There’s an older story where the system admin was spying on kids in their own homes through the webcam using similar software.
I hope that person is in jail.
Unfortunately not
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/610k-settlement-in-school-webcam-spy-case/
As for the $610,000 settlement, a significant portion goes to legal fees. Another student who sued will receive $10,000. But Blake will receive $175,000 in a trust. He will receive $25,000 up front.
And it’s not even all going to the victims.
Earlier this summer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Montgomery County District Attorney cleared the District, and its employees - current and former – of any criminal wrongdoing.
I really wish we could change this.
We revised our policies and procedures, reaffirmed our commitment to technology and put safeguards into place to ensure the privacy of our students, staff and school families.
This reads like, “we made sure we’re not going to get caught again.”
‘As children grow up they become more independent’, apparently privacy doesn’t apply in this case. I’m sure some students are annoyed at that fact that people trust them less and less.
This article feels pretty disingenuous to me.
It glosses over the fact that this is surveillance on computers that the school owns. This isn’t them spying on kids personal laptops or phones. This is them exercising reasonable and appropriate oversight of school equipment.
This is the same as complaining that my job puts a filter on my work computer that lets them know if I’m googling porn at work. You can cry big brother all you want, but I think most people are fine with the idea that the corporation I work for has a reasonable case for putting monitoring software on the computer they gave me.
The article also makes the point that, while the companies claim they’ve stopped many school shootings before they’ve happened, you can’t prove they would have happened without intervention.
And sure. That’s technically true. But the article then goes on to treat that assertion as if it’s proof that the product is worthless and has never prevented a school shooting, and that’s just bad logic.
It’s like saying that your alarm clock has woken you up 100 days in a row, and then being like, “well, there’s no proof that you wouldn’t have woken up on time anyway, even if the alarm wasn’t there.” Yeah, sure. You can’t prove a negative. Maybe I would usually wake up without it. I’ve got a pretty good sleep schedule after all. But the idea that all 100 are false positives seems a little asinine, no? We don’t think it was effective even once?
Counter point: when this isnt an obscure thing, and kids are aware of it, they will purposefully use trigger words because they are kids.
If kids/people are having mental health issues, whats the best way to handle that? By scanning for the symptom and telling them to stop being mentally troubled? I really doubt kids are getting the care they need based on these flags. Seems like a bandaid for cultural/systemic issues that cause the mental illness/harm.
Sure, maybe, but I’d also say you shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Yes, we should absolutely have better mental healthcare safety nets. Yes, false positives are probably a pretty common prank.
But this isn’t a zero sum game. This can work on tandem with a therapist/counsellor to try and identify someone before they shoot up a school and get them help. This might let the staff know a kid is struggling with suicidal ideation before they find the kid OD’d on moms sleeping pills.
In an ideal world would this be unnecessary? Absolutely. But we don’t live in that ideal world.
In fairness you cant just say its not a zero sum game when the article is supported with a quote from one individual saying they were glad it told them in some cases. We dont know how effective it is.
This is normalizing very intimate (and automated) surveillance. Kids all have smart phones and can google anything they want when they arent using school hardware. If kids have any serious pre-meditation to do something bad then they will do it on their smartphones.
The only reason this would be effective is to catch students before they are aware they are being watched (poof thats gone tomorrow), or the student is so dirt poor that they dont have a smart phone or craptop.
And what else will the student data be used for? Could it be sold? It would certainly have value. Good intentions are right now… data is FOREVER.
Exactly.
As a concerned and very involved parent, I do not want this nonsense tracking my child, because I value my child’s privacy. I also don’t provide them a phone, because they haven’t demonstrated to me that they’ll use it responsibly (oldest is 10). If I let my kids have a device, it’s because I trust them with it, and I let them use my desktop and laptop w/o supervision and w/o any tracking to do things like play games and do homework, but they only get access when I say they can. When they earn my trust, I’ll let them have their own device with their own passwords that I don’t know.
But I don’t think I’m the target audience here. My kids aren’t poor and we have a pretty good relationship. I tell them consistently if they don’t feel comfortable talking to me about something, who they can talk to (teachers, school counselors, ecclesiastical leaders, certain neighbors, etc). I wish all kids had parents who had the time and inclination to care for their emotional needs, but that’s not the world we live in. That said, we do exist, so whatever policies exist need to cater to privacy-minded families who properly take care of their kids.
I don’t know the solution here, but I will oppose any hidden surveillance I hear about.
Yeah, but last time this happened, they did spy on the kids inappropriately. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/19/schools-spied-on-students-webcams
You say “the last time this happened” as if this wasn’t a generalized trend across all schooling for the past decade or so.
Out of the tens of thousands of schools implementing systems like this, I’m not surprised that one had some letch who was spying on kids via webcam.
And I’m all for having increased forms of oversight and protection to prevent that kind of abuse.
But this argument is just as much of a “won’t someone think of the children” as the opposite. Just cause one school out of thousands did a bad thing, doesn’t mean the tech is worthless or bad.
Like any tool, the tech is fine. It’s the people using them that have been shown to be irresponsible. Therefore, we should not allow use of these tools.
That argument could be expanded to any tool though.
People run people over with cars or drive drunk. Ban cars?
People use computers to distribute CP. Ban computers?
People use baseball bats to bludgeon people to death. Ban baseball?
The question of if a tool should be banned is driven by if its utility is outweighed by the negative externalities of use by bad actors.
The answer is wildly more nuanced than “if it can hurt someone it must be banned.”
The utility of these tools does not outweigh their misuse.
That is what we’re debating, yes.
If it could be conclusively proven that a system like this has saved a child’s life, would that benefit outweigh the misuse?
If not, how many children’s lives would it need to save for it to outweigh the misuse?
“Just think of the kids!”
This reminds me the story of a pressure cooker and the backpack - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/01/employer-reported-suspicious-google-searches-that-led-to-terrorism-task-force-visit-for-long-island-family/ It’s a 10 year old story and back then it seamed like a bad dream. Turned out it’s a bad dream we are living today.
On top of that I do remember reading about people getting a complimentary police visit just because they have ordered nitrite based manure (mostly farmers). Unfortunately I don’t have a link. And I do remember reading about students questioned by a police based on a library renting habits. Back then, when I was like “this will kill the privacy as we know it”, I was ridiculed.
