Senators Question School Surveillance Startups on Data, Civil Rights (bloomberg.com) 38
School surveillance companies are not doing enough to determine whether their products unfairly target minority groups, according to a report released by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey. From a report: Democratic senators sent questions to four of the most prominent companies that make education software monitoring students' online activity. The resulting report about their findings said that parents and schools are not fully informed about the extent and risks associated with the tracking software made by GoGuardian, Gaggle.Net, Bark Technologies and Securly. The report also said that because the products could increase students' contact with law enforcement, the software "may be exacerbating the school-to-prison pipeline."
Online education during the pandemic led to unprecedented levels of digital surveillance of children, as schools rushed to find ways to keep track of students, Bloomberg Businessweek reported in October. Private equity-backed GoGuardian, officially named Liminex, is one of the most popular makers of education surveillance tools. Its software helps teachers and administrators track what students are doing on school-issued devices, and sometimes personal devices when kids are logged into school accounts. The senators' report says none of the companies has assessed whether their algorithms are biased or track whether they over-target students of color or LGBTQ students. Each of the companies told the senators' offices that they do not study the effects of their products on specific populations due to privacy concerns.
Online education during the pandemic led to unprecedented levels of digital surveillance of children, as schools rushed to find ways to keep track of students, Bloomberg Businessweek reported in October. Private equity-backed GoGuardian, officially named Liminex, is one of the most popular makers of education surveillance tools. Its software helps teachers and administrators track what students are doing on school-issued devices, and sometimes personal devices when kids are logged into school accounts. The senators' report says none of the companies has assessed whether their algorithms are biased or track whether they over-target students of color or LGBTQ students. Each of the companies told the senators' offices that they do not study the effects of their products on specific populations due to privacy concerns.
Education surveillance tools (Score:2)
> education surveillance tool
Thar's your problem.
My kids' school tried to pull this shit and Google is an accomplice.
If you run into it, find the offending extension in the profile, mkdir $extension-uuid then as root chattr it immutable. Chrome just moves on and 'for some reason it's not working'.
These Marxist spies can go to hell - as gov't employees they are subject to 4th Amendment restrictions, indisputably in a student's home.
Come back with a warrant.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you figure it's Marxists behind the surveillance software? As far as I can tell, these measures are mostly supported by right wing fascist red state governments.
Re: (Score:2)
Marxism is when you let software created by private companies spy on you. The more you let it spy on you, the more Marxy it is /s
Re: (Score:2)
Duly noted and Marxed for reference!
Re: (Score:2)
Naw, parenting is a lost art. When you rely on the schools to handle what you as a parent should be doing, you've already lost.
Parenting can't be taught in Schools (Score:2)
We have failed multiple generations by allowing schools to become the sole source for learning. Self-absorbed parents who don't interact with their kids, teach them right from wrong expect schools to do it oh, and make sure you feed them too. This has led to cops in schools complete with metal detectors. My sons went to a high school that had a zero-tolerance off-campus policy, where I could go to the 7-11 during lunch or break times, my sons would get detention.
Teach the kids at home right from wrong, if y
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen two big problems in parenting. The problem that parents don't control is that they have to make a living. Both parents work in most households. They literally don't have time to do it right, let alone energy. The problem that they do control, but only before they're parents, is that many of them don't really want to become parents in the first place. They do it because they feel they have to, then they regret it, and the parenting suffers.
Re: (Score:2)
Therein lies the issue. If you can't be a parent, don't have the kids. I realize that may be harsh to some people but if you can spend all day staring into your phone you should be able to carve out a few hours to interact and work with your kids. Spend time with them, be attentive to what they're doing in school otherwise don't act surprised when they wind up in detention or worse.
Re: (Score:2)
If we as a society feel this is an issue and active involved parenting is something that should be encouraged and supported then we need to accept that it will involve some amount of government and therefor societal assistance.
Daycare is expensive and an extremely labor intensive operation. If the economy is currently structured to require two parents to work then daycare should be subsidized to a large degree. If having a non-working parent is something we feel should be valued then that cost of lost opp
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, the adage "If you can't feed them don't breed them" comes to mind.
I grew up in a single-parent situation, my parents divorced before I was 5.
My mother always found the time to work with my teachers, showed interest in my school work. She wasn't a strict disciplinarian but if I stepped out of line then there was always hell to pay. Then again I didn't have 5 or 6 other brothers or sisters to contend with for her spare time.
Did I get into fights in school? Hell yeah but then it was handled within
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, I can agree that it probably should be harder to have a kid than it is to get a drivers license or a passport, but we as a society have decided such draconian policies are untenable and immoral, so we have to meet parents where they are and that means some irresponsible people are going to have kids and not be prepared to be parents.
If we value the education and upbringing of that child into a functioning well adjusted member of society then we should be willing to commit the societal resources to hel
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, the adage "If you can't feed them don't breed them" comes to mind.
I grew up in a single-parent situation, my parents divorced before I was 5.
My parents divorced when I was 5, and I was "raised" by my mother.
My mother always found the time to work with my teachers, showed interest in my school work. She wasn't a strict disciplinarian but if I stepped out of line then there was always hell to pay. Then again I didn't have 5 or 6 other brothers or sisters to contend with for her spare time.
I didn't have siblings either, but my mom didn't do any of that shit. She suffered with depression, and I consequently suffered too.
Did I get into fights in school? Hell yeah but then it was handled within the school and by the parents, not the judicial system!
I was bullied at school, and everyone's response including my mother was "what did you do"
I would have turned out a total shitlord incel fuckhead if not for the scruz geek community. UCSC and Unix saved me! :D To the extent that it did, anyway. I ain't perfect.
Re: (Score:2)
The left already agrees with you, and the right is too busy pulling on their bootstraps to listen to reason. They usually figure out what they're doing isn't working sometime in their fifties or so, and then they shift from "libruls r dum" to "both parties are corrupt so I refuse to participate in politics or watch the news" and then they still vote republican because abortion or whatever, and they still tune in to Hannity or Tuck-Tuck to make sure they know what to think, all the while claiming the media i
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely correct, case in point is the two Senators who this story is actually about. People like to whinge about how they hare the idea of voting for "lesser evils" but we make decisions about lesser evils all the time, every day in almost all facets of life. Why we should suddenly not abide by those prescriptions with politics is just silliness.
Re: (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with political philosophy and therein lies the issue: it's not politics it's life. We see parents struggle all the time but in most cases, their parents struggled too so they can become overwhelmed and just tune it all out. We used to have societal frameworks, neighbors who were friends, churches, schools and other social organizations that assisted in helping parents be parents.
Rather than giving them the assistance they need, some advice, a hand with helping their kids with homework
Re: (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with political philosophy
What? Yes it does, it absolutely does. The right wing believes that if you fail it's your fault, and furthermore, Jesus doesn't love you as much [wikipedia.org]. This is the root of their constant enablement of shitlord politicians who give zero fucks about anything but re-election and profit.
Rather than giving them the assistance they need, some advice, a hand with helping their kids with homework, etc. we now just say it's the government's issue to fix.
Who do you imagine should fix it? The right doesn't want assistance with any of that from the left. Advice? They call it absurd liberal propaganda. A hand with their kids' homework? Libruls r turning r kids gay.
Societal corrosion is a result of the lack of interest in raising our kids and the fear of failing or reaching out, not party affiliation.
They're both factors.
Re: (Score:2)
The family should be the basic economic unit. The original keys to American success should be restored.
1) Eliminate no-fault divorce
2) Modify the CRA, so we can return to return to having a 'family wage'
3) Punitive taxation of second household incomes to strongly discourage two parent labor force participation.
Re: (Score:2)
Eliminate no-fault divorce
How does forcing two parents who dislike each other make a healthier environment for a child? If you want to make this happen then you should have no problems subsidizing marriage counseling and support efforts. There are countless stories of kids having better home lives with parents who are happily divorced but were miserable while married. It's also unenforceable outside wildly invasive measures.
Modify the CRA, so we can return to return to having a 'family wage'
Do you mean the Community Reinvestment Act or the Civil Rights Act or what? I agree that having a single
Re: (Score:2)
None of these support ideas are new or revolutionary, many countries already implement similar policies and frankly get better outcomes. Asking parents to essentially just "bootstrap" their way to being better is not working and why would we expect it to?
This is an expectation in American society on almost every issue. If something isn't working, even if it's on a systemic level, we all seem to think it's because individuals just aren't trying hard enough.
The real fear is that, even if it would be good for society as a whole, somebody on the lower rungs of society may get a little bit of assistance and that might help them climb up the societal ladder. This is why it's so difficult to implement any form of government assistance even when it makes perfect se
Re: (Score:2)
I wish I had points to give you because that is 100% on point. We choose to suffer as a whole because we have been taught the worst outcome of all is that someone possibly might get something beneficial even if they "don't deserve it". It's maddening.
Re: (Score:1)
What the fuck?!?!
My parents both worked, and still found time to be "involved" parents, they coached me on my school work, and spent most every evening with me.
Mom did stay home with me through maybe 1st or 2nd grade, but after that they both worked.
It's called sacrifice....they
Re: (Score:2)
You could just say "bootstraps", it would be much more concise.
The idea of "we did it, everyone else do it" discounts every variable that affects people of different circumstances and the changing economic conditions that existed 20, 30, 50 years ago.
Making wild unfair generalizations about parents today who might be struggling for several reasons outside their control doesn't contribute anything to the problem either.
If you just don't care about the outcomes of children since they have no control over the
Re: (Score:1)
It has never been and is not now the governments place to raise or help you raise your fucking kids.
It is not the responsibility for any other citizen to provide their tax dollars to you to raise your kids...no more than has already been doing in t
Re: (Score:2)
Again, just say "bootstraps".
It has always been more than just "the parents" involved in child bearing. The idea of just the 2 parent nuclear family being the sole source of childcare is actually a fairly new development in terms of human history. Traditionally these have been responsibilities shared with your village, your neighbors, your church and large local extended families. In modern times these things are less prevalent.
Maybe we say they should be more common but in their absence just telling pa
Re: (Score:1)
Err...we're not talking the dark ages or medieval times.
Let's just go with recent modern US history...say 30's through 80's.
Worked just fine for the majority of folks in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Err...we're not talking the dark ages or medieval times.
No, we are actually talking much more recently, 19th century even. Also we are talking developed countries here, this is still the case in many less developed parts of the world.
Worked just fine for the majority of folks in the US.
Maybe a majority or plurality but when we talk about social prescriptions we aren't talking about the people who are doing fine, we are talking those who are not and their children who did not choose the parents or situation they get. This is basically telling them "Don't be born to a poor family. It's that easy!"
Parent's did just fine in recent decades before this and life wasn't exactly a bowl of cherries then economically.
Again, some pare
Re: (Score:2)
The problem that they do control, but only before they're parents, is that many of them don't really want to become parents in the first place.
It's not necessarily that people didn't want to become parents in the first place (for some, yes), it's that they like to have sex in a manner that produces children and in the moment don't care or aren't thinking about the consequences. The biological sex drive can be very hard to "control". When the woman gets pregnant, they choose to have the child they may not really want; could be a number of complex reasons for that. Here in the US, choices after sex are becoming fewer and fewer; not to mention inc
Re: (Score:1)
Funny...my parents both worked and they found time to make sure I was doing my homework, doing house chores, obeying the rules of the house, etc.
No it wasn't perfect, but it was done and CAN be done.
Parents have to sacrifice their own time and fun for their kids, that's part of the deal.
Pe
Re: (Score:2)
Speak for yourself; "we" haven't failed anyone. Look to the parents, the culture, and genetics. Asian students from poor families do just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The entire school system has been going to hell because everyone points fingers at everyone else, while the politicians continue to defund it, and schools are forced to teach to an arbitrary test standard. However, oftentimes, both parents work. Schools are also almost indistinguishable from prisons in a lot of respects. Like the parent mentioned, older people could leave for lunch, and have a lot more freedoms. I know it is easy to treat kids like prisoners, and if they step out of line, the schools to
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I would have gotten detention too if I had taken my lunch break off to go to a local shop, back in the 1980s.
THAT rule is far from new.
does the School have an right EULA rights away (Score:2)
does the School have an right to EULA rights away from students anyways?
Re: (Score:2)
in Carpenter v. US [oyez.org] it was ruled that you can't do warrantless surveillance so this may be a good one for a test case?
Required (Score:1)
Now, using t
Re: (Score:2)
God are we fucked up as a society. Armed guards marching the halls in school = perfectly fine. Kids looking at boobs? MORAL PANIC HOLY SHIT GRAB THE DISCO BALL AND SPIKE THE PUNCH!
We're still fucking draconian puritans when it comes to the human body, anatomy, sexuality, and natural phenomenon. And by god, we'll fucking shoot you in your god damned face if you dare show kids boobies. What a mess.