School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy for Unproven Promises of Safety.
School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy for Unproven Promises of Safety
school-issued machines
Stopped reading right there. Whenever you are issued a device, you should immediately assume it's being monitored by the owner of the device. This goes for school/job/etc. The owner of the device will always be monitoring it for reasons of making sure you are using the device for intended purpose to making sure you aren't using it for illegal purposes.
I know that, you know that, many know that, but many don't. Imo they should be required to inform you, preferably with a splash screen on boot or something similar that says "monitored by XXXXX" or something. Especially for things like schools where it's more likely kids won't know it (and will be more likely to become privacy advocates for life from knowingly having theirs violated.)
That's fine.
But third parties should still be heavily limited on the information they can gather from just class work usage.
The first thing I did when I was issued a laptop for a job was check for monitoring software of any type. The second thing I did was become extremely suspicious when I couldn't find any. I suppose the rule is "most likely" or "more often than not" while also being "always assume".
I might have the exception to this. I’m able to dual boot my work laptop, as can the other engineers in my department. So it’s effectively a Linux machine under my exclusive administration. The only request from my IT department was how to format the host name.
I’m still not taking chances with that thing though, even when on my home network. The rules exist even if there’s a 99.99% chance they won’t be enforced. I have nothing to gain from doing nefarious shit on it just to prove a point, lol.
OK so that's nuts they installed a private 'AI' monitoring software that they have no oversight or control over. From the article, they can't even see what it flags as inappropriate - it just flags and deletes.
A school admin should never hand over that much control!
School contracting is corruption central.
The rights of children, especially privacy, has never been a priority for anybody except the children themselves.
Have you worked with kids? They're nice, but they're not autonomous people.
They were searching backpacks and lockers in my high school back in the 90's, student privacy has been dead for a long time. And at the same time they let students keep rifles in their cars on school grounds during hunting season so those students could hunt before school. There's no real logic at work, just school boards reacting.
Oh man. That’s work that office IT. At my office, the just log everything but unless you do something wrong, no one checks it.
Every student should be issued a webcam shade
At the junior high level last year, two potential suicides were flagged by search terms, a kid was caught dispensing fentanyl when a peer searched 'how much fentanyl to take', and an early stage threat was detected when was looking up bomb-making instructions.
That's what I know about from my caseload.
Woah, what did the school use?
No idea. I just work there. Sometimes the computer goes ding and we call in people to haul off a kid. /s
Seriously though, from the teacher-side it is called Class Policy, but I don't think that is the system that monitors and flags.
If a school provides a device to a student to take home there's two possible outcomes.
In both instances there's something to legitimately complain about, but I still say the first option is the better one. The problem comes with oversight and auditing on the use of those management tools.
Not to mention that even with the second option of unmanaged devices, invasion of privacy can still occur if students are stupid enough to use the school provided accounts (Google, 365,etc)
What are we monitoring? How kids get dressed, if they pick their nose while using the computer?
Blocking sites does not require on device "monitoring". Locking down a machine does not require monitoring. So why this invasive level of monitoring.
There's other ways - write it into the conditions of loan that it's not the school's responsibility to monitor student use when at home.
There are solutions that allow monitoring only on campus - both the monitoring person and the student need to be on-site for the software to contact a licensing server. No server contact=no monitoring.
And never bring 'AI' into it.
There's Steven Black Hosts for blocking gambling, social media, fakenews and porn sites. Should be enough for a school, no?
Our system flags key words for staff intervention. This has provided earlier support for suicidal students and earlier intervention for developing threats.
This is every school surveillance software
Parents don't know or care much about their school domain's IT sadly
Imagine permitting this to be done to your child 🤡
Most parents probably don't even know it's happening.
This headline reads like an onion article lmfao
...on students’ school-issued machines and accounts.
These are school issued machines, and like all machines issued by a 3rd party for use under their supervision, they come with monitoring software.
This isn't some dystopian issue, and frankly, students should not be using school issued machines for private chats or photo storage, and should absolutely have their search history monitored while using said devices.
These aren't necessarily the computers you and I grew up on where they had a dedicated computer lab room for use during class time. These are devices they take everywhere with them, even home. Now imagine some creepy school IT administrator decided to peek on the Webcams of kids while they're on their room?
No need to imagine, it's linked in the article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/610k-settlement-in-school-webcam-spy-case/
Camera/mic access seems like overreach. PII should be obfuscated and only accessible with an audited workflow that includes an access review.
Modern off the shelf MDM is capable of this.
wait schools dont have computer labs anymore???? in ALL my schools and the one im in right now we have them
I understand the difference between a laptop and PC thanks.
Now imagine if, and hear me out, one didn't bring school hardware home so some "creepy IT administrator" doesn't have access.
"Save the kids" arguments always fall flat on the face when the solution is as simple as leaving school devices at school.
This isn't isolated to school-issued equipment. While this article is mostly talking about high school students, this same situation plagues upper education, as well. My roommate was recently taking some college courses from home, and the proctoring software they require installs rootkit-level spyware on his computer and tried monitoring our entire network activity.
The article has a pretty convincing argument against it. You should read the whole thing.
I read the article and it is not in any way convincing.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Justify it however you want it but this is a huge over reach esp since we got some shiti 3p vendor involved to middle man this.
I totally trust them not to sell that data after it is "properly anonymized" or "leaked" 🤡
Damn right.
Yeah, when i was in school; there were no devices issued to students. We had 'computer labs'. Ie; a room full of computers for student use. There was always one computer for the teachers to use that had a remote-desktop interface monitoring every screen in the room live. They could always see what you were doing, lockout your keyboard/mouse, blank your display.
This really doesn't seem any different.
I could understand outrage if students were require to install this on their own hardware; but school issued devices are under the schools monitoring and control. Always have been.
These are different because kids take these computers home, and it’s some random working for a 3rd party monitoring what’s going on.
Creepy.
I agree that this is no different, and has the same solution: Don't use the schools computers for things that aren't for school and you won't have no problems.
If your kids' school laptops are surveilled, they're surveilled by someone. Let's call that someone Joe. Joe is a person who took a low-paying job that lets him surveil your kids. Joe likes his job, because he gets to surveil your kids. He gets to turn on the camera and look in your kids' room. He gets to read the chat messages your kids send to their classmates.
Your kids would be better off without Joe in their lives. Joe is not a source of security. Joe is not protecting your kids; Joe is a threat to them.
We know that positions with power and access to children will attract pedophiles this is a well known, thoroughly confirmed fact.
And yet we got apologist justifying another government over reach.
I work IT in schools. There is limited surveillance tools on college owned devices. Mainly logging of web traffic. Screens can be viewed when on campus network, not reachable off campus.
No one in our department has time to waste looking at web history or screens. Teachers don't bother to use it much either. We only look at it when directed by college executive or when I go in there at the end of term to clear the alerts.
I'd imagine most other schools are similar, no one gives a shit what kids are doing on their devices
Except Joe. And people like Joe. Whose surveillance of kids is now not only easier, but sanctioned.
That's what it looks like when it works well. There's no way for parents to know if its a Joe situation or not.
It's not like it hasn't happened before. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/610k-settlement-in-school-webcam-spy-case/
So if no one gives a shit anyway you don’t need the surveillance capabilities anyway, right?
You're pretty far off base here.
Just to clarify, the majority of active pedophiles are opportunistic, they go after those they have access to.
This is why every industry that has greater access to children, also has an greater number of pedophile scandals... It's a problem, and yeah, giving someone direct access via a computer to a child's digital life is a form of access that might be used opportunistically by such people.
I don't think you understand just how locked down modern school laptops are. They don't have access to Google snake, much less something like discord to chat with their friends. I semi-volenteer with my highschools library and I have to make tickets because some kids date/time was wrong and they didn't have the ability to fix it. We don't even have the ability to share PowerPoints anymore. The people that look on them are also the overworked IT guys that have to deal with these BS date/time tickets all day.
Teenagers are crafty and don't have respect for the technology provided to them. I've seen (on multiple occasions) my peers beat the screen of the free laptop repeatedly if it's too 'slow'.