
Schools Are Spending Millions on High-Tech Surveillance of Kids - joeyespo
https://gizmodo.com/schools-are-spending-millions-on-high-tech-surveillance-1823811050
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psyc
Today I learned about Social Sentinel[0], since both right-twitter and left-
twitter are condemning it today. Kind of heartwarming to see everyone (except
LE and opportunistic entrepreneurs) agree on something for a change. Anyway,
seems the idea is to analyze kids' social media accounts and send minority
reports to the police. All too easy to spin it like "nothing to see here" too.
Interesting that this company has been around for 4 years and I can't find a
single testimonial about any attacks it prevented.

[0] [https://www.socialsentinel.com](https://www.socialsentinel.com)

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OscarCunningham
Eventually one of the parties will oppose it more strongly than the other one,
at which point the other one will be forced to support it. I believe this is
known as "spontaneous symmetry breaking".

Also for what it's worth "minority report" was the term in the film for when
one of the precogs disagreed with the other two, so it's not really applicable
here. You'd be forgiven for forgetting this fact though, because the plot
doesn't actually feature one.

~~~
psyc
It was a play on words.

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dkoubsky
At my high school - a private prep school - we are required to have iPads. All
of us were required to install a monitoring program that has access to most of
what we do on the iPads (internet searches, messages, etc.). To my knowledge,
it hasn't been used to incriminate anyone but it still makes me wary.

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BoiledCabbage
There will be an entire generation of kids for whom spying on everything they
do on their computer till age18 will have been normalized.

What happens when they start participating in denocracy. It's hard to imagine
they'll have the same expectations of personal privacy after that.

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eikenberry
This is just their school issued Ipad. They'd hopefully have a personal
computing device of some sort that they'd be free to do what they want on.
Assuming they don't have helicopter parents who have to control every aspect
of their kids lives, then they're just screwed.

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ams6110
Right -- it's the school's iPad, and they can set the terms of use.

Do schools still have libraries? They did when I went, and you can be sure
they curated the set of books in the catalog and kept records of who checked
out which ones.

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jstarfish
Even the public libraries started disclosing checkout history to agencies with
the advent of the PATRIOT act.

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jacobolus
[https://www.aclu.org/librarians-nsl-
challenge](https://www.aclu.org/librarians-nsl-challenge)

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Any parent that thinks schools won't end up abusing their newfound
surveillance powers is deluding themselves. Look at the example of WebcamGate
at Lower Merion High School in 2010.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Merion_High_School)

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Digital-Citizen
Mass surveillance is an abuse. One could go further in exploring additional
abuses by looking into what is done with the data (Where is the data stored?
Who else has access? What do they do with the data? Is any of this knowable?)
but indiscriminately collecting information on people in the hope it will
somehow prove useful is nothing but a cover for seeding people with the notion
that it's right and proper to have no privacy.

Consider this excerpt from the article: "“Schools are justified in thinking
about safety, both in terms of gun violence and other possible hazards,”
Rachel Levinson, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, told
Gizmodo. “At the same time, these technologies do not exist in a vacuum; we
know, for instance, that facial recognition is less accurate for women and
people of color, and also that school discipline is imposed more harshly on
children of color.”"

Everything Levinson says here is vague and remarkably inarticulate. Being
concerned is insufficient and a better written article would have asked
Levinson further questions to clarify these claims. Precisely how is a bunch
of data like this going to curb gun violence? What other hazards are you
referring to, exactly? Why should we be concerned about the details of
accuracy of the collected information while we're questioning whether it was
ethical and useful to collect this data in the first place? Which school
situations where "discipline is imposed more harshly on children of color"
will be resolved by watching surveillance footage or examining location data?

All the more reason why people should get their own computers, never use
school-issued computers, and make sure that their own computers run only a
free software OS, and install nothing but free software on top of that. Also
everyone (not just parents and students) need to politically organize to let
students use privacy respecting books and (only if strictly needed) computer
education that can be used from any computer OS.

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ourmandave
I don't think I would allow my daughter to have a laptop where the spyware
comes pre-installed.

Assuming the school district doesn't abuse it (like webcamgate) what's to stop
every hacker from here to Moscow in this day and age?

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shostack
Do parents have rights when it comes to this? What if the only way to compete
school work is with a school issued laptop?

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ams6110
Change schools, or if public school get involved with the school board and
make a stink.

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blattimwind
Land of the Free ⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾⁽³⁾

⁽¹⁾ No jaywalking ⁽²⁾ Permit 38A required to hold children outside areas
designated safe per § 477e of title XVI ⁽³⁾ Civil rights temporarily suspended

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John_KZ
Do the parents know about this? I can't imaging this happening in my country
without massive, nation-wide action to stop it and fire/punish those that
tried to implement the system.

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kwhitefoot
I'm curious, which country? I'm in Norway and I think would cause an outcry
here too.

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mLuby
Obligatory Black Mirror reference: S4E2 "Arkangel"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8)

