Cheri Kiesecker is a Colorado parent who pays close attention to technology that invades student privacy.
She left the following warning as a comment:
In response to the question about GAFE. Below are a few links that may be of help.
GAFE, Google, Chromebooks… seem to suffer transparency issues on how they track and use and analyze student data. When parents have asked to see what data points Google collects, how that information is analyzed, who it is shared with, there are no transparent answers.
Many privacy organizations and advocates have concerns and questions about the algorithms used and data collection/ sharing in GAFE.
Google Chromebooks are pre-set to send student data, all user activity, back to Google.
This article explains how ChromeSync feature tracks students. Some schools purposely leave the SYNC feature on. Others, however, turn off Sync before asking students to use Chromebooks. MANY schools and parents are NOT AWARE of the Chrome Sync tracking feature.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-confusing-consumers-profit
This blog does a great job explaining GAFE issues in Where The Sidewalk Ends: Wading Through Google’s Terms of Service for Education:
Google defines a narrow set of applications as “core” Apps for Edu services. These services are exempt from having ads displayed alongside user content, and from having their data used for “Ads purposes”. However, apps outside the core services – like YouTube, Blogger, and Picasa – are not covered by the terms of service that restrict ads. The same is true for integrations of third party apps that can be enabled within the Google Apps admin interface, and then accessed by end users. So, when a person in a Google Apps for Edu environment watches a video on YouTube, writes or reads a post on Blogger, or accesses any third party app enabled via Google Apps, their information is no longer covered under the Google Apps for Education terms.
To put it another way: as soon as a person with a Google Apps for Education account strays outside the opaque and narrowly defined “safe zone” everything they do can be collected, stored, and mined.
So, the next time you hear someone say, “Google apps doesn’t use data for advertising” ask them to explain what happens to student data when a student starts in Google apps, and then goes to Blogger, or YouTube, or connects to any third party integration.” read more…
https://funnymonkey.com/2015/where-the-sidewalk-ends-wading-through-googles-terms-of-service
EFF COMPLAINT against GOOGLE
The privacy watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint with the FTC about Google’s deceptive tracking of students.
Chrome books are set to send back students’ entire browsing history to Google but that is not all.
Google’s Student Tracking Isn’t Limited to Chrome Sync
Many media reports on (as well as at least one response to) the FTC complaint we submitted yesterday about Google’s violation of the Student Privacy Pledge have focused heavily on one issue—Google’s use of Chrome Sync data for non-educational purposes. This is an important part of our complaint, but we want to clarify that Google has other practices which we are just as concerned about, if not more so.
In particular, the primary thrust of our complaint focuses on how Google tracks and builds behavioral profiles on students when they navigate to Google-operated sites outside of Google Apps for Education. We’ve tried to explain this issue in both our complaint and our FAQ, but given its significance we think it’s worth explaining again.
To understand what’s going on, you first have to understand that when it comes to education, Google divides its services into two categories: Google Apps for Education (GAFE), which includes email, Calendar, Talk/Hangouts, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Contacts, and the Apps Vault; and everything else, which includes Google Search, Blogger, Bookmarks, Books, Maps, News, Photos, Google+, and YouTube, just to name a few.
Google has promised not to build profiles on students or serve them ads only within Google Apps for Education services. When a student goes to a different Google service, however, and they’re still logged in under their educational account, Google associates their activity on that service with their educational account, and then serves them ads on at least some of those non-GAFE services based on that activity.
In other words, when a student logs into their educational account, and then uses Google News to create a report on current events, or researches history using Google Books, or has a geography lesson using Google Maps, or watches a science video on YouTube, Google tracks that activity and feeds it into an ad profile attached to the student’s educational account—even though Google knows that the person using that account is a student, and the account was created for educational purposes.
This is our biggest complaint about Google’s practices—that despite having promised not to track students, Google is abusing its position of power as a provider of some educational services to profit off of students’ data when they use other Google services—services that Google has arbitrarily decided don’t deserve any protection. read more
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/googles-student-tracking-isnt-limited-chrome-sync
Google and other apps may be “free”, but as privacy experts warn, your child’s data is the price. GAFE is just one example of needing transparent and enforceable privacy laws to protect students and why schools and teachers should read the privacy policies, terms of service surrounding data collection and use…and communicate that information with parents before signing a child up for GAFE or any app. Ideally, every parent should be given the choice to opt-in, as many parents are not aware of data privacy issues surrounding edtech.
…and as privacy groups warn, Google is playing with [COPPA] fire in promoting GAFE to children under 13.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Silicone Valley technocrats are more dangerous than the autocrats outside of tech.
Than the banksters and hoghedge funders??
Aren’t they all from the same bucket of slop?
They certainly feed out of that same bucket which, you and I, the peeons provide with our work.
Oh, the image I just had of what it would be like to carry that bucket. Imagine the stench. We’d clip our nose with an old fashioned clothes pen and hold our breath while we carried it to the pig pen to feed the hogs. I suspect if the hogs ate this swill, they’d all drop dead.
Reblogged this on DelawareFirstState and commented:
Google and other apps may be “free”, but as privacy experts warn, your child’s data is the price.
Thank you, Kim!
Cross posted
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-Parents-Need-to-Know-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Data-Mining_Diane-Ravitch_Google_Laws-160924-576.html
I forwarded this to a teacher in a district that just put Chromebooks in every classroom. The teacher is a BAT and super savvy.
The tech marketers are far more sophisticated on all of this than most of the people that buy their products.
The Gates and Lumina Foundation are among those working to get rid of student data privacy in postsecondary education, all in the name of “transparency” and “accountability.”
There are solutions. I did the following many times.
1) Chromebooks can be freely turned into Linux laptops. Linux is a free, most stable, full fledged operating system with thousands of apps—unlike the Chrome operating system with its highly restrictive offerings of apps.
2) Instead of google, use a nontracking, but equally powerful search engine, such as Duckduckgo, https://duckduckgo.com/ . Better yet, make it your default search engine.
3) Use Adblock plus to prevent seeing advertisements. https://adblockplus.org/
4) Use the Firefox browser instead of Chrome, Google’s browser. https://www.mozilla.org/
All these can be easily done on all the chromebooks the school got. Let me know if I can be of more help.
Thanks for that info, Mate.
Cheri, Diane, thank you. The administration of my school district is obsessed with using Google and Chrome for everything under the sun. They have set up accounts in my and my students’ names using our personal information. They did it without asking. The accounts cannot be removed. Refusing to use them and the Chromebooks they increased class sizes to buy is a daily fight. It’s time for me to do my job, to educate people. So thank you for the information. Keep it coming.
You’ve left me with my mouth hanging wide open. They set up accounts with your personal info without your knowledge or permission? I sure hope that’s illegal.
Every student and teacher in the nation’s second largest school district has a district Google account. Also, the district firewalls block other search engines on campus. Somehow, the Google account is coordinated with the online textbook/program accounts. I was wrong, though, about being unable to remove it. I just now looked up how to delete a Google account. (I googled it.) You just need to know what password the district gave you, and you can get rid of it. I will tell my students tomorrow.
“Also, the district firewalls block other search engines on campus. ”
That cannot be legal. What happens when you try to visit, say duckduckgo.com?
Duckduckgo is blocked. It gives you a Denied Access screen.
Sounds like the behavior of a rogue government, doesn’t it? I am sure you guys could FOIA (do a public record request) the exact contract of the school district with Google.
It also puts something like Inappropriate Website Visited in your search history.
District personnel in many cases have refused to e-mail documents to me, insisting on google docs instead.
Once, in a professional development meeting, a teacher said she was using google docs to collect student work, and the coaches gave her an actual round of applause. They were beaming.
There is definitely something very fishy in LA.
Is the blocking implemented in the chromebooks and other school computers only or the whole school network itself is censored?
What displays if you go to duckduckgo.com is a district office-made looking screen. You can go to google, though.
That’s on the school iThing at school. I guess the site admin can turn it on and off? My personal iThing can still go to duckduckgo.com on campus, but I don’t use my personal iThing during class. I don’t use my school iThing at home. As for Chromebooks, I so far have only had to use them for weeks of testing each year for the last couple years.
“That’s on the school iThing at school. I guess the site admin can turn it on and off?”
(Sorry for the repost. It got posted in the wrong place)
Great work Cheri! Opt out of all this harmful ed tech invading our schools!
Wasn’t it Arne Duncan’s (and now presumably King’s) goal to “track” kids from preschool, through high school, past college, and into the work force? How better than with interconnected computer programs which can now recognize not only fingerprints but facial features?
As the adage/meme correctly observes, “If an online service is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
Kudos to Cheri for this important research, and to Diane for circulating it more widely. Only when this information becomes embedded in the collective awareness might there be a chance to stop the hyper-monetization of children and the data they generate, which is a pillar of so-called reform.
Let’s add that Windows also collects data and tracks its users.
I don’t know which is worse, Google or Microsoft. Oh wait, there’s history to take into account: William Gates the Third, Steve Ballmer, and stacked ranking. Microsoft is worse.
Um, Yikes.
What’s a mere mortal to do?
Here’s a mere mortal’s meta-dilemma: is referring to all this stuff or even worrying about it paranoid? Because when I contemplate posting this to a parent’s list, I fear losing credibility from among either (a) those who think this is loony-tunes weirdness to consider or (b) folks who have grown so weary of these complex privacy-issues that they have given up worrying about what they can’t understand or change yet can become defensive about the matter in the face of those who have not, perhaps for the same reasons they have now given up these concerns.
I believe you and agree that all of this is hugely concerning. But presenting the information effectively strikes me as very difficult.
OK, mea culpa. My inchoate concerns are completely addressed in the very first, eff.com url of the OP.
There is a lot to learn and know about all this but there’s nothing like just starting.
“Here’s a mere mortal’s meta-dilemma”
You are correct: most parents don’t seem to care about this. This is because they don’t perceive tracking and personal information sharing as such a big deal. A few case studies would be useful to make the whole issue less abstract, but I don’t know of any good website that has good examples which would show the possible detrimental consequences.
Agreed! I wish I cared more about this, but in the scope of ed things to care about, I don’t understand this one as much, and so I just haven’t get too worked up about Google using data to get better ads. I’m sure there’s also an element of having come into adulthood as a loyal google user myself. Should I be worried about what’s happening now, or is the real problem what the current technology could turn into?
Well, here is an older article about using children’s personal data for military recruitment. In fact, this use of the data was mandated by No Child Left Behind. I wonder if ESSA has anything related.
I certainly don’t want any particular company to have an upper hand in influencing my child’s future.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/08/privacy-advisory-leave-my-child-alone
id you know that President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act mandates that public high schools turn over private student contact information to local military recruiters or risk losing federal education funding? Not only that, but the Pentagon has compiled a database of more than 30 million young people, including 16- and 17-year-olds, for the purpose of military recruitment?
It seems that using student data for military recruiting hasn’t been eliminated
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg112.html#sec9528
Erin, to understand why we should be safe from data gatherers, I suggest you watch the film “Snowden”. The reason they are collecting the data today might not be how they use that data in the future.
“That’s on the school iThing at school. I guess the site admin can turn it on and off?”
That would be interesting (and important) to find out. If the devices are shipped with the filters that close out websites, it may be a problem with closing out the competition. If the site admin does the filtering, there may even be a problem with censorship.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/its-404-day
When you’re using a computer in a public library or school and you encounter a banned website or blocked information we highly recommend using Herdict, a project by the folks at Harvard’s Berkman Center that allow users to log web blockages, censorship, and filtering as it happens.
Thanks, Máté Wierdl for all the information!
I showed this post to my assistant principal in charge of tech today when I asked him to help me take down the Google account the district made in my name (which I have to call district IT to accomplish), and turn off Chromebook Sync. I was shocked when he not only recognized EFF, not only said he donates money to EFF, but totally agreed about ending Google tracking and Chromebook Sync. He’s a tech guy! An LAUSD administrator and a tech guy! Tech is his LA Unified admin job! He explained how he navigates the world of tracking, turning it on when “necessary” and off when the least bit superfluous. He even said something like what you wrote to me, Diane, “Control the data; don’t let the data control you.”
We are not alone, Diane. This war is getting big.
LeftCoastTeacher, Máté Wierdl – you are both within LAUSD’s sphere then?
Máté, this upper-level ‘privacy switch’ you’re talking about… can it be used/applied to Naviance? That’s presuming this “career and college ready” software is all about the same marketing collection at its root?
Could LCT and Máté please contact me offlist using my user-name at gmail?
Thanks, tons!!!
In the meantime, anyone have information about Naviance please? TIA!
Erin, I completely hear you in your overloaded confusion. I feel all this has to be incredibly important but sheepishly I’m still not exactly sure why.
Although assigning more reading-homework to the saturated isn’t especially wise, I’ve been delving into this by following a bunch of links that started here and are therefore mostly repetitious. I copy them below, slightly anotated, because some are new and all are interesting. I think this stuff has a really, really long learning-curve. It’s very complicated, dense and tinged in paranoia so it’s hard to swallow. For me all this just got moved to the front burner when dd’s school instituted Naviance, the swiss banker of national data collections:
Naviance, Data collection and cradle-to-job tracking:
How is your data used?
Privacy concerns of Naviance:
General data collection issue:
GAFE (Google Apps For Education):
GAFE’s loopholes:
EFF lawsuit:
EFF advice re technology/privacy issues:
Difficulty determining what data is collected; opt-out mandatory”
Old NCLB military-use data collection:
Background:
Michael, YES!!!!:
“If an online service is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
Thanks for collecting this stuff!
Well, I am happy that I’ve bookmarked Diane’s site. I wouldn’t even have this info if I hadn’t. (I NEVER use Google for searches, but that doesn’t mean that stuff can’t be scrubbed from the internet, rendering a search with any search engine fruitless.) Some time ago, I came across a couple of articles look at Google’s invasion of the Canadian education system. Parents were expressing concern. I could have swore I blogged about it or bookmarked the articles. I can’t find anything on either of my two computers.
For the record, I do not trust EFF. Give Yasha Levine’s “Surveillance Valley” a read to know why we shouldn’t. Or check out his article “All EFF’s Up.” – https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine