Sunday Globe Special: Student Surveillance

"Digital classroom tools raise privacy concerns" by Jessica Meyers | Globe Staff   September 14, 2014

WASHINGTON — Many of the nation’s schools lack restrictions on the 0123456789unprecedented student data amassed by education technology companies0123456789, an omission that has worried parents and prompted legislative proposals from statehouses to Congress.0123456789 0123456789
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01234567890123456789I hope no perverts are working for them.0123456789

This 0123456789data collection transforms how teachers interact with their students and gives researchers a new understanding of how youths learn0123456789. But 0123456789some fear it comes at a cost0123456789, allowing 0123456789firms to profit 0123456789from sensitive information.0123456789 0123456789
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01234567890123456789That's the AmeriKan way in the 21st-century, and the kids have been prepared for it through school and smartphone.0123456789

These 0123456789tensions continue to build0123456789 as the 0123456789federal government encourages technology in school0123456789s, reinforcing an ongoing struggle between privacy assurances and digital innovation.
0123456789
01234567890123456789Control, control, they must have control! Besides, makes it easier for the NSA to snoop.0123456789

“Parents are right to ask, ‘Who holds the information to this website and what are they gathering about my kid?’ ” said Tracy Novick, a Worcester School Committee member who limits the online activities of her three school-age daughters at home.
0123456789
01234567890123456789What is there to worry about? Government is protecting your kid. That's what all the politically-correct curriculum of inculcation and indoctrination is about, as well as the lies sending them off to war.0123456789

Fewer than 7 percent of districts that contract with cloud-service providers restrict the sale or marketing of student information, according to a report by Fordham Law School’s Center on Law and Information Privacy, and 20 percent fail to create policies that govern online services at all.

Vendors have 0123456789not been caught reselling0123456789 student information, 0123456789but 0123456789experts warn it 0123456789could happen without notice0123456789.
0123456789
01234567890123456789Ah, the bu$ine$$ of ejewkhazion.0123456789

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Google has 0123456789agreed to stop scanning students’ Gmail accounts for advertising reasons 0123456789after users sued the company. The search giant accessed the information through its free Apps for Education service.

The Federal Trade Commission intervened this May in the bankruptcy case of Boston-based ConnectEDU, which uses interactive tools to help students choose careers. It warned the proposed sale of 20 million student records could leave the information up for grabs. And inBloom, a 0123456789nonprofit funded partly by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, shut down 0123456789this spring after complaints it would 0123456789create a student database0123456789 ripe 0123456789for identity theft0123456789.
0123456789
01234567890123456789Well, government is the hackers, so....0123456789

The Department of Education, meanwhile, has worked to clarify the main federal law on student privacy, passed in an era of typewriters and paper records. But the agency’s latest guidelines on whether such protections extend online begins with, “It depends.”

States have drafted more than 100 bills on student data privacy this year, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that promotes effective use of data in education.

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Companies0123456789 point to technology’s potential to improve0123456789 education.
0123456789
01234567890123456789I'm not knocking technology; I'm knocking those that control it. It frightens me to think what a controlled idiot lefty I might still be had I not found the Internet and learned the real truth of so many things. I shudder thinking I would still be believing the shit paper.0123456789

They are “actually measuring what is going on and using that to make school better,” said Aaron Feuer, who cofounded Cambridge-based Panorama Education in 2012 as a college student and has since 0123456789received $4 million0123456789 from investors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The company works to improve feedback between students, parents, and districts.
0123456789
01234567890123456789In other words, these are intelligence agency platforms to collect data because it is now well-known that is what is Facebook.0123456789

These 0123456789kinds of businesses now make it possible to catch a teenager on the verge of dropping out or learn why a middle-schooler can’t comprehend0123456789 adverbs.
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01234567890123456789Always about bu$ine$$ in AmeriKa, even the ejewkhazional in$titutions. 0123456789
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01234567890123456789And you wonder why I'm tired, so damn tired, of doing this?0123456789

“We 0123456789don’t want to take away0123456789 the 0123456789tools that help teachers0123456789,” said Paige Kowalski, the state policy and advocacy director for the Data Quality Campaign.
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01234567890123456789We will just cut the budgets.0123456789

Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, sought to address concerns in late July when he and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, unveiled a student privacy bill.

Some groups, including the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, attacked the legislation for not doing enough, and much of the software industry labeled it unnecessary.

The bill aims to update the federal law, known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, through clearer prohibitions against marketing students’ personal information.

“We have to 0123456789make sure0123456789 this 0123456789business of storing and sifting through the records of students0123456789 is going as fast as students are,” Markey said. “But we also need to ensure there is simultaneously an increase in privacy and security protections.”

Officials have started to take note....0123456789 0123456789
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01234567890123456789After the horse is out of the barn.0123456789

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