Current Events > Schools monitoring students' emails, messages in real time

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/22/school-student-surveillance-bark-gaggle

For Adam Jasinski, a technology director for a school district outside of St Louis, Missouri, monitoring student emails used to be a time-consuming job. Jasinski used to do keyword searches of the official school email accounts for the districts 2,600 students, looking for words like suicide or marijuana. Then he would have to read through every message that included one of the words. The process would occasionally catch some concerning behavior, but it was cumbersome, Jasinski recalled.

Last year Jasinski heard about a new option: following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the technology company Bark was offering schools free, automated, 24-hour-a-day surveillance of what students were writing in their school emails, shared documents and chat messages, and sending alerts to school officials any time the monitoring technology flagged concerning phrases.

The automated alerts were a game-changer, said Jason Buck, the principal of the Missouri districts middle school. One Friday evening last fall, Buck was watching television at home when Bark alerted him that one of his students had just written an email to another student talking about self-harm. The principal immediately called the first students mother: Is the student with you? he asked. Are they safe?

Before his school used Bark, the principal said, school officials would not know about cyberbullying or a student talking about hurting themselves unless one of their friends decided to tell an adult about it. Now, he said, Bark has taken that piece out of it. The other student doesnt have to feel like theyre betraying or tattling or anything like that.

Although students at his school are aware theyre being monitored, they were surprised at first at how quickly school administrators could follow up on what they had typed, Buck said. Its not, Hey, I sent this email two days ago, [its] You just sent this email three minutes ago, lets talk.

Bark and similar tech companies are now monitoring the emails and documents of millions of American students, across thousands of school districts, looking for signs of suicidal thoughts, bullying or plans for a school shooting.

The new school surveillance technology doesnt turn off when the school day is over: anything students type in official school email accounts, chats or documents is monitored 24 hours a day, whether students are in their classrooms or their bedrooms.

Tech companies are also working with schools to monitor students web searches and internet usage, and, in some cases, to track what they are writing on public social media accounts.

Parents and students are still largely unaware of the scope and intensity of school surveillance, privacy experts say, even as the market for these technologies has grown rapidly, fueled by fears of school shootings, particularly in the wake of the Parkland shooting in February 2018, which left 17 people dead.

Digital surveillance is just one part of a booming, nearly $3bn-a-year school security industry in the United States, where Republican lawmakers have blocked any substantial gun control legislation for a quarter century.

Schools feel massive pressure to demonstrate that theyre doing something to keep kids safe. This is something they can spend money on, roll out and tell parents, this is what were doing, said Chad Marlow, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Unlike gun control, Marlow said, Surveillance is politically palatable, and so theyre pursuing surveillance as a way you can demonstrate action, even though theres no evidence that it will positively impact the problem.

Related: Senate Republicans want to make this mandatory

https://twitter.com/loisbeckett/status/1187100238001164288
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interesting that republicans want this very liberal idea
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Do they really use their school emails to discuss personal stuff? I would have thought they would use a personal email like Yahoo or Gmail.
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Godnorgosh posted...

I'm trying to imagine 24x7 operations centers where people monitor this sort of thing

"We have a P1 ticket that just came in for student use of the phrase 'weed breh,' someone gonna grab it? Only 20 minutes until it breaches"

Law & Order PS100
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DuranOfForcena posted...

school emails and chatrooms? this is really a thing now? why tf would students even use it for discussing personal stuff?

My only thought is maybe the school internet filters out other emails and chat things, etc... so the only way they can use the intrawebz to communicate during school is through those forums.
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If they're dumb enough to use school systems, and dumb enough to talk about this stuff on school systems, then they're dumb enough to need to be monitored constantly before they choke on their own saliva.
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Think this part is also worth noting

Take an adult in the workforce. You cant type anything you want in your work email: its being looked at, Bill McCullough, a Gaggle spokesperson, said. Were preparing kids to become successful adults.

Experience with school monitoring is a training ground that might mean that students wont lose their job for sharing inappropriate content, said Trimble-Oliver, the chief information officer for Cincinnatis public school district, which uses Gaggle.

Students need to know that organizations can and probably are monitoring their content, she said.

Privacy experts called these arguments concerning, and note that there are legal limits to how companies can monitor employees work emails.

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Guide posted...

If they're dumb enough to use school systems, and dumb enough to talk about this stuff on school systems, then they're dumb enough to need to be monitored constantly before they choke on their own saliva.

This; you have no expectation of privacy using the schools internet or email.

I say this as a former teacher

I bet this lasts about as long as it takes the kids to throw together a "everyone text self harm to one another" days and gives the guy a hernia.

Kids are little shits

Missouri
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GiftedACIII posted...

Missouri

It is not exclusive to Missouri in any way.
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GoatGeneral posted...

I bet this lasts about as long as it takes the kids to throw together a "everyone text self harm to one another" days and gives the guy a hernia.

Kids are little shits

Then have a restorative justice assembly showing the harms of that and how it isnt funny

The Top Crusader posted...

DuranOfForcena posted...

school emails and chatrooms? this is really a thing now? why tf would students even use it for discussing personal stuff?

My only thought is maybe the school internet filters out other emails and chat things, etc... so the only way they can use the intrawebz to communicate during school is through those forums.

And? If you wanna do dumb shit do it off campus

Antifar posted...

Think this part is also worth noting

Take an adult in the workforce. You cant type anything you want in your work email: its being looked at, Bill McCullough, a Gaggle spokesperson, said. Were preparing kids to become successful adults.

Experience with school monitoring is a training ground that might mean that students wont lose their job for sharing inappropriate content, said Trimble-Oliver, the chief information officer for Cincinnatis public school district, which uses Gaggle.

Students need to know that organizations can and probably are monitoring their content, she said.

Privacy experts called these arguments concerning, and note that there are legal limits to how companies can monitor employees work emails.

lmao yeah my work literally cannot legally access my work email unless I give them permission
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My only concern here is, like usual, private company.
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Ive literaly never used email to send anyone personal messages so I doubt that theyd actually find anything
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spudger posted...

Godnorgosh posted...

I'm trying to imagine 24x7 operations centers where people monitor this sort of thing

"We have a P1 ticket that just came in for student use of the phrase 'weed breh,' someone gonna grab it? Only 20 minutes until it breaches"

Law & Order PS100

Filmore
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Minors basically have no rights.
I'm fine with this.
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CruelBuffalo posted...

The Top Crusader posted...

DuranOfForcena posted...

school emails and chatrooms? this is really a thing now? why tf would students even use it for discussing personal stuff?

My only thought is maybe the school internet filters out other emails and chat things, etc... so the only way they can use the intrawebz to communicate during school is through those forums.

And? If you wanna do dumb shit do it off campus

Yes. And.......?
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Antifar posted...

Surveillance is politically palatable

Unfortunately.

Unlike gun control, Marlow said, Surveillance is politically palatable, and so theyre pursuing surveillance as a way you can demonstrate action, even though theres no evidence that it will positively impact the problem.

We officially live in a cyberpunk dystopia.
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@TheOnionKnight
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Frankly I would just assume this is the case

same reason I use my work email strictly for work purposes

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I don't know about you guys but I'm pretty shocked that kids still use email
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eston posted...

I don't know about you guys but I'm pretty shocked that kids still use email

They barely know how to.

One student wrote me an email asking me to switch his seat. Bless his heart, he wrote the whole thing in the subject line.

I let him move his seat.

academics has always been a dystopia
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As soon as the private company starts selling the students data(and you know they will) to an advertising firm and it becomes public knowledge then this will shut down real fast.
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TheMikh posted...

academics has always been a dystopia

Not sure school sponsored email monitoring is a dystopia, but ok

ehhhhhh, I'm skeptical about the efficacy of this. how many students actually use school computers and email/IM for this sort of stuff versus their own personal devices? would the next step be monitoring software on those too?

also, if this is a private company, what's to stop them from data mining and selling the information for, say, advertising and demographic identification purposes?

not to mention the privacy implications like Mikh is hinting at, though it's certainly true that safety of students is paramount and you have no real expectation of privacy while on school grounds

TheGoldenEel posted...

Frankly I would just assume this is the case

same reason I use my work email strictly for work purposes

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If it were just the schools handling this information then it wouldn't be as big a deal.
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SmidgeIsntBack posted...

If it were just the schools handling this information then it wouldn't be as big a deal.

idk, then you have to deal with the sort of lazy administrators that cooked up broad zero tolerance policies

though you'll still have that, really. there needs to be more counseling and focus on mental health instead of just suspending or expelling at-risk students because it's easier

spanky1 posted...

@TheOnionKnight

Fuck this bullshit.
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SkittyOnWailord posted...

Do they really use their school emails to discuss personal stuff? I would have thought they would use a personal email like Yahoo or Gmail.

This. What kind of idiot discusses stuff like this in school/work email? I wouldn't even connect to their networks these days since I can just use my phone. No need to give them the ability to inspect my packets.
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School emails? School chat?

That should've stayed in universities. Minors cannot handle this responsibility and probably not the companies running these either.
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