Columbia’s Knight Institute Goes to Court to Find Out  As we’ve noted, a veritable gaggle of organizations (including a service called Gaggle) are helping schools to monitor student activity on district-issued devices – tracking every website, every keystroke (and potentially snapping pictures of students’ private lives). These arrangements lack transparency. Parents are only told it’s necessary to ensure “public safety” or some version of “safeguarding student mental health.” In the meantime, school districts and taxpayers are shelling out millions to the ed tech industry. And all that collected data? Surveillance companies like GoGuardian and Gaggle have signed a Student Privacy Pledge that they will not sell students’ personally identifying information. Despite pledges from school districts and tech companies, more clarity is needed about who can access students’ information and why. This inscrutable practice of student monitoring is about to get a little more attention – in the form of a lawsuit aimed at unearthing the facts. Attorney Jennifer Jones of the Knight First Amendment Institute describes the student surveillance industry in detail and makes the legal case against it in the Teen Vogue online newsletter. The Knight Institute’s lawsuit isn’t the first of its kind, but its timing amid the cultural chaos of artificial intelligence suggests it could be a tipping point for transparency. This lawsuit is also not about specific privacy violations alleged by individuals, so it won’t be settled for damages as some previous cases have been. On paper, student surveillance systems sound great: The monitoring is designed to prevent self-harm, cyberbullying, and violence. And yet, as Jones points out, the standard list of related keywords and websites the software provides can be customized – making it capable of going far beyond universal safety concerns to serve the political or cultural agenda du jour. What happens if a student tries to access a banned book, for example? Should that be reported? This is all just one search word away from a dystopian episode of the Twilight Zone. As has been reported from multiple quarters, there is scant and merely anecdotal evidence that any of these systems accomplish what they purport to – but evidence of plenty of misfires. Moreover, the law on which this burgeoning surveillance apparatus is based, the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000, requires no measures beyond basic obscenity filters. The ed tech industry has done a bait and switch to take advantage of well-intentioned school administrators who are desperate to solve some of the most heartbreaking problems of our time. It would be nice if AI-powered surveillance was the quick fix, but it’s not. It is a blunt force instrument with chilling implications up and down the Bill of Rights. We don’t need to normalize an educational-corporate-juridical surveillance state. The answers to the problems of school violence and self-harm are not easy, and they won’t be solved by technology alone. They must be mitigated through connection and relationships: Talking not stalking. So it’s time for a reckoning, and a conversation that brings all of us to the table. We hope the Knight First Amendment Institute’s lawsuit makes that candid and open conversation happen. Here’s some suggested further reading: Comments are closed.
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