US schools gave kids laptops during the pandemic. Then they spied on them

[mr moose]

30 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Except that, again, the lockdowns forced them inside and may have created a need for a PC that wasn't there before. Also I don't think it's particularly fair to place children in a situation where they need to read the fine print or risk their privacy being invaded.

 

What need outside of school attendance do you think lock downs have created that also require the school to provide PC for?  If it has nothing to do with the school then the schools laptop shouldn't be used for it,  end of story.

 

There really isn't that much fine print they need to read,  As I tell students all the time,  the school knows everything you type into that device,  so treat it like you are allowing your teacher to read everything you type. 

[Heliian]

The old "omg they can access my mic and webcam" shtick. 

 

As a parent who had school loaned devices for their child, I can assure you that I had no issues whatsoever about any monitoring.  The child was doing schoolwork or the unit was shut off/closed.   

 

My work computer is monitored 24/7, I don't play with it.  

 

Education is key here though, everyone should learn about the possible dangers of connected devices. 

 

 

 

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, IWolfieI said:

 Due to this parents can't their own monitoring or filtering software.

 

Exactly,  My 5 yo daughter has an ipad on loan from the school for her work,  it has a plethora of specialized apps for remote learning, I have absolutely no way to know what else half those apps do, who see's the data, what is recorded or what type of security it uses to prevent my daughters zoom meeting and location being obtained by someone else.

 

As I cannot do anything about any of it so I have to trust the school has done their best not to put her in a position where she can be harmed.

 

 

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

if you read this article and want to check if your school is spying on you just search in google are you spying teacher obviously in your school commissioned device and pls DON'T DO THIS but if you are already in trouble good news you can do it JK

[IWolfieI]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

As I cannot do anything about any of it so I have to trust the school has done their best not to put her in a position where she can be harmed.

 

We had to seek out additional licensing for multiple solutions we have as we didn't loan out devices before the pandemic. Luckily vendors that provide our solutions had prepared detailed guides to quickly get solutions in place. One vendor even approached us to beta test their cloud filtering which syncs with our onsite firewall.

 

6 minutes ago, linux fanboy said:

if you read this article and want to check if your school is spying on you just search in google f u teacher obviously DON'T DO THIS

Whether you're a troll or a young student. The article is click bait and aimed to put a negative view on filtering and monitoring software for school devices, please read some of these comments and educate yourself. These solutions are key to finding vulnerable students and other safeguarding issues.

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

Please read first my first comment will give you better insight and I am not a troll or a student in any school if you will please find a Ted Talk about this subject I am not Joking I have seen that ted talk but that takes too much time for me to find it. This is not trolling and I am dead serious in this post

9 minutes ago, IWolfieI said:

We had to seek out additional licensing for multiple solutions we have as we didn't loan out devices before the pandemic. Luckily vendors that provide our solutions had prepared detailed guides to quickly get solutions in place. One vendor even approached us to beta test their cloud filtering which syncs with our onsite firewall.

 

Whether you're a troll or a young student. The article is click bait and aimed to put a negative view on filtering and monitoring software for school devices, please read some of these comments and educate yourself. These solutions are key to finding vulnerable students and other safeguarding issues.

 

[Sauron]

13 minutes ago, mr moose said:

What need outside of school attendance do you think lock downs have created that also require the school to provide PC for?

Any and all social interactions, for one.

14 minutes ago, mr moose said:

If it has nothing to do with the school then the schools laptop shouldn't be used for it,  end of story.

Why? What downside is there to children using school provided laptops for other things outside of school hours? ...other than the apparent risk of being creeped on by school staff, of course...

 

In my opinion, as long as it isn't damaged there's no reason for the school to care what it's used for outside of school hours.

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

There really isn't that much fine print they need to read,  As I tell students all the time,  the school knows everything you type into that device,  so treat it like you are allowing your teacher to read everything you type. 

Maybe not all school staff is as forthcoming as you are regarding this stuff. Also... does the school really need to know everything you type? Even if you're using it for school work you may not like all of it being shared. It also opens you up to less obvious information gathering, for example at what times you do homework and potentially when you sleep, plus roughly where you are at any given time even outside of school hours, on top of - apparently - video and audio feed from your home. These are things the school has no business knowing.

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Any and all social interactions, for one.

How did a school provided device for school work become both a requirement and also a right of that student to use it personally for social interactions?

 

17 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why? What downside is there to children using school provided laptops for other things outside of school hours?

None, but that's simply not the right of the student to have over such a device. You don't have the right to take your rental car rally cross racing do you?

 

It's not their or your device so you have no say over how it gets used.

 

17 minutes ago, Sauron said:

In my opinion, as long as it isn't damaged there's no reason for the school to care what it's used for outside of school hours.

Providing a device with the capability to be dual purpose and used privately outside of school hours is more costly and time consuming, more technically challenging and user unfriendly, than to treat it as school equipment for school purposes.

 

Dual booting is the easiest solution but is also flawed in that the student has to remember to reboot it and choose the correct operating system to boot in to.

 

17 minutes ago, Sauron said:

plus roughly where you are at any given time even outside of school hours, on top of - apparently - video and audio feed from your home

This whole webcam thing far as I can tell came from a commenter in this thread not from the news story. Most of these monitoring tools actually do not let you turn on the web cam nor the microphone and if they did usually display an acceptance prompt to the user of the device. The people that make these software are not actually stupid, they aren't willingly going to put themselves in front of liability suits and criminal suits for providing tools that breach privacy like that.

 

So before you believe any random commenter or uninformed teacher in a survey that may have no idea what on earth they are talking about have a look in to these kinds of software and see what they can actually do and how they function. I for one don't expect any regular teacher to really know anything at all about AB Tutor other than the basic functions they use of it so I wouldn't trust them as an information source on how it works beyond how they use it.

[IWolfieI]

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why? What downside is there to children using school provided laptops for other things outside of school hours? ...other than the apparent risk of being creeped on by school staff, of course...

The only people that would be able to see any of this would be the schools IT team whether that's a inhouse (Like me) or an Managed Sservice Provider, whatever is found is usually sent to the school Desinated Safeguarding Lead who then deals with the issue. Teachers shouldn't have access to those tools. The exception to that is devices used within school to ensure students are do their work and not goofing off. There is no spying.

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

In my opinion, as long as it isn't damaged there's no reason for the school to care what it's used for outside of school hours.

Maybe not all school staff is as forthcoming as you are regarding this stuff. Also... does the school really need to know everything you type? Even if you're using it for school work you may not like all of it being shared. It also opens you up to less obvious information gathering, for example at what times you do homework and potentially when you sleep, plus roughly where you are at any given time even outside of school hours, on top of - apparently - video and audio feed from your home. These are things the school has no business knowing.

While it's possible to do all of this it very likely wouldn't happen, and no tool I've seen in the education sector allows you remotely activate a webcam, some can activate a microphone for communcation but it prompts the end user.There is no need to gather that kind of data on students.

You've got to remember teachers wouldn't and shouldn't have access to this.

[Sauron]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

This whole webcam thing far as I can tell came from a commenter in this thread not from the news story.

Fair enough, in that case I suppose it's not quite as bad. I still do believe that on some level kids have a right to the tools needed to both attend school and interact with their peers, after all both of these are considered Children's Rights by the UN. If a pandemic forces the implementation of lockdowns then we should make sure all of these needs are still met.

[mr moose]

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Any and all social interactions, for one.

That has nothing to do with schools and not something a school is obliged to help anyone with.  It is a device for school work only, not social interactions.

 

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why? What downside is there to children using school provided laptops for other things outside of school hours? ...other than the apparent risk of being creeped on by school staff, of course...

Being able to use something for a purpose it was not intended for is not an argument.   The schools are not responsible for providing anyone with devices to do anything except school work.

 

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

In my opinion, as long as it isn't damaged there's no reason for the school to care what it's used for outside of school hours.

Yes there is, they are governed by law (in most countries) to do so.  

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Maybe not all school staff is as forthcoming as you are regarding this stuff. Also... does the school really need to know everything you type? Even if you're using it for school work you may not like all of it being shared. It also opens you up to less obvious information gathering, for example at what times you do homework and potentially when you sleep, plus roughly where you are at any given time even outside of school hours, on top of - apparently - video and audio feed from your home. These are things the school has no business knowing.

Most are, but that is beside the point,  it is a school device to be used only for school and as such the only data they could collect they would already require the student to hand in as work or are emails to teachers anyway.

 

 

It doesn't matter how you try to spin it,  schools are providing a device to people in order for them to continue with school.  They are not capitalizing on lock downs in order to force students to use monitored devices for personal things.  It is solely the choice of the student if they wish to use it for social media and as such they wear the consequences of that should there be any.

 

[IWolfieI]

Just now, Sauron said:

Fair enough, in that case I suppose it's not quite as bad. I still do believe that on some level kids have a right to the tools needed to both attend school and interact with their peers, after all both of these are considered Children's Rights by the UN. If a pandemic forces the implementation of lockdowns then we should make sure all of these needs are still met.

Which is what this allows. Most schools have a school email system. Now it depends on what the school web filter blocks and how it functions, we had ours allow social media sites 3PM-9PM.

[mr moose]

47 minutes ago, IWolfieI said:

 

 

Whether you're a troll or a young student. The article is click bait and aimed to put a negative view on filtering and monitoring software for school devices, please read some of these comments and educate yourself. These solutions are key to finding vulnerable students and other safeguarding issues.

I think he was just trying to be funny,  like if you want to know if the NSA are reading your emails just send one with the subject "funds have been transferred, ship plutonium after dark from the south bank"

[leadeater]

18 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Fair enough, in that case I suppose it's not quite as bad. I still do believe that on some level kids have a right to the tools needed to both attend school and interact with their peers, after all both of these are considered Children's Rights by the UN. If a pandemic forces the implementation of lockdowns then we should make sure all of these needs are still met.

Generally schools have no issue with students using the device personally outside of school hours it's just that they aren't going to be all that willing to implement modes that remove the management features. So if you wish to use that device personally then you'll have the standardized monitoring and logging applied.

 

Also much of this monitoring is logging and will never get viewed, IT and teachers actually have better things to do than to crawl through activity logs and alerts especially if it's an off task alert at 8pm because they are using YouTube.

 

Like I have access to everyone's information, and I mean literally all of it from emails to documents to HR records to clinical records, I don't look at it because I like my job and I have better things to do than waste time crawling through crap to maybe find what? And you know what's more scary, I could do it out of place undetected because I'm the backup technical lead so can restore any document or any database anywhere I want and grant myself access to it, I also have the permissions and knowhow to remove the audit logs of this although you'd know they were removed if inspected.

 

If the schools are backing up the data, yes even Cloud solutions like G Suite or Office 365, then all the documents and emails can be read. The scope of who can is just reduced. As a backup and storage engineer reasonability line you'll never hear me not recommending backing up data

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And you know what's more scary, I could do it out of place undetected because I'm the backup technical lead so can restore any document or any database anywhere I want and grant myself access to it, I also have the permissions and knowhow to remove the audit logs of this although you'd know they were removed if inspected.

...isn't that kind of the issue? Sure, in most cases a tech won't have much reason to sift through the data - but there's no way to be certain they won't. While this data may be useless to you, we know that there is a market for it. Someone less ethical about it than you might go and sell this data to the highest bidder. That's also ignoring the possibility of the organization itself deciding they actually want to do something with that data. At the very least I'd say it warrants some weariness and maybe the introduction of some checks and balances to make sure you can't pull off what you describe... though I do admit that what data is gathered does matter and I would consider visited domains to be lower on that list than live audio, which you said isn't recorded.

[IWolfieI]

23 minutes ago, leadeater said:

If the schools are backing up the data, yes even Cloud solutions like G Suite or Office 365, then all the documents and emails can be read. The scope of who can is just reduced. As a backup and storage engineer reasonability line you'll never hear me not recommending backing up data

Yup, we use G Suite and have our data retention for email set to indefinitely as you never know how far back somethings may go. And only 2 people have access me and my manager. Vault is great for findling lost work, or email.

23 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Like I have access to everyone's information, and I mean literally all of it from emails to documents to HR records to clinical records, I don't look at it because I like my job and I have better things to do than waste time crawling through crap to maybe find what? And you know what's more scary, I could do it out of place undetected because I'm the backup technical lead so can restore any document or any database anywhere I want and grant myself access to it, I also have the permissions and knowhow to remove the audit logs of this although you'd know they were removed if inspected.

Same here, it's daft how everyone gets mad over a teacher's seeing what students are working on, but don't realise that most SysAdmins or higher IT roles can access practically all data in an organisation without being detected. You just don't do it because it's a waste of time.

[IPD]

Might as well get kids used to the idea early.  The rest of their lives they'll be dealing with issued electronics and the monitoring thereof.  Even a car you drive that work has issued you--will have speed monitoring/etc.  Not saying that we should be actively snooping for something to play "gotcha".  But this is the way of things now--issued devices will be monitored.  And honestly, I wouldn't sweat it.  No IT department anywhere is going to be proactive enough to stop a school shooter or anything--from a person without any history of legal troubles or who isn't already under surveillance (or probation) for something else.

 

 

[Quackers101]

2 hours ago, Heliian said:

My work computer is monitored 24/7, I don't play with it.  

so you have other devices other than the one for work?

Quote

Education is key here though, everyone should learn about the possible dangers of connected devices.

sorta, but hell no that we should accept it for a way to "teach" people about it

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Exactly,  My 5 yo daughter has an ipad on loan from the school for her work,  it has a plethora of specialized apps for remote learning, I have absolutely no way to know what else half those apps do, who see's the data, what is recorded or what type of security it uses to prevent my daughters zoom meeting and location being obtained by someone else.

while unsure what would be under this and different mindset for work. this is a lot better if its just school apps without deep rooted exploitive software.

and if the Ipad runs as normal with the school stuff added ontop, limited functionality would be fine for it's use case.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

At the very least I'd say it warrants some weariness and maybe the introduction of some checks and balances to make sure you can't pull off what you describe... though I do admit that what data is gathered does matter and I would consider visited domains to be lower on that list than live audio, which you said isn't recorded.

Well the checks and balances is that it would be a breach of the Privacy Act here which comes with very harsh punishments. Self preservation tends to go quite far.

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

While this data may be useless to you, we know that there is a market for it. Someone less ethical about it than you might go and sell this data to the highest bidder.

Well that is pretty well the type of risk that exists with almost anything. I don't tend to spent every day worrying about the 0.01% of people in the world that are murders or w/e that percentage actually is so I'm not going to not implement things on the fear that one of those types gets in to a role that would abuse it. Because while like I said I could look at it, do something with it, however at the point I tried to sell it I can guarantee this would get picked up on and an investigation started and in the list of 6500 ish staff there is about 3 that have the access to the backup system and would know how to restore it and 1 that would know how to remove the audit evidence, that 1 person being me. So yea, lack of evidence is evidence itself and it's not possible to hide the tampering of the audit logs from deeper inspection.

 

Whatever money I could get for it is not worth losing my freedom aka jail.

 

As far as schools go they have bigger problems than trying to do anything other than the stated purpose with the monitoring data, like funding for text books or other school equipment, roof maintenance to fix that leak for the 489th time etc.