[HN Gopher] Protect Public School Students from Surveillance of ...
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Protect Public School Students from Surveillance of Off-Campus
Speech
Author : hn_acker
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-11-27 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| hn_acker wrote:
| The original title is:
|
| > EFF to Arizona Federal Court: Protect Public School Students
| from Surveillance and Punishment for Off-Campus Speech
| p_ing wrote:
| EFF goes on about how speech has been protected off campus in
| various cases, but what about _Bong Hits 4 Jesus_ where the
| Supreme Court ruled that the school did not violate First
| Amendment rights with suspension?
|
| In that case, the student was off school grounds across from the
| high school.
|
| Was Morse v. Frederick case law overturned in later cases?
|
| And I could just be completely reading this incorrectly, too.
| gruez wrote:
| >but what about Bong Hits 4 Jesus where the Supreme Court ruled
| that the school did not violate First Amendment rights with
| suspension?
|
| >In that case, the student was off school grounds across from
| the high school.
|
| The wikipedia summary is actually:
|
| >the Court held, 5-4, that the First Amendment does not prevent
| educators from prohibiting or punishing student speech that is
| reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use at a school-
| sanctioned event.[1][2]
|
| So the parts you're failing to mention is that it's a school
| sanctioned event, and that it's promoting illegal drug use.
| Based on the examples in the EFF blog post, it's clear that
| those are not the cases that EFF is objecting to, for instance:
|
| >Surveillance Software Exposed a Bad Joke Made in the Privacy
| of a Student's Home
|
| I agree that using school devices can be vaguely construed as
| being similar to "school-sanctioned event", but it's not the
| same, for the reasons outlined in EFF's blog post.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| What a bizarre case. I'm a technology person and late Gen-X. The
| only tech in my school were lab computers and Ti-81/82
| calculators, and I've been increasingly leery of the technology
| in schools since about 4th grade. Before that, they occasionally
| used iPads for a few things.
|
| Now that my son is in 8th grade, the whole Chromebook phenomenon
| is something I find gross. Kids don't read books. The various
| assessment products are gross and stress inducing, and the tools
| used for math, especially graphing, make trivial assignments
| incredibly difficult.
|
| I hate to sound like an old man. But between worse educational
| products, corporate surveillance tools applied to children and
| cheap, hard to use devices, I miss books.
| tclancy wrote:
| You are an old man: kids didn't read books back when we were
| kids either. I did and you probably did, but that's doesn't
| mean most people did. And it doesn't mean that kids aren't
| curious or learning.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Technology in the classroom has completely and utterly failed
| at improving education.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Was that really the aim?
|
| Or just getting kids hooked on tech and bowing to our tech
| overlords at a younger age?
| mystraline wrote:
| I guess learning "someone elses' computer isn't yours" is a
| lesson best taught early on?
|
| I know fellow millenials that use their work computers for
| personal reasons. And thats some of the stupidest things you can
| do. Dont use work or school hardware for personal reasons.
|
| I'd also say, if you're running Windows you're also surveilled to
| hell and back as well. Linux is basically the only platform thats
| not.
|
| And as to larger surveillance, its pervading everywhere. Work.
| School. Driving (Flock). Commercial web. "Free" services.
|
| I'm glad I grew up in one of the last generations that wasn't
| habitually online. I did loads of "troublesome behavior", that
| never followed me. Now, some thing will be captured with a
| smartphone and memorialized forever. And that... Alas. (Old man
| yelling at cloud, I guess?)
| zrail wrote:
| Yep. I treat work computers as hostile entities. They are
| always on an isolated guest SSID and VLAN and I never use them
| for personal tasks.
|
| When my kids start bringing school-owned hardware home that's
| getting the same treatment.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There are so many lessons going unlearned here. People who
| surrender their children to the government are upset that they
| aren't de-surrendered later in the evening once the child
| arrives physically at home. Even if they win the court battle,
| they've lost the philosophical one a long time ago.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Laptops are so cheap these days there's no reason to not buy a
| separate laptop for personal use and _only_ use the work laptop
| for work.
|
| Also put a sticker over the camera.
| bell-cot wrote:
| At what point could one argue that school-supplied Big Brother
| tech in students' homes constitutes a violation of both the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Amendment_to_the_United_...
| and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United... ?
| astrobe_ wrote:
| I wonder, if the device is equipped with a microphone and/or a
| webcam, does it mean that the school has the right to remotely
| activate them for "monitoring" purposes? It not too far from what
| they did when the monitoring software sent the screenshots of an
| email that never existed.
|
| And what if he joked about stabbing his girlfriend/boyfriend?
| Would the school report him to the police? What the police would
| do in this case?
| runjake wrote:
| I have worked extensively with this technology and have
| witnessed many of its pros and cons firsthand. I have seen it
| misused, but I have also observed it saving students' lives and
| preventing mass violence events.
|
| A major point to consider in the public conversation is what
| happens after a tragic event occurs. The school district is
| often called out for ignoring the warning signs, not paying
| attention to things that could have prevented the event, etc.
| So the other side of abolishing this technology is that school
| districts no longer have those tools and public expectations
| should be adjusted accordingly. What _really_ happens is that
| public opinion ebbs and flows between support and opposition,
| depending on what tragedies have happened near term.
|
| The policy and legal frameworks used by US schools clearly
| state that school district staff are not allowed to remotely
| activate the microphone or camera on a student's device.
|
| There's also legal precedence:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...
|
| When the Robbins case occurred, school districts everywhere
| took notice. In the organizations I've worked with since then,
| we no longer activate the microphone or webcam, regardless of
| the Chromebook's location. However, I can't speak for every
| school district, whose morals and ethics may vary greatly.
|
| _> It not too far from what they did when the monitoring
| software sent the screenshots of an email that never existed._
|
| It did exist but it wasn't never sent. The software runs as an
| agent on the student device and inspects the DOM tree for text
| phrases it considers alert-worthy: self-harm, threats, drug
| use, etc.
|
| _> And what if he joked about stabbing his girlfriend
| /boyfriend? Would the school report him to the police? What the
| police would do in this case?_
|
| This entirely depends on the school and police personalities
| involved, but the answer is "possibly" or "probably", depending
| on the jurisidiction.
|
| Regardless of the outcome, I think what's really important
| include the following:
|
| - There ARE bad actors employed in every school district! Many
| of them would love to spy on students, collect naked photos and
| share them.
|
| - School districts need STRICT AND _ENFORCED_ use policy and
| minimal "need to know" access for TRAINED district staff. No
| hand slaps. Termination of employment, and legal and criminal
| consequences are in order.
|
| - Auditing flipped on for everything possible (for CYA, if
| anything). If school staff flips on a webcam, that should be
| logged somewhere that cannot be scrubbed. In the case of a
| webcam activation, I'd have it auto-notify key personnel and
| probably legal. Those audit logs should be reviewed often by
| multiple auditors -- preferable a third party. Audit events
| should be backed by extensive documentation, such as a help
| desk ticket, if anything.
|
| - If possible, students should obscure the webcam when not in
| use to protect themselves. If feasible, I also suggest they get
| a cheap dummy mic off of Amazon and keep that plugged in.
|
| If this type of product survives litigation, we need to move
| toward assurances of privacy (eg. verifiable Private Cloud
| Compute model), so this doesn't turn into another Flock
| situation where certain government entities may have a
| global/national single-pane-of-glass.
|
| I almost said "on-premises" there, but that would be a disaster
| because school districts don't patch their stuff.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > but I've also seen it save students' lives and stop mass
| violence events.
|
| The saving lives thing is always the excuse for total
| surveillance. Trading away your freedom for security gets you
| neither.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| It also relies on knowledge of a counterfactual situation.
| Was the guy arrested for a threat genuinely going to hurt
| people, or was it a dumb joke that was taken seriously by
| somebody snooping in a conversation they lacked the context
| to even understand?
| runjake wrote:
| From experience, this is generally easy to figure out.
| The ratio between dumb joke threats vs actual threats is
| something like >99.9%.
| runjake wrote:
| Touche. I get that and agree. It's certainly a polarizing
| conversation.
|
| I'm hoping the conversation and courts arrive at definitive
| guidance and regulations that preserves freedom, doesn't
| add to the surveillance state and provides some kind of
| answer to the half or more than half of the population that
| expects school districts to surveil everything kids do on
| their devices (self-harm, harm, bullying, etc).
|
| It's a really weird experience to hear the same powerful
| people argue both sides. How do you expect us to do one
| without the other?
|
| And again, it's... safe to assume there are a lot of bad
| actors in education where enforced safeguards are needed.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Just keep the spying to a minimum. Any spying on a kid or
| his family outside of school is off-limits. 1984 was a
| warning, not an instruction manual.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This is a substantially more serious scenario now that
| transcribing and analyzing audio / video content is so much
| faster & cheaper today. Previously some freak had to watch or
| listen to everything in nearly 1:1 time to eavesdrop.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| I am thinking more and more that a total surveillance state is
| basically inevitable as technology progresses. Governments will
| have the data and companies will have it too. Right now we are
| building up the infrastructure for a future totalitarian regime.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yep and even if the current regime may not be too bad, the
| technological foundations are being set for when a future worse
| regime can take full advantage of it.
| Barathkanna wrote:
| This is honestly alarming. Student surveillance has crossed far
| beyond safety and is starting to look like constant monitoring of
| children's private lives. The idea that schools can track off-
| campus behavior should worry everyone.
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(page generated 2025-11-27 23:01 UTC)