Issue 4 - Schools, Students and Surveillance
A newsletter about tech, people and human rights
Framed by OPTF is a newsletter about tech, people, and human rights. We dive into real-world tech issues that are impacting people’s rights, share our thoughts about digital privacy and security, and re-imagine the way we think about tech-for good.
E-safety is a hot topic — and it’s becoming an especially common turn of phrase when it comes to keeping kids safe online. But…what exactly are people talking about when they say ‘e-safety’? Of course we all want kids to be safe online, but some of the ideas getting bundled into the school-certified, parent-teacher association-friendly, government-approved version of e-safety are more than a little concerning.
In the last couple of years we’ve had a lot of conversations where someone—people from digital rights organisations, cybersecurity experts, educators—said they felt like e-safety was becoming a Trojan Horse for digital surveillance. And when we saw an example of a cyber-safety handbook that had been shared to parents at a local school, we started to feel the same.
Surveillance inside the e-safety capsule
E-safety feels like such an urgent issue to address because the importance of online-ness in the modern kid’s life is self-evident. Kids are socialising, learning, and developing in mostly-online terrain, and what that environment is like is hugely impactful on child welfare.
But how we create a positive online environment for our kids is also impactful. Schools have a long history of controlling and disciplining kids to try and elicit some predetermined behaviour. Principals perched on podiums at school assemblies, sentries stationed up the aisles. Watchful teachers roamed playgrounds to catch misbehaving kids. Eventually we realised surveilling, spying, and intimidating students wasn’t just ineffective — it was destructive. It didn’t work.
Well, the digital realm has resurrected student surveillance. But now we call it e-safety.
During the past two decades, CCTVs or surveillance cameras have become the norm in many schools. More recently, with the advent of low-cost, powerful cameras, companies have started offering facial recognition systems as an alternative to the traditional roll calls.
Last week a school in Sydney, Australia made the news when it installed biometric fingerprinting of students, to control who could access the toilet. The motivation, according to the school, was to prevent vandalism. While opposition voices emerged (and the story is still live), there’s over a decade-long history of using student fingerprints to access buildings, borrow books, or get food from the canteen.
While cameras and biometrics form one part of the school surveillance system — there’s another, more insidious form of surveillance embedding itself into our childrens’ lives.
Student management software is becoming increasingly common, especially as ICT devices strengthen their stranglehold on classroom learning. This software is pitched to parents as being ‘digital safeguarding’, and providing a proactive way to protect students online.
Depending on the specific implementation, the software can be used to monitor all use of student devices, block certain activities, or completely prevent the device from even connecting to the internet. And all of this is possible whether they are on-campus or not. This info might be visible by parents, teachers, or other school admin.
This introduces huge privacy concerns on two levels. Firstly, kids deserve privacy too. We want to know that our kids are safe and happy, but peering into their personal devices isn’t helpful.
And to make it worse, take a look at the privacy policies of any number of school administration and learning platforms. They’ll almost always reserve the right to share or disclose data collected with their partners, or as one platform indicated in their privacy policy “to pursue our legitimate business interest”. These platforms not only collect and record personal information related to the student and their family, but they also collect and store attendance details, medical information, performance-related information, biometric data and school reports.
If we are to get serious about our kids and their privacy—not just for today, but into the future—it’s critical we take a more holistic approach to the personal information being collected and stored about them. And importantly, there needs to be a real investment in educating everyone - parents, teachers, policy makers and importantly the children - about the value of privacy and why we must do everything we can to protect and promote it.
OPTF Housekeeping
New posts and videos
Target acquired: The increasing threat of targeted cyber-attacks
Sim Swapping attacks: How to protect yourself from this common phone scam - read the article and/or what the video)
Pandemic of Control
COVID-19 dramatically accelerated the authoritarian use of digital technologies. Digital surveillance has radically increased, with governments tightly tracking the movements and associations of their citizens. This collection — put together by our friends at Engagemedia — features articles that give insights into how Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Australia deployed digital technologies under the of the pandemic. Download the PDF. Download the EPUB version.
World Ethical Data Forum 2022
OPTF and Session have partnered with WEDF - an event embracing the full scope of interrelated ethical and practical challenges around data and information - from AI, analytics, privacy and cybersecurity to human rights and press freedoms. Register for free.
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Stay safe everyone! Until next time,
The OPTF Team