School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy for Unproven Promises of Safety
www.eff.org
Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’...

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the U.S. don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines and accounts.

“As we demonstrated with our own Red Flag Machine, however, this software flags and blocks websites for spurious reasons and often disproportionately targets disadvantaged, minority and LGBTQ youth,” the Electronic Software Foundation (EFF) says.

The companies making the software claim it’s all done for the sake of student safety: preventing self-harm, suicide, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. While a noble goal, given that suicide is the second highest cause of death among American youth 10-14 years old, no comprehensive or independent studies have shown an increase in student safety linked to the usage of this software. Quite to the contrary: a recent comprehensive RAND research study shows that such AI monitoring software may cause more harm than good.

  •  TexMexBazooka   ( @TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee ) 
    2•8 days ago

    Sooo schools should just provide devices to kids with no monitoring at all?

    There shouldn’t be an expectation of privacy on school/company provided devices, that isn’t how it works literally anywhere. It’s on the parents to teach their children not to use the device for personal reasons.

    Ideally the school machines should be limited to only allowing coursework and limited messaging between classmates and teachers, it’s a tool not a toy.

    Idk I just can’t get upset about this. Kids and privacy is kind of a tough one to begin with, I personally think kids shouldn’t have unregulated access to communication devices at all until like 14-15, maybe.