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Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

theguardian.com

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Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#81

Post by knz »

MarcScott wrote: post #80
red-indian wrote: post #13

A few years ago I found out my nephew's Kindergarten had implemented fingerprint scanners for all students. They get to scan their fingerprint when checking in or out of lunch, going to the bathroom, arriving and leaving school. Promoted as a safety feature to ensure they knew where the kids were and that they were ok. I was asked to go in with my brother and talk to them about it. They said it was all ok because tha…

Almost every school in my area (UK) uses fingerprint scanners, including my son's. They're used only for purchasing food from the school's cafeteria. I'm quite "privacy aware" and don't really have any problems with this. The schools act under GDPR, the data stored is just a hash of the fingerprint, and compared to the data held on the school management software, a fingerprint hash is pretty negligible. My kid could…

My kid's elementary school in the US uses their initials and a five digit PIN.

It took about a week for them to learn their PIN (during which time they had a card with the number) when they started school but, several years later, it works fine and doesn't involve exposing their biometric or other PII data.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#83

Post by tehlike »

red-indian wrote: post #13

A few years ago I found out my nephew's Kindergarten had implemented fingerprint scanners for all students. They get to scan their fingerprint when checking in or out of lunch, going to the bathroom, arriving and leaving school. Promoted as a safety feature to ensure they knew where the kids were and that they were ok. I was asked to go in with my brother and talk to them about it. They said it was all ok because tha…

All it takes is one eu citizen to file a gdpr complaint...

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#84

Post by tehlike »

itronitron wrote: post #27

A while back in Texas my wife and I got a lovely call from one of our children's school counselors because our child's search history the previous evening, on their school issued chrome laptop, had included a search for symptoms of cyanide poisoning which apparently triggered one of the systems used to detect those sorts of things. It turns out that the search was related to a homework assignment for a book they had…

I search arbitrary topics, that is how i learn. Infering _anything_ from my search history would br madness...

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#85

Post by jancsika »

mLuby wrote: post #64
itronitron wrote: post #27

A while back in Texas my wife and I got a lovely call from one of our children's school counselors because our child's search history the previous evening, on their school issued chrome laptop, had included a search for symptoms of cyanide poisoning which apparently triggered one of the systems used to detect those sorts of things. It turns out that the search was related to a homework assignment for a book they had…

Searches about suicide/murder-related topics could lead to life-saving interventions. One sympathizes with families that didn't or couldn't read the warning signs, and understands why they'd whole-heartedly support monitoring. The other side is that children learn there is an intense adult response to certain topics. That may lead to excessive interest in that topic. Or ever more secretive behavior. Or an inability t…

Your response applies equally to a world where every kid has their own privacy-enabled, perfectly secure free software phone with data monitored and occasionally transmitted by an AI agent that is programmed jointly by the child and a technically-minded parent.

Meanwhile, the article is about third-party data slurpers sitting in between the school and the Chromebooks that are supplied to a captive audience of millions of minors. The tradeoff here isn't between security and freedom. It's between whatever security the third-party claims to deliver and the risks from what the third-party actually does with the data to turn a profit. We have to gain insight into that fundamental question before we can begin reflect on your point.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#86

Post by tehlike »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #65

An interesting example of why cost of education can have unbounded growth. Parents who sue schools are actually suing society.

Parents who sue schools over their privacy has every right to be.

Fines dont always have to be about monetary compensation. You can make it criminal, then things would change. There are other ways other than money to act as detertent. Shutting down private schools could be one.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#87

Post by mixmastamyk »

j8014 wrote: post #38
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we just give public schools a pass for providing kids with email addresses and other adult technologies that have no real educational value? Giving devices to kids is not saving on educational costs, and it's not making their backpacks any lighter. Books don't require tech support lines, chat bots, or surveillance tech to keep it all humming smoothly. But worse of all, it's totally outside the proper purvi…

Books? Who uses books anymore? My kids have had laptops for school since the 2nd grade, they are in 5th and 8th grade now. Syllabus & courses, homework, communication, research all on their laptops. Everything is interactive, videos and classroom lectures recorded. No paper, they never miss a thing, can move ahead in assignments or review old.

Not the case in Southern California. Tech in the class but still mostly done on paper.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#88

Post by vkou »

Riverheart wrote: post #61
closeparen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing students to generate data and then using it against them isn’t incidental to education, it’s the whole thing. Imagine having the right to edit, delete, and restrict processing of your grades and attendance records. Imagine having the right to an equal shot at college admission while declining to reveal any test scores. It would upend everything about school.

Except there's no academic value in fingerprinting kids.

Most of what schools do has little to no academic value, so that's not exactly a practical rebuke.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#89

Post by campfireveteran »

Another story that has not been told is how gifted students in America are inventoried and tracked with IQ tests and other supposed "resource" programs. The GATE program in California is just one example of a dual-purpose, duplicitous program that can be easily exploited for spy and national security research recruiting to the military-industrial complex. More investigative journalism research on this topic is needed to find out exactly who, what, when and where it may be going on.

Re: Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids

#90

Post by Riverheart »

vkou wrote: post #88
Riverheart wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there's no academic value in fingerprinting kids.

Most of what schools do has little to no academic value, so that's not exactly a practical rebuke.

That's an overly cynical view of school but I'll hear you out if you'd like to support that line of reasoning.
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