On schools, mental health, digital surveillance, student privacy and parental input

Op-Ed: School sur­veil­lance on stu­dents’ lap­tops will not help solve the youth men­tal health cri­sis (Los Ange­les Times):

In the past year, school dis­tricts in Cal­i­for­nia and else­where have con­tract­ed with dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance com­pa­nies to spy on stu­dents at school and home, cit­ing the need for men­tal health sup­port dur­ing the pandemic.

Despite being a vig­i­lant and involved par­ent, I found out only recent­ly that my own kids, who attend high school in the Coro­na-Nor­co Uni­fied School Dis­trict, have been under con­stant dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance for the past year.

Gaggle.net has a con­tract with Coro­na-Nor­co to mon­i­tor email accounts of stu­dents in sev­enth through 12th grade while using their dis­trict-issued lap­tops or school accounts on their own devices, accord­ing to dis­trict doc­u­ments. The sur­veil­lance is meant to ensure that stu­dents aren’t access­ing inap­pro­pri­ate con­tent such as porn and also gauge stu­dents’ men­tal well-being by mon­i­tor­ing their accounts for terms and words such as “men­tal­ly unsta­ble” and guns. Gag­gle con­tent review­ers email admin­is­tra­tors with flags and call if they think a stu­dent might be in immi­nent dan­ger of harm or death…

I found out about the pro­gram after spot­ting a line item in the bud­get con­sent cal­en­dar of the Octo­ber school board meet­ing that men­tioned a con­tract with Gaggle.Net for “stu­dent men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware” and then doing my own research.

Coro­na-Nor­co admin­is­tra­tors approved their first con­tract with Gag­gle for up to $104,000 using CARES Act funds in Novem­ber 2020. Last month, the school board approved a year­long exten­sion for anoth­er $104,000. The dis­trict added a sec­tion about Gag­gle to the Par­ent-Stu­dent Hand­book in Novem­ber after I ques­tioned admin­is­tra­tors about the lack of parental noti­fi­ca­tion … There are no easy answers when it comes to stu­dent safe­ty. For stu­dents already strug­gling to learn in a con­strained envi­ron­ment, inva­sive sur­veil­lance with unknown pri­va­cy impli­ca­tions and lack of parental input isn’t the right response.

News in Context:

• Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues
• Chi­na is har­ness­ing brain-wave track­ers and arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence to raise bet­ter (and more com­pli­ant?) students
• Will these five Neu­roR­ights help har­ness emerg­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies for the com­mon good?
• A call to action: We need the right incen­tives to guide eth­i­cal inno­va­tion in neu­rotech and healthcare
• Let’s antic­i­pate the poten­tial mis­use of neu­ro­log­i­cal data to min­i­mize the risks–and max­i­mize the benefits
• New report: Empow­er­ing 8 Bil­lion Minds via Eth­i­cal Devel­op­ment and Adop­tion of Neurotechnologies

How to address pri­va­cy, eth­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry issues: Exam­ples in cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, depres­sion and ADHD from Sharp­Brains