
Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems - johnny313
https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25919951&bcid=25919951&rssid=25919941&item=http%3a%2f%2fapi.edweek.org%2fv1%2few%2f%3fuuid%3d8805A088-82E5-11E9-B21E-B4F258D98AAA
======
elliekelly
> Evergreen Public Schools in Washington state, for example, started using the
> company's service this school year. Between September and mid-March, the
> system flagged more than 9,000 incidents in the 26,000-student district. The
> overwhelming majority-84 percent-were for minor violations, such as
> profanity.

The fact that the system even monitors for profanity at all tells me its
purpose has a lot more to do with student surveillance than it does with
student safety.

~~~
TheOperator
I don't nessecarily have an issue with surveillance systems as they act as
force multipliers for all sorts of noble causes.

Surveillance systems should strictly be used for physical safety, anti-
vandalism, and loss prevention purposes. You're not preparing kids to succeed
by micromanaging them from behind a series of monitors. At all. People who
intend to use the system to punish the kids for swearing by no means should be
allowed access. The teachers and even the principal really shouldn't even have
access to reduce the temptation to abuse the surveillance system. If they keep
getting access the surveillance system should be thrown in the trash.

Bosses who use similar systems to keep their employees working can also expect
nothing better than mediocrity and a widespread CYA mentality.

~~~
zepto
What noble causes do they currently act as force multipliers for?

~~~
Gibbon1
Classification of people into a permanent class hierarchy.

------
yepguy
To fight this, I don't think we should be talking about privacy or rights.
That's all very important, but society is already fairly desensitized to that
language, and the pro-surveillance side can literally point to the dead bodies
of real children.

Instead, we should be talking about how deleterious it is to the character
development of our children. Among other problems, they are being demanded to
conform to an increasingly narrow range of acceptable behavior, and
conditioned to develop about as unhealthy a relationship with authority
figures as possible.

~~~
bilbo0s
That won't work either though.

I can hear it now:

<sarcasm> "Well, if by 'increasingly narrow range of acceptable behavior' you
mean 'not molesting the girls and refraining from committing school shootings'
then maybe they should have systems like this!" </sarcasm>

You need to have some arguments not centered around the idea of behavior.
Because that idea will be thrown back at you almost immediately. Behavior is
exactly what these people will say they are trying to change.

~~~
Aeolun
It’s so crazy considering the kids are exhibiting the exact same behavior as
their parents 20-30 years ago. Puberty isn’t new...

~~~
Gibbon1
From some distance it looks to me like kids today are aren't exhibiting the
same behavior as their parents. Their parents were oh so much much worse
behaved.

------
Mirioron
I cannot believe that these people are so dense:

> _" Why would it have a chilling effect if the superintendent of the school
> might see something that slips through the system about someone went
> hunting?" he asked. "There's no threat."_

How is the following not harm?

> _He pointed to a recent incident in which Social Sentinel flagged a college
> student who threatened on Twitter to shoot his professor for scheduling an
> early morning exam. (The student, who said he intended no harm, was
> arrested.)_

~~~
dsfyu404ed
They're not dense. These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly
acceptable because they have a world view in which living in totalitarian
society is acceptable. Their world view simply does not align with yours or
mine. They simply do not consider the use these kind of systems to be
fundamentally incompatible with free society the way you or I do.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> These people consider that kind of stuff perfectly acceptable because they
> have a world view in which living in totalitarian society is acceptable.

Except they don't. The moment the totalitarian society started to demand
conformance to something they don't like, you can be sure they would object.

~~~
jakeogh
They move the goalposts to the new normal, see "problems" still happening and
apply the same solution iteratively to absurdim.

~~~
Gibbon1
When organizations spend money on a 'tool' they will find a justification for
it's existence.

30 years ago the city I lived in bought a helicopter for the police. So they
could 'spot criminals from the air'. They actually appear to use it mostly to
look for teenagers hanging out in parks after hours.

------
SolaceQuantum
_" The local Brazosport Independent School District had recently hired a
company called Social Sentinel to monitor public posts from all users,
including adults, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. The
company's algorithms flagged Lafrenais's tweet as a potential threat.
Automated alerts were sent to the district's superintendent, chief of police,
director of student services, and director of guidance. All told, nearly 140
such alerts were delivered to Brazosport officials during the first eight
months of this school year..."_

OK, I think we really need to investigate protecting the privacy of our youth.
This is effectvely acclimating our children to minimal privacy as enforced by
authoritarian organizations.

~~~
momokoko
Unfortunately, it's pick one.

Either:

1\. Allow for potential bullying and sexual harassment and other things kids
put each other through.

2\. Monitor every single thing they do and police them at all times.

We as a society need to make a choice. You cannot have a perfectly safe and
positive environment at all times for children(and adults) without constant
and detailed monitoring.

My guess is that the correct answer lies somewhere in the middle. Ignoring
that reality and avoiding handling this at the regulatory level will result in
groups going either all the way to one side or all the way to the other.

Edit: I'm shocked how insane and unrealistic the people downvoting this are. I
feel so unbelievably bad if any of you have children or vote on any policy
that has to do with children. Awful people. Just awful.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its popular to create false dichotomies. Like this one.

How about: monitor them sometimes and train them into good behavior patterns,
so as to create a population of civil citizens

You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100
surveillance. Like any civil society.

~~~
momokoko
_> You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100
surveillance_

You absolutely, positively, cannot have that. Bullying is an all day every day
thing with children. Especially boys. The only way you prevent it all the time
is to never leave boys alone in a group with no monitoring or supervision.

Edit: If you are downvoting or disagreeing with this, you are part of the
absurdly unreasonable expectations we have for our children. Especially boys.
And are likely part of the reason 1 in 6 boys are diagnosed with ADHD for not
meeting these insane ideals.

~~~
jdietrich
_> Bullying is an all day every day thing with children._

Kids tease each other, they call each other names, they occasionally get into
fist-fights, but that's not necessarily bullying. Bullying is systematic and
targeted harassment; it is entirely right and proper that we should not
tolerate it.

If a kid is a bully, he's an asshole. He shouldn't necessarily be expelled or
even necessarily suspended, but someone needs to make it _crystal clear_ to
him that his behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, otherwise
he'll grow up to be an asshole and raise his kids to be assholes.

Don't drag ADHD or insane ideals into this and don't suggest it's some sort of
modern mollycoddling. Internet surveillance and helicopter parenting is no
substitute for moral leadership and the teaching of values. The idea that kids
need constant monitoring is symptomatic of a profound societal cowardice, an
abnegation of responsibility for teaching children to be decent human beings.

The solution to bullying isn't constant surveillance of children, it's
teaching children how to stand up for themselves and instilling them with a
sense of duty to stand up for their peers. It's creating a school community in
which bullying isn't something to be swept under the carpet, but something to
be fought vigorously. It's leading by example, taking the time to listen to
children and treating them with the same respect that you expect them to show
others. That's not easy, but it's our duty.

~~~
cr0sh
> If a kid is a bully, he's an asshole. He shouldn't necessarily be expelled
> or even necessarily suspended, but someone needs to make it crystal clear to
> him that his behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, otherwise
> he'll grow up to be an asshole and raise his kids to be assholes.

It's not entirely clear that this is true all the time.

I was reading a reddit thread the other day where the subject turned to
bullying, people who were bullied, and people who were bullies.

There were several there who seemed sincere in that they claimed they had been
bullies, but as they grew up, they grew out of it (some were "young bullies"
\- aged 8-10 or so, and grew out of it as teens, others were teens and worked
it out as they became adults) - but were remorseful about their former
actions. Many expressed the wish that they could apologize to those they
tormented or hurt. Others noted that they had been able to do that; or noted
that they had their bullies apologize to them. Some said it helped, others
said that while they appreciated it to an extent, they still kept those people
at arms length, as they didn't trust them. Others still mentioned becoming
friends (in one case, their bully became their best man at their wedding!).

Yes, this is all anecdotal, and should be taken with a grain simply because
"internet/reddit". At the same time, I don't think we can paint these people
with a broad brush in either direction.

~~~
jdietrich
My words were slightly carelessly chosen, but I think it's reasonable to say
"...otherwise he's highly likely to grow up to be an asshole and raise his
kids to be assholes". Some people do grow out of it, some people do learn
decent behaviour of their own volition, but that's far from guaranteed. I do
wonder what proportion of those people who "grew out" of being a bully
actually got away scot-free and just changed their ways ex nihilo, and what
proportion realised that they were gradually becoming a pariah and decided to
sort their act out.

Conversely, I can't think of many people who were genuinely kind and decent
children but grew up to become nasty thugs; the only examples that spring to
mind involve severe trauma or brain injuries.

------
esaym
Ah Clute, Texas. Howdy from Brazosport class of 2002! This is the second
article mentioning this area on HN I've seen in the last 3 years or so. The
first one mentioned Brazosport as the dropout capital of the entire USA. So I
doubt anyone within a 100 mile radius of there has ever heard of HN (but
waiting to be proven wrong).

Edit:

I guess to add more context. This is probably an example of a small,
underfunded, school district being coaxed into purchasing something it doesn't
even need, or the administration doesn't even understand.

~~~
danmg
The school district I graduated from, around the same time, hired some
consultant who used Brazosport, TX as the role model on how to improve their
NCLB related standardized test scores. It did not turn out well.

~~~
esaym
Brazosport (in the mid 1990's) had very good scores on the standardized tests.
But that was literally all they taught. And this was the TAAS test which had
very little content in it.

~~~
danmg
This is the straight up propaganda they were selling:
[https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-
xpm-2001-04-01-3363949-story.h...](https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-
xpm-2001-04-01-3363949-story.html) .

~~~
esaym
Wow talk about nostalgia!

Mrs. Sale was the elementary principal in the 1990's. She was nice, though I
never got sent to her office in elementary school. My trouble years started
after 5th grade. In 5th grade my teacher was Mr. Davis. The only man teacher
in the elementary. There were plenty of rumors going around about how he had
the hots for Mrs. Sale. And in the article's date of 2001 and with the new
name of Mrs 'Sale-Davis', I guess the rumors were right!

I was a Karankawa in 7th grade and a Mayan in 8th. I never knew what the
purpose of the 'pep rallies' were. Just figured it was what all schools did. I
don't even know what was talked about, I was just happy to get out of class.
Sometimes my buddy and I would try to pick up rocks on the way to the gym to
throw at people from the stands. Or a couple of times we'd sneak to the
bathroom and hide out there but that was really boring. I did think it was
somewhat strange that we organized our grades and classes into Indian tribe
names. Gang violence was all around us and it seemed to be an inappropriate
parody.

Even more interesting is the resistance in 1992 it speaks of with some
teachers quitting over the new ideas. I know in the early 1990's, several
teachers and counselors moved from Brazosport to its rival a few towns over
'Brasozwood'. Perhaps that was the reason. I only knew of that because I
briefly attended Brasozwood in the 8th grade and later in life found a
collection of year books from the two schools and was perplexed that many of
the administrators I knew from Brasozwood were listed in the Brazosport year
books of the 1980's.

>"Brazosport is unabashed about admitting it teaches to the test."

I guess the question is, "but is that right"?

"I know you're heading to the bathroom to tuck in that shirt," she tells a
10th-grade boy, who smiles widely before ducking into the men's room." <\--
heck that was probably me!

------
devoply
Schools in certain parts of the US, usually with more unruly students from
lower income backgrounds, are pretty much set up like prisons. You can't leave
the premises as the exits are heavily guarded, there are cops present, there
are various sorts of checkpoints where things are searched. Now it looks like
the prison follows you home into your private life where you might be planning
something nefarious. It's a bit of a mess.

~~~
noonespecial
>Now it looks like the prison follows you home into your private life where
you might be planning something nefarious.

Just getting them warmed up for the parole process later on.

------
shapiro1
I bullied a kid in middle school to the point where he switched classes.
Teachers didn’t panick and kick me out, rather they listened to both sides and
let us figure it out. We talked and became really good friends, even to this
day!

Humans aren’t perfect. I’m not saying bullying is good, but the best solution
is not to punishment. I’d certainly spiral out of control and become a monster
had I been kicked out.

Scandinavian pedagogy is great!

------
e12e
"the secret [to creating fiction about technology that stays relevant] is
basically to assume that people will be really stupid about technology for the
foreseeable future."

Cory Doctorow on the anniversary of "Little Brother"
[https://craphound.com/littlebrother/](https://craphound.com/littlebrother/)

------
rgrieselhuber
I always lose a few magical internet points when I say this, but, if possible,
avoid public schools.

~~~
oyebenny
And what have we learned about private institutions?

But that leaves us with homeschooling...

~~~
rgrieselhuber
Homeschooling has come a long way. It’s a sacrifice, for sure, but far easier
now than it was even 20 years ago.

~~~
Noos
You're complaining about an authoritarian public school system, but are
replacing it with an even more authoritarian solution. Homeschooling keeps the
child under the parent's eye 24-7 and completely captive to their worldview
and idea. If that worldview and idea is for them to be "schooled" in helping
their dad run his landscaping business, or being prepared to be married off,
well, good luck.

Public school is important precisely because it is public. It gets the kid out
to realize society exists and to deal with it as it exists. Homeschooling to
me is bad because the child is dominated by their parent too much and it's not
something that can really be fixed except with great effort by the child later
in life.

~~~
esaym
>Public school is important precisely because it is public. It gets the kid
out to realize society exists and to deal with it as it exists.

Perhaps your public school was better than mine, but what I was conditioned
into socially while in high school did not line up at all with "the real
world".

At the age of 20, after many months of deep thought about my life's direction,
I literally realized I needed to throw out everything I learned/was
indoctrinated into by the public school and start over. The sad thing is,
thanks to facebook, I've looked up many of my old high school buddies. They
are still the same. They are 30+ years old now and act like they are still 15.
Still playing the same video games, listening to the same kind of music, still
showing the same attitudes, still not having any responsibility.

Which is the point I realized when I was 20, why send your teenager into an
institution that will condition him/her into acting like a typical teenager? A
person with a "teenager" mentality will never be a CEO, will never own a
company, will never be successful and will never make wise choices. And why
would they? They already know everything and can't be taught a dang thing.

Its clearly a two way street. I've seen some terrible products of
homeschooling and I've seen some really good ones. But that brings the
question of if the "terrible products" of homeschooling had went to public
school, would they have been better off? I've going to assume probably not.

~~~
Noos
You don't know the opposite though.

The kids that fail are barely educated; they may have fourth grade level math.
They end up indoctrinated totally by their parents worldview or unable to
function with others. They have no real way to connect with others because
there isn't even the shared topic of "public school sucks." CEO isn't an
option for them; hell a life apart from their parents barely is.

I think people romanticize it way too much, and there is the HLSDA which
really pushes a lot of narratives about it. The blog Homeschoolers Anonymous
is inactive, but a good reference on some of the issues.

~~~
esaym
>You don't know the opposite though.

I've seen good and bad products from both public and non-public. So I don't
know what you mean by opposite. The worst case was my own friend's brother
whose mother pulled him out of public school after he failed the fourth grade
for the 2nd time. She said the school was "full of mexicans" and she'd just
teach him herself. But she never did anything... He has been arrested many
times for selling drugs, which he did because he could never get a "normal"
job as he had no ID or birth certificate (his mom lost all that). Thankfully
through prison he learned how to read and do math and he was given a prison ID
card which can be used in place of a birth certificate to get an official ID
card from the DMV. But he's' still not doing too well... But that's the worst
case, and his brother that graduated from public school isn't doing much
better.

The point I make is, the parents should know what is best for their own
children and they should have their children's best interest in mind. Sure,
some don't and or can't but they still need to have options. But as a society
of sovereign individuals, this is what we allow. To overreach this area
through government regulation will just end up with a loss of rights and a
poorer ending (that has already been played out in other countries of the
past)

------
Analemma_
This is nasty, but the unpleasant truth is that these schools are just
rationally responding to public pressure and doing CYA. Every time there's a
school shooter, the first thing the parents and media do is dig through his
angry Facebook posts and go, "Look at all these red flags! Why wasn't anything
done?". Well, now the schools are doing something. It's not the _right_ thing
to do, and it's not going to fix anything, but getting angry at the schools
isn't going to cause them to change course: they're responding to public
demand. You need to start talking to parents and educating _them_.

~~~
yepguy
Wouldn't increased monitoring also increase their liability when something
does go terribly wrong?

~~~
elliekelly
My first thought exactly. If the school "knew" about it and dismissed the
alerts as a false positive I would have to imagine that opens them up to far
greater liability than simply not knowing about the behavior in the first
place.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _If the school "knew" about it and dismissed the alerts as a false
> positive..._

Knowing what you know about liability, ask yourself, what are the real chances
of the school knowing something and dismissing it as a false positive?

I think if you search your heart you'd probably come to the conclusion that
the fact that the school will follow up on every little thing is exactly the
problem. Not everyone means "I'd kill for that test answer sheet" when they
write "I'd kill for that test answer sheet".

~~~
elliekelly
> I think if you search your heart you'd probably come to the conclusion that
> the fact that the school will follow up on every little thing is exactly the
> problem.

The issues of school administrator overreach and school district liability for
negligence are not mutually exclusive.

> Knowing what you know about liability, ask yourself, what are the real
> chances of the school knowing something and dismissing it as a false
> positive?

Knowing what I know about liability and knowing what I know about compliance
monitoring systems with high rates of false positives is precisely why I said
what I said.

Negligence = known or should have known of X

Efforts to hold schools accountable for shootings have historically been
difficult because the plaintiffs must show (1) but for the action of the
school, the injury would not have occurred and (2) the injury was a
foreseeable result of the school's negligence.

This monitoring system creates actual knowledge of a potential threat where
most law suits over school shootings have had to argue the school "should have
known" _and_ requires the school to take make a record of their decision for
every alert (investigate or ignore).

------
atoav
Teach them early that we don’t live in free societies any more. How else would
you go about building tomorrow’s distopia?

We actually need the opposite: we need schools that create educated, crtically
thinking individuals that don’t hessitate to work together for thw future.

------
Avamander
I think this is just a strategy for moving the Overton window.

"Look what we can do! Instead we opted in for this [vendor] MITM proxy and
cameras in each classroom that snoop on your kids' activities! Much less
invasive ;)"

------
faissaloo
I was (and still am) against the monitoring, restriction and limiting of
student devices at school. I find it deeply disturbing that children are going
to be monitored when they aren't even on school grounds, it's nightmarish.
Every day homeschooling my future children looks exponentially better.

------
cryoshon
if you've ever been to a middle school or a high school as a student, you know
that these surveillance systems are probably already being used to crush
innocent dissent.

imagine how many times you made a snide remark about a teacher or a principal
to your peers in confidence. now, the target of your jeer will know that
you're talking shit -- and, much like if they were to overhear trash talk
about them in the hallways, they won't tolerate it. and so a bunch of harmless
children will be caught in the surveillance net, and punished for normal
behavior.

even worse, down the line you can be certain that state actors will gain
access to the data sets produced by surveillance. then, in these kids'
dossiers, they'll be marked as having anti-authoritarian tendencies as a
result of their childhood discussions which were snooped on. throw in a social
credit system, and someone may have a childhood remark following them for
life.

~~~
iamnothere
> if you've ever been to a middle school or a high school as a student, you
> know that these surveillance systems are probably already being used to
> crush innocent dissent.

This may sound hyperbolic to some people (my schools were fine), but it is
very true that school administration has a tendency to attract petty
authoritarians. Who is easier to rule with an iron fist than powerless
children?

I sometimes see things like the laptop spying scandal [0] and realize that I
was very lucky to avoid these sorts of people as a kid.

[0]
[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2521075/pennsylvania-s...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2521075/pennsylvania-
schools-spying-on-students-using-laptop-webcams--claims-lawsuit.html)

------
mixmastamyk
It's not clear from the article how the system monitors encrypted social media
traffic. Perhaps Twitter as it is public afterward, right? Or does it look for
public posts to local groups in Facebook? Or everyone has location tagging on
posts on other sites?

How are these companies getting their information to analyze?

~~~
mirimir
They just look at public posts, I guess.

What puzzles me is this:

> Social media monitoring companies track the posts of everyone in the areas
> surrounding schools, including adults.

Do Facebook, Twitter, etc expose geotags in posts?

~~~
esaym
I'm wondering the same. There's another company that does the same[0] and
probably several more. I know I've read reports of police departments getting
more lucrative access into private facebook posts. Perhaps it is the same for
a company trying to "help" a school district as well.

0:[https://geolistening.com/](https://geolistening.com/)

------
panzagl
Do any of the naysayers here work in a public capacity- teacher, law
enforcement, military/intelligence, etc? Have you ever been solely responsible
for the security and well-being of more than, say a half-dozen total
strangers? It's a hard problem, a continual tweaking of what we would see as
engineering trade-offs, usually performed by people with minimal training,
support, or reward who are stuck with the responsibility by default.

Supposedly we're here because we want to apply technology to hard problems-
well, here's one of the hardest, and here's how it's been applied so far.
Let's have a more reasonable discussion than a bunch of thin-veiled whining
about how it will affect our torrents.

~~~
ameister14
I have, yes. However, I don't believe it's always necessary to have experience
doing something in order to understand how it works - humans developed pretty
well in ways to enable us to share experience with one another.

Anyway, as I see it first we should agree on what exactly the problem is; in
this case, it appears this was created to solve the problem of mass shootings
in schools.

If that is the problem, this solution goes well beyond what is necessary to
solve it. Further, it remains to be seen whether this solution actually works
to solve the problem at all.

So you have something that might work but definitely does a bunch of
unnecessary things. At best, you have an incredibly inefficient solution and
at worst something that actively harms people.

~~~
panzagl
How does it go beyond? The systems discussed either grab public social media,
or monitor information created on the schools' machines. I don't know that
there is a reasonable expectation of privacy on either.

~~~
ameister14
First, I'd say monitoring profanity, the word 'gay,' mentions of drugs and
sex, etc. does not have bearing on the primary issue at hand: gun violence. If
you can outline for me how giving a student body principal information on a
student setting up a dating profile serves to solve the issue of mass
shootings, I'd appreciate it.

Second, the systems discussed pull information from student's phones and
directly monitor communication using school email addresses. The former is an
issue for obvious reasons and the latter is an issue because you actually
should have a reasonable expectation of private communication through mail.

The fact that it is possible for the school to read your mail is immaterial.
It is possible for the government to read your mail. The government does not
get to do so, despite the many, many crimes committed through the mail and by
people that receive mail.

~~~
panzagl
Actually, thinking about it, mass violence is probably secondary in these
systems to predicting suicidal behavior. And while you can argue a principal
shouldn't have to worry if a kid is bullied into suicide, or whether an
underage girl is using a dating site to find external validation, you better
believe they'll be the first ones blamed when a 15 year old girl goes missing
after meeting a guy on a dating site she accessed during math class.

But I don't know of anywhere that provides you a computer, email address,
whatever, without language saying they are for approved use only and can be
monitored. From what I read the 'pulling information' was after a device was
connected to a computer, most likely caused by school administrators and
students not understanding how the system reacts when it sees a new drive
attached. This isn't invading kids deepest darkest secrets, like asking them
to accept a cacert or whatever.

------
apearson
Non-Mobile Link: [https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/05/30/schools-are-
de...](https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/05/30/schools-are-deploying-
massive-digital-surveillance-systems.html)

------
manfredo
I was the type of high school student that would deliberately spam profanity
and other things that would trigger this system just to spite the
administrators. Privacy through obfuscation: when alarm bell rings all the
time then the alarm bell becomes meaningless.

------
vangelis
I figure the psychological damage will create even more school shooters.
_shrug_

------
arikr
Dang could we possibly get a new title on this? The default one is a bit
clickbaity.

~~~
srs_sput
Also a link to the non mobile site please

~~~
apearson
Non-Mobile Link: [https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/05/30/schools-are-
de...](https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/05/30/schools-are-deploying-
massive-digital-surveillance-systems.html)

------
dqpb
This should be fairly easy to DOS

~~~
bilbo0s
Not quite as easy as your Jedi Hand Wave-y assertion makes it out to be.
Letting the Authorities acclimate children to this sort of environment is
dangerous for society.

