Schools Are Spending Millions on High-Tech Surveillance of Kids

A recent article in Gizmodo stated: "Advanced surveillance technologies once reserved for international airports and high-security prisons are coming to schools across America. From New York to Arkansas, schools are spending millions to outfit their campuses with some of the most advanced surveillance technology available: face recognition to deter predators, object recognition to detect weapons, and license plate tracking to deter criminals. Privacy experts are still debating the usefulness of these tools, whom they should be used on, and whom they should not, but school officials are embracing them as a way to save lives in times of crisis."

It's not just surveillance technology in schools that is an issue. Less than a year ago the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote: Spying on Students: School-Issued Devices and Student Privacy, "Students and their families are backed into a corner. As students across the United States are handed school-issued laptops and signed up for educational cloud services, the way the educational system treats the privacy of students is undergoing profound changes - often without their parents’ notice or consent, and usually without a real choice to opt out of privacy-invading technology."

And according to the New York Times: Student Data Collection Is Out of Control, "The collection of student data is out of control. No longer do schools simply record attendance and grades. Now every test score and every interaction with a digital learning tool is recorded. Data gathering includes health, fitness and sleeping habits, sexual activity, prescription drug use, alcohol use and disciplinary matters. Students’ attitudes, sociability and even "enthusiasm" are quantified, analyzed, recorded and dropped into giant data systems. Some schools use radio frequency identification tags to track student location throughout the school day. Other schools use “human monitoring services” that read student email and then contact local law enforcement if something is amiss. Students and parents will never see the vast majority of information collected."

The U.S. Department of Education has published the Parents' Guide to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act: Rights Regarding Children’s Education Records: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal privacy law that gives parents certain protections with regard to their children's education records, such as report cards, transcripts, disciplinary records, contact and family information, and class schedules. As a parent, you have the right to review your child's education records and to request changes under limited circumstances. To protect your child's privacy, the law generally requires schools to ask for written consent before disclosing your child's personally identifiable information to individuals other than you. - It is important to understand FERPA.

 

Military Kids

 

The Complete Privacy and Security Podcast is a joint effort of Michael Bazzell and Justin Carroll. Together, they wrote the "The Complete Privacy & Security Desk Reference: Volume I", which I recommend. In podcast # 52 - Protecting Your Kid's Privacy they discuss privacy in the school system (the segment runs from about 4:05 to 44:00).