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?
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.
European point of view: My work computer and the network in general has filters so I can’t access porn, gambling, malware and other stuff on it. It has monitoring for viruses and malware, that’s pretty normal and well understood need to have. BUT. It is straight up illegal for my work to actively monitor my email content (they’ll of course have filtering for incoming spam and such), my chats on teams/whatever and in general be intrusive of my privacy even at work.
There’s of course mechanisms in place where they can access my email if anyting work related requires that. So in case I’m laying in a hospital or something they are allowed to read work related emails from my inbox, but if there’s anything personal it’s protected by the same laws which apply to traditional letters and other communication.
Monitoring ‘every word’ is just not allowed, no matter how good your intentions are. And that’s a good thing.
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.
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.
No one ever questions these things. “It’s for the kids!” is the one argument that’ll lead us all to damnation.
“Just think of the kids!”
‘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.
