Mandatory Student Spyware Is Creating a Perfect Storm of Human Rights Abuses

[usonian]

Students can't opt out of this easily abused spying, AFAICT.
I copied a bunch. EFF won't mind, I am sure.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/mandatory-student-spyware-creating-perfect-storm-human-rights-abuses

Spyware apps were foisted on students at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Today, long after most students have returned to in-person learning, those apps are still proliferating, and enabling an ever-expanding range of human rights abuses. In a recent Center for Democracy and Technology report, 81 percent of teachers said their schools use some form of this "student monitoring" spyware. Yet many of the spyware companies supplying these apps seem neither prepared nor concerned about the harms they are inflicting on students.

These student spyware apps promise scalable surveillance-as-a-service. The lure of “scalability” is a well-documented source of risk to marginalized users, whose needs for individualized consideration are overshadowed by the prospect of building mass-scale, one-size-fits-all “solutions” to social problems. The problems of scale are dangerously exacerbated by laws that disparately impact marginalized communities.

Today, Americans face an unprecedented, record-breaking wave of legislation targeting transgender youth: from sports bans, to speech and literature bans, to the criminalization of life-saving healthcare, all on top of the widespread practices of locker-room- and bathroom-bans.

And it’s not just trans kids in the crosshairs: Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court precedent that protects the right to have an abortion, is likely about to be overturned.

That means that students who use their devices to research trans healthcare or abortion related material could find those devices weaponized against them, potentially resulting in criminal charges. If prosecutors consider charges against students, the data gathered by mandatory student spyware apps like Bark, Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly will prove invaluable.

Another recent report, this one from Senator Warren’s office, concluded that student spyware apps are more dangerous than previously imagined. Their use in schools has disproportionately targeted students from marginalized communities and needlessly increased their contact with law enforcement.