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Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

theguardian.com

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Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#71

Post by oconnor663 »

lolinder wrote: post #45
merpnderp wrote: post #4

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 becaus…

> 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 fam…

I'm sympathetic to this, because my own politics are very libertarian. But recently I've gotten more sensitive to cases where we acknowledge that something is the government's job (e.g. protecting kids from violence), but then we insist that that job should be done poorly. I think this has ripple effects, not only in that the job doesn't get done well, but in the culture of how the government works and who chooses to work in government. It seems like there should be a middle ground where we don't want the government to be responsible for too many things, but we do want it to be good at the things it's responsible for.

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#72

Post by roody15 »

We use a product called Linewize in my district for around 2500 students. To be honest its reporting is creepy to the degree it analyzes and tries to assign labels to student activity. Hate Speech, aggression, depression, suicide, criminality, gangs, sexual conduct, etc.

I think we as a society need to decide are we just biological automatons that can be controlled via inputs and outputs? Or do we believe in some form of free will and with that some personal privacy.

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#73

Post by RajT88 »

adolph wrote: post #68
RajT88 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, some police are known to be racist Worse yet, most police are at least classist. Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. What happens when there's already heavy policing of poorer neighborhoods, and police are trained to "get the bad ones off the streets"? They look for any excuse to arrest and prosecute people in those neighborhoods. Once you have a felony conviction on…

> Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. I see this sentiment often. If this were true it would represent a criminal opportunity to victimize "wealthier neighborhoods." As far as I can tell: that does not seem to be the case very often; and victimization rates are higher in "poor neighborhoods." I can see the logic of an argument that excessive legal criminalization induces cycl…

Police already have discretion to enforce the law on whomever, and however they wish. It is inappropriate to try and shift blame entirely to lawmakers, when (obviously) the police have culpability here because of the choices they make regarding the enforcement of those laws. That's why the sentiment is so common. Obviously. Come on.

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#74

Post by voakbasda »

karaterobot wrote: post #65

I guess main the problem is the secrecy. Even the article is unable to say exactly what information the app has, and who has access to it—they mention safeguarding leads being the users, but then talk about how "schools" get notified when a student has an encounter with the police. Does this information get sent only to qualified professionals with clear accountability, or does it get sent to a shared email address t…

Secrecy is an integral part of the effectiveness of the system. If you know how the algorithm works, you can find ways to game it. That doesn't make the practice acceptable, but I think it explains the approach.

FWIW, the same secretive approach prevents anyone from knowing why their social media accounts were banned, or how changes to a website will affect their ranking in the search engines. Exposing the underlying algorithms creates an arms race that will lead to even bigger problems.

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#75

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

imnotlost wrote: post #63

The Brits have gone all in on the surveillance society with their CCTV cameras all over the place and now the Online Safety Bill. Still early days, I'm sure it'll be expanded at every opportunity. Maybe 1984 is the blueprint. In the US the fundamental Christians are grabbing power and they're taking flamethrowers to books and talking about tracking women who may go across state-lines to get an abortion. Self-censorsh…

Well, as a Brit, I agree with the surveillance society bit although the police don't even have time to go after the crims, so I suspect that most surveillance footage is ignored unless you're a political figure.

As a devout atheist, I have a particular view of Christians and from what I can gather, the Christo-fascists in the U.S. trying to grab power are Christian in name only and represent almost the exact opposite of the teachings of Jesus. I think it's more of a fascist movement that picks on the most gullible and easily led of groups for their support base.

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#76

Post by rob137 »

tempaway22641 wrote: post #60

Lots of people here not really understanding how this works in the UK. A few times there's been a big media stories in the UK about a child who got badly abused or killed in domestic situations and then afterwards it turns out that various people (social services, teachers, charities etc) had concerns about the child's safety but concerns weren't written down or joined together and so the child could have been saved/…

I'll just throw in that I volunteer for an organisation that often deals with children, and in many ways safeguarding has been a disaster. I can totally see how good intentions following the 'Baby P'* case led to laws like this. But the reaction from many organisations has been to completely reorient themselves, and at all costs.

This is quite natural given that ultimately the law poses the greatest threat to the leaders of charities, schools etc. You really don't want a high profile failure on your watch.

When I was trained to lead shifts of volunteers, it stood out to me that the only instruction I received was in safeguarding...

My first thought was that something simply isn't quite right, since safeguarding is far newer than the organisation itself.

But actually I think this is just the way of things. If you have enormous punishments, then you will have commensurate reactions from management.

We've lost a large number of volunteers because we can no longer guarantee anonymity to young people. Initially we were reassured that we would only be expected to report things when identifying information was willingly given to us. This has since been revised to instructions that we are to actively seek such information.

The law itself was brought in following high profile instances of horrific abuse that went overlooked by social services. However, the scope of the law is surprisingly wide.

For instance, this would all apply to a 17-year-old who mentions that they were being bullied by peers.

I myself do feel conflicted - abuse is terrible, and it's worth tolerating other kinds of indirect harm to prevent. But it's still shocking to me that the second order consequences don't appear to get discussed at all in the public sphere. I do worry that this has been snuck in as a "Save The Puppies Act" without proper deliberation.

I'm unsure if there are other countries who have pretty much identical laws, or if it is just the UK?

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Peter_Connelly

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#77

Post by tempaway22641 »

karaterobot wrote: post #65

I guess main the problem is the secrecy. Even the article is unable to say exactly what information the app has, and who has access to it—they mention safeguarding leads being the users, but then talk about how "schools" get notified when a student has an encounter with the police. Does this information get sent only to qualified professionals with clear accountability, or does it get sent to a shared email address t…

There's no secrecy about it, the app, who has access to it and why is explained here:

https://www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/social-care-and-health/...

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#78

Post by matheusmoreira »

tempaway22641 wrote: post #60

Lots of people here not really understanding how this works in the UK. A few times there's been a big media stories in the UK about a child who got badly abused or killed in domestic situations and then afterwards it turns out that various people (social services, teachers, charities etc) had concerns about the child's safety but concerns weren't written down or joined together and so the child could have been saved/…

So many tragedies happen daily because of human imperfections and limitations. If we develop and put a monitoring collar on the neck of every human being from the day they wre born, we could save so many of them.

How far are you willing to go?

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#79

Post by tempaway22641 »

tempaway22641 wrote: post #66
tempaway22641 wrote: post #60

Lots of people here not really understanding how this works in the UK. A few times there's been a big media stories in the UK about a child who got badly abused or killed in domestic situations and then afterwards it turns out that various people (social services, teachers, charities etc) had concerns about the child's safety but concerns weren't written down or joined together and so the child could have been saved/…

Here's the description of the system from https://www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/social-care-and-health/... Think Family Database (TFD) --------------------------- The Think Family Database (TFD) supports and connects safeguarding professionals from Bristol City Council and other public sector organisations. The data collected by Insight Bristol is securely held in the TFD, and includes information from approximately 5…

And here's a uk government report about the data sharing mechanisms for the app https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Re: Call to shut down Bristol schools’ use of app to ‘monitor’ pupils and families

#80

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

pydry wrote: post #67
lolinder wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fam…

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.…

I'm curious how well a GDPR challenge would fare. There's specific exemptions around data gathering to detect fraud and to solve crimes, but this database has a lot more detail and the lack of consent from families is concerning.
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