Audrey Watters is one of the leading voices among those who are concerned about student privacy.
In this post, she notes the growing attention to surveillance of children but observes that some parents are purchasing devices that facilitate surveillance.
Do you want your child to be surveilled by unknown persons and corporations?
During the Duncan administration, the Department of Education conducted, and the Gates Foundation paid for, experiments on using galvanic skin response bracelets, retinal scanners, and other devices to monitor, in real time, students’ emotional responses and attention to the task at hand. Arne Duncan evidently “thought” that such Orwellian total information systems for command and control of students were just peachy. But then, he “thought” that anything conceived of by Great Leader Gates was just peachy.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/he-sees-you-when-youre-sleeping-2/
This was also about the time that Gates was rolling out his Orwellian national student and worker total information system, inBloom, which failed because of privacy. This would have, in part, functioned as the gradebook for the entire nation, and anyone who wanted to sell educational materials would have had to interface with it, giving it monopoly control over who could play in that market and who couldn’t. Fortunately, people saw this for what it was and put a stake in the beast shortly after its monstrous birth.
and we should not forget that he was given free reign by everyone in Wash DC at the time
Alas, yes.
After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting Florida has increased surveillance of students. Some districts are investing in new security technologies that scan social media posts, school assignments and even student emails for potential threats.
“And, on Aug. 1, the state launched an ambitious data repository called the Florida Schools Safety Portal. It’s intended to collect information from school discipline records, law enforcement and mental health and child welfare systems and display it all in one place, alongside tips sent in by the public and automatic scans of social media posts for potential threats.”
The problem with endless data collection is that a student may have made an error in judgment in high school, but the data may follow and pigeon hole students for years. Florida also plans to implement social-emotional software in schools across the state. Parent are concerned and should be very concerned about what happens to the data. As we have seen with algorithms, programmers often overstate the capabilities of software.https://www.npr.org/2019/09/12/752341188/when-school-safety-becomes-school-surveillance
I often wonder why people invite surveillance into their homes and communities just so they can turn lights on and off without touching a switch. Smart devices are so dumb. Drives me nuts to see how gullible people can be when they don’t read much.
I had to laugh as I watched a news item on young people having trouble with scam programs which were taking over their smart devices when they asked for things verbally, like “Siri, call my dad.” The suggestion was made that the frustrated users could simply bypass the problem by calling the person directly, and the response was one of this amazed shock that anyone would even suggest something like that.
Amazing, isn’t it.