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Student Monitoring’s Other Uses

Student monitoring has become “nearly ubiquitous,” with 89% of teachers reporting that their school uses monitoring technology, a 5% increase from last year, according to a new report from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). Of the teachers who report using monitoring software, 78% said that a student had been flagged for disciplinary action by the software, and 44% said that a student had been contacted by law enforcement as a result of the monitoring software. 

CDT’s report also found that the resulting discipline disparately impacted students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and low-income students. “This is becoming a conversation not just about privacy, but about discrimination.”  Elizabeth Laird, an author of the survey and CDT’s director of equity in civic technology, told The 74.  “Without a doubt, we see certain groups of students having outsized experiences in being directly targeted.” The Trevor Project tweeted on September 30th that it would return a donation from Gaggle, after concerns about the student surveillance tool’s “role in negatively impacting LGBTQ students.”

Following the release of the CDT report, more than a dozen education and civil rights groups wrote to the US Department of Education, urging the agency to develop a policy statement that clarifies the intersection of civil rights laws and student monitoring. A significant concern of these groups? “The escalation of these technologies risk fundamentally altering the way children grow and develop in school systems.”

Perhaps the most pervasive form of monitoring in higher education has become online proctoring. In “a victory for digital privacy advocates around the country,” a Cleveland State University student won his lawsuit against the school, successfully arguing that being required to show an online proctor a scan of his room prior to taking a test violated his fourth amendment rights.

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News & Updates From Regulators Around the World

While the FPF Youth & Education team spends most of our time focused on US policy, children’s privacy is a global issue, and various ideas and proposals are often modeled on existing policies and best practices. Case in point: California’s new AADC is modeled closely after the U.K’s approach. A few updates from regulators around the world (and one instance of lacking regulation):

• The Irish Data Protection Commission issued the second-largest ever fine under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), penalizing Instagram €405 million for violations of children’s privacy, including the publication of email addresses and phone numbers. The company argued that the “inquiry focused on old settings that we updated over a year ago.”

• A new report published by the Digital Futures Commission documents how the data collection practices of some of the most popular educational applications in the UK may be in violation of the GDPR’s data governance standards. The report calls on the UK government, regulators, and the edtech industry, to take immediate action to update its standards to better protect student data. 

• Also in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office posted a Twitter thread that documents its Age-Appropriate Design Code resources to date, and the UK Department for Education released updated guidance regarding the use of biometrics in schools.

• Don’t miss an alarming and eye-opening report detailing how India’s edtech startups and self-regulatory efforts have generated “hundreds of complaints” and calls for the government to impose stricter regulations.

Regulators in the US remain busy as well. In advance of its October 19 virtual event, Protecting Kids from Stealth Advertising in Digital Media, the FTC announced it is seeking public comment on the impact of digital advertising and marketing to kids. Comments to the Commission are due November 18, 2022.

The FTC also released its Federal Trade Commission Report to Congress on COPPA Staffing, Enforcement, and Remedies. The report concludes by restating that children’s privacy is a priority for the commission and that ultimately “With more resources, however, the FTC could do more.” An appendix to the report summarizes the 11 COPPA actions brought by the Commission in the last five years. My colleagues Bailey Sanchez and Lauren Merk have more background on the FTC’s most recent COPPA action, U.S. v. Kurbo, Inc. and WW International, Inc., announced in March.

The FTC’s newest commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, gave his first sit-down interview to The Washington Post since joining the Commission and noted that he views addressing children’s and teens’ mental health online could be a key area of bipartisan interest.

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Just how effective are….

We talk a lot about technology and various tools/tactics that are designed to protect kids, including some things that are quite expensive. But just how well do they work?

AI-powered scanners designed to detect guns

School safety has become a “nerve-racking mission for tens of thousands of school leaders in the United States” and helped fuel the growth of the school safety technology industry, which reached $3.1 billion in 2021. But Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ rollout of AI-powered scanners designed to detect guns provides a cautionary tale, VICE reports. The scanners caused “chaos” through a high volume of both false positives and failures to detect common handguns at common sensitivity settings, diverting the attention of school safety officers and leading one principal to remark that the day they were installed at their school had been “the least safe day.” Nevertheless, similar technology is used in schools in at least 18 states, and school districts continue to purchase it.

Thermal scanners to detect COVID

In another story of tech purchased by schools, The Daily Beast details how schools spent millions on thermal scanners - including some with facial recognition technology - to detect COVID, only to have the scanners flag so many false positives they were rendered ineffective. (Don’t miss an appearance from my FPF colleague Tatiana Rice in that one!)

Parental controls

Following Instagram’s release of new and updated parental controls in June, Snapchat recently unveiled its own update with features “modeled on real-life parenting.” But how much can parental controls really help? As we have noted in past newsletters, age verification remains a significant challenge, Instagram announced it was testing new methods in June, while Snapchat says it has “strong measures” in place to prevent kids from lying about their age.

Another place where parental controls and responsible data collection can get tricky? Streaming services. Kids are a significant audience for streaming services (half of all Paramount+ subscribers watch Nickelodeon content) and platforms are responding in a variety of ways. Some platforms give subscribers the ability to create a separate profile for kids, which often includes parental controls and content restrictions.