/5972-insight-bris...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- msla 3y ago
  Health data, including mental health data, is fed into the system.
- robaato 3y ago
  Scary. Just having an EHCP (Educational Health Care Plan) is an indicator...
- bmsleight_ 3y ago
  Bloody hell - until I looked at the digram, I did no realise - this is pure profiling. What has benefit data got to do with a child at risk. As per Housing - this is profile of people because they live on the 'wrong' estate. "Accessing Out of Work benefits" is saying the child may be at risk. "Teenage Parent" is used as an indicator.
  - 3y ago

fullspectrumdev 3y ago

Nah the spyware is sold by a different company - for example, Impero.

vharuck 3y ago

>Schools in my area need to know which kids are living in poverty because they send home backpacks of food with them over the summer. What's wrong with just asking the parents?

IggleSniggle 3y ago
Not all parents will respond, and of those that do, not all parents respond honestly. But the child still needs to be fed, whether the parent thinks they need to be fed or not.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  It shouldn't be the responsibility of teachers or the school to provide food, but if there's a real need, then why don't they offer the food to those that want it and just cut out the secret database crap?
  - notahacker 3y ago
    You're going to need some sort of database to record who wants the food sending to them...
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Why? Gather together a big pile of food and let the kids know where it is with instructions to only take what they need for the next couple of days or so. Why go to the bother of sending the food out, when the kids are already there. Also, the parents/carers may feel insulted if they are thought to be receiving "charity", so it'd be a better idea to allow the kids to obtain extra food without involving the rest of the family.
      - notahacker 3y ago
        The kids aren't already there during the summer. As the GP pointed out.

lolinder 3y ago

> just a central database bringing together data from different government agencies I realize this is a US perspective, but this actually sets off more alarm bells in my head than a school overreaching by installing spyware. The latter can be addressed by direct parental action pretty easily. Government agencies systematically sharing data is a lot harder to solve and if anything is more dangerous. Just because a family gets welfare aid from one agency doesn't automatically mean that they want their kid's school to know about it. Maybe they got enough and want their child to not have to feel different from the other kids by getting special treatment at school. Why not just let the family self-report their need to the school? More alarming is the idea of reporting interactions with police. A conviction is one thing, but an arrest could very easily be a mistake, and propagating that information explicitly in the name of child protection is a recipe for turning that mistake into a tragedy when a school overreacts.

candiodari 3y ago
But social care agencies have a serious problem. They don't take good care of kids, which leads to them having a very bad reputation, which leads to child abuse (and many other crimes) not getting reported. Why? Simple: kids are treated far worse "in the system" than at home, even in abuse situations. But if CPS doesn't get kids reported, they don't get money. They don't want to fix this by taking better care of kids (“generational squeeze” on public finances, as the article puts it), so they must find other solutions. And the solutions they're going with are simple: get everyone to report everything on kids, in a format that can be easily used in court. In 6 months, expect a message that a teacher got beaten up for, probably unknowingly, causing a kid to be forcibly placed into "care".
pydry 3y ago
This is the kind of thing where it might be ask for a panopticon where the parents can see precisely what kind of queries are run on their data, by whom and why, with a time limited ability to keep query data secret for police investigations and such. Fighting against this type of data sharing on principle will probably fail because there are some legitimate use cases to Keep the Children Safe for this type of data. It'll be hard, however, to push back a request that all data access requests are logged with justifications because, after all it helps to Keep the Children Safe. You might also discover that the appetite for this data might wane entirely if they can't access it without being monitored and without having to justify themselves.

SoftTalker 3y ago

> Schools in my area need to know which kids are living in poverty because they send home backpacks of food with them over the summer. This is the sort of thing that sounds good at first but ends up with these big brother databases. Really, why is it the responsibility of the school to send home food with a child? Schools should teach. That's it. If there is a need to send food to some family, there are agencies and charities that are specifically created and empowered to do that job. Using schools as conduits for all sorts of unrelated social services is why our schools are so fucked up. Instead of just being focused on teaching, they are now responsible for psychological services, food distribution to the needy, substance abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse intervention, mandatory reporting of any number of other concerns, all of which contributes to the need to monitor everything and centrally catalog and track as much information as you can about kids and their families. It was one thing when this kind of stuff might be a note in a file folder, but now it's online, probably poorly secured, and will never be deleted.

merpnderp 3y ago
Man I totally agree with you, but you have to understand how bad meth has made things. The schools used to send home coats and clothing too, but the parents would sell them. In a just world the state would throw those piece of shit parents in rehab and have a wonderful place for the kids to stay until their parents either straightened up or lost custody. But it is what it is and we do what we can.
ChoHag 3y ago
[dead]

didntcheck 3y ago

I wish people would stop calling any website/networked service an "app". That's just the interface