Kids should have absolutely no expectation of privacy.
Kids are human people. Why should some of us have no expectation of privacy, while others do?
Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#12OT: Anyone know why a comment in this post went dead in less than 4 minutes? It was pretty substantive and didn't contain anything inflammatory, although the author did say he was using a throwaway. link to comment (you need enable showdead in settings to read it): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15108272
New accounts comments can be autoflagged for various reasons.
Vouch for it, as we can see someone has. The system works.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#13Kids should have absolutely no expectation of privacy.
Are you saying they shouldn't trust anyone to protect their privacy, that I can agree with, or that they don't have a right to it?
I've been teaching my kid he has a right to privacy since the day he asked about having a baby monitor in his room. I told him why it's there, how to turn it off and that we'll take it out completely if he ever wants it gone. If his school forced this on him, I'd explain to him why not to carry it every where he goes and why he should never use it for personal communication.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#14I used to work in school IT and had products pitched to us constantly that would be basically malware/RATs to spy on students. We could purchase anything that would help us look at Facebook messages, emails, documents/picture, anything really. Our department went against it for a few reasons:
- If you have this knowledge you need to monitor it. If a student is writing about killing themselves in a document on their machine then they follow through and we had access to that knowledge it becomes our problem.
- Opens us up to far more knowledge than we had before, knowledge we didn't necessarily want. Kids are kids. We're trying to make adults and should give them a certain amount of free reign to learn and make mistakes without us watching them all the time.
- Our IT department just didn't feel that it was the best idea and agreed with it on moral/ethic grounds.
EDIT: I should also clarify that all of these tools went beyond what we would need to administer devices from an IT standpoint. Our other tools were more stop a malicious PDF than read little Johnny's email.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#15I used to work in school IT and had products pitched to us constantly that would be basically malware/RATs to spy on students. We could purchase anything that would help us look at Facebook messages, emails, documents/picture, anything really. Our department went against it for a few reasons: - If you have this knowledge you need to monitor it. If a student is writing about killing themselves in a document on their m…
Reminds me of a Pennsylvania school "WebcamGate" in 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...
The school's IT dept had a program to control the student's laptop camera so if it was lost or stolen they could take a picture and see where it was and with who.
It didn't end well.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#16I used to work in school IT and had products pitched to us constantly that would be basically malware/RATs to spy on students. We could purchase anything that would help us look at Facebook messages, emails, documents/picture, anything really. Our department went against it for a few reasons: - If you have this knowledge you need to monitor it. If a student is writing about killing themselves in a document on their m…
Reminds me of a Pennsylvania school "WebcamGate" in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School... The school's IT dept had a program to control the student's laptop camera so if it was lost or stolen they could take a picture and see where it was and with who. It didn't end well.
[deleted]
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#17Does anyone here have experience with approaching their districts?
I had a meeting last year with three assistant superintendents to discuss issues related to student privacy. New York has a student privacy law (§2-d of EDC Title 1 Article 1) passed as part of the Common Core Reform Act that establishes a Parents' Bill of Rights for Data Privacy and Security, which must be completed 120 days after its effective date of 12/08/2016. Among other things, this document must list all third parties to which student PII is provided, for what purpose, and state that they take the proper precautions to protect student data. That date---04/07/2017---has since passed. Unfortunately, my district (and possibly the entire county, Erie) is far behind.
We also discussed school devices---they're moving toward a device-per-child model---and we expressed to one-another our concerns. The EFF's resources were essential in my research and provided resources for the district as well.
The EFF was kind enough to put me in touch with a lawyer practicing in NY with an interest in student privacy to provide pro bono counsel as I figure out the best way to move forward. I'm going to try my hardest to keep on good terms with the district; going the route of issuing FOIA requests and such is a last resort. Finding other concerned parents in my district is likely my next step.
My oldest son is entering first grade this year, so this is a fairly urgent priority for me.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#18OT: Anyone know why a comment in this post went dead in less than 4 minutes? It was pretty substantive and didn't contain anything inflammatory, although the author did say he was using a throwaway. link to comment (you need enable showdead in settings to read it): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15108272
New accounts comments can be autoflagged for various reasons. Vouch for it, as we can see someone has. The system works.
>Vouch for it, as we can see someone has. The system works.
Can you even do that? I thought flag/vouch only works for links.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#19Kids should have absolutely no expectation of privacy.
They're going to disagree, and frankly in this arena, they're far better equipped than most of the people doing the spying. The worst kind of tyrant is an ineffective one.
Re: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy
#20Kids should have absolutely no expectation of privacy.
I've tried to educate my kids about this. I've told them since an early age, that there is no privacy in any interaction with the school: Even a well meaning attempt to protect their information, in the absence of sufficient expertise, is futile.
Famous hacks and releases of private information, reported in the news, are good teachable moments.
My advice is that they can still get good grades while sticking with "safe" opinions and topics of discussion. This is also good preparation for corporate life.