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

theguardian.com

91–100 of 176 posts

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

#91
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, consider the power itself, not the category the power belongs to. If a school knows 2 extra things about you (on benefits; father in jail for child abuse), that's not the same as 24x7 video surveillance. Risk assess the reality, not the overarching category.

Yes: 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel J. Solove https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used. The problems captured by the Kafka me…

Sorry, I don't know how these relate to what I said.

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

#92

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/…

If you're going to hold government services such as social services or teachers responsible for childrens safety then this sort of thing is needed. And if you think thats not the job of the state then fair enough thats your opinion but in the UK the status quo is that it is the job of the state to look after vulnerable children/people.

This is the heart of the problem. When you start trying to turn people like teachers and doctors into something other than teachers and doctors you risk breaking the essential trust between parents and the professionals who have a role in their children's lives. That is a dangerous path to follow. Obviously no-one wants to see any child suffering abuse or neglect and obviously as a last resort the authorities might have to intervene to protect a vulnerable child from harm. But there are other dangers with measures like this that are easily overlooked in our culture today and I'm not sure that's healthy.

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

#93

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…

"although the police don't even have time to go after the crims,"

That's how it always works, even in the US. Selective enforcement of the laws against some group (or to favor some group).

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

#94
post #42
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The council provides a data flow diagram showing the source of the data: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/5972-insight-bris...

Health data, including mental health data, is fed into the system.

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

#95

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…

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 t…

"but then we insist that that job should be done poorly."

Where is that being insisted? Also, what is the bar for "poorly"? After all, were talking about the government, which does many things poorly despite massive budgets, extensive power, etc.

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

#96
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

Yes I've seen the same thing. As you say, lots of orgs have had to reorient themselves around the safeguarding process

Another example that just sprang to mind. A headteacher I know reported safeguarding concerns when he was made aware that a 7 year old was walking to primary school alone. I suppose partly to do with leaving a paper trail in case the worst should happen - but the system then does kick in all the same. It's the same law that was originally designed to deal with far more serious incidents. (You could argue that this case wouldn't even qualify in many peoples' minds, but it's also not obvious to me that the headteacher was being irrational, given the law.)

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

#97

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…

Hmm, but you can deploy essentially infinite resources for free in arbitrage to exploiting an algorithmic quirk in social media distribution, search engine rankings, etc.

What exactly is the comparable threat model here? It's ridiculous. What are they exploiting, trace amounts of government resources? For one family?

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

#98

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…

It's not just the British.

For decades in the US, school administrators have been obsessed with monitoring student's online activity and email. There is a lucrative industry providing what amounts to glue and regexs for detecting and reporting suicidal language, threats of violence, and so on (you can be sure there's detection of LGBTQ language for all the various religious schools.)

There is a subreddit for K-12 IT administrators and the stuff people would post there about monitoring students was pretty shocking (also, the levels of incompetence are also pretty shocking. Most of the crowd are barely competent at IT basics. People who are in charge of IT at multiple campuses.)

Tell your kids that any email account associated with the school, and anything they even type into a school device (phone, tablet, laptop, computer) is monitored, and even the most innocent keyword could flag their email and put it front of admins. If they want to talk to a trusted friend about anything regarding the administrator or teachers, or something regarding mental health, sexuality, bullying, violence, etc - they need to do it on devices not associated with the school, with no school management software installed, on non-school accounts.

In fact, they should probably never use their school accounts or devices for anything except strictly school related communication and work.

It's amazing how completely ignorant these admins are that, say, hauling a suicidal student into a meeting with administrators is just about the last fucking thing that kid needs, and yet that's exactly what was described in some posts and discussions. The only thing they care about is snooping in student's activity and covering the school's ass.

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

#99

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…

> Self-censorship for fear of being 'canceled' is putting a damper on the spirit of freedom.

I'm always curious about what people mean by this, because usually its people upset they can't say the N-word or upset they're getting cancelled over being sex pests.

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