Privacy

The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case that may determine whether schools can discipline students for comments they make on social media. A student in a Pennsylvania district was suspended from a cheerleading team after a Snapchat post surfaced in which she used foul language and was disrespectful to the school and cheer team, but she and her parents say the discipline violated her First Amendment right to free speech.

In a move celebrated by privacy advocates, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill into law that prohibits the use of biometric identifying technology -- such as facial recognition software -- in schools. Linnette Attai, founder of PlayWell, a privacy consulting firm, said other states are likely to adopt similar restrictions citing privacy issues and the inaccuracy of the technology in correctly identifying individual girls, women, and members of certain ethnic and racial groups.

While TikTok has seemingly avoided a ban in the US (for now), the app remains under scrutiny, due to concerns about its impact on young users and international data security considerations given its Chinese ownership. On the first point, TikTok is set to once again be examined over the ways in which it tracks and uses data from underage users as part of newly launched legal proceedings in the UK. The case is the latest of many that have brought against the app over the same concern.

The Federal Trade Commission has given nine top social media and Internet firms 45 days to provide details about "[how they] collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens." No penalties apply if companies fail to answer. So far it seems many of the social media companies are pointing fingers at each other’s practices, claiming they are worse  than their own, but if you are interested in consumer privacy it is a story you will want to watch unfold.

Voice recognition technology is growing rapidly, but the data generated – including this such as the voice of a child reading a story stored on digital media- qualifies as personal information, raising privacy and compliance issues, writes Joseph Lazzarotti of law firm Jackson Lewis. In a commentary, Lazzarotti outlines seven factors for schools and businesses to consider, concluding that "creating a robust data protection program or regularly reviewing an existing one is a critical risk management and legal compliance step."

Ruben Verborgh, a professor of computer science in Belgium, says tech companies' "data collection frenzy" discourages innovation and "encourages unfair competition." Verborgh is working with the web's creator, Tim Berners-Lee, on a project called Solid to help consumers create personal safes for their data.

The use of students' academic and attendance data in a Florida district in Pascoe County to predict whether they might commit crimes later in life is drawing scrutiny. Law enforcement officials say the data, which has not been shared with the roughly 400 students identified, is used to target students who need additional support and mentorship, but experts on data privacy and student security are asking for an investigation, and say it could be illegal.

About 75% of educators report that students who learn via live online instruction are required to keep cameras on if they have them, according to a survey by the Education Week Research Center. This comes despite concerns from some teachers that the requirement could put some students at a disadvantage, including lower-income students who may not want their classmates and teacher to see their homes, or those with lower bandwidth connectivity. This is also a good reminder for checking the space your child uses for online classes and removing items that might be used later by cyberbullies (or hackers) as visual clues – posters, pictures, sports memorabilia - into their life. Best practice is to keep the space they use as background for their appearance on Zoom and other online class as neutral as possible.

Large, wealthy school districts in the suburbs are most likely to be hit by hackers, an analysis by the Government Accountability Office finds, and at least 289 US districts are reporting cyberincidents this year, says Doug Levin of consulting firm EdTech Strategies. Student academic records were most commonly compromised, including assessment scores and special education records. Coming in second were records with personally identifiable information, such as student Social Security numbers, according to the analysis of data from July 2016 to May 2020. The trend is also seen in some smaller districts, such as the 6,000-student Newhall School District in California, where a ransomware attack in September halted virtual instruction for five days and forced a network reboot.

Despite the challenges, many parents and educators are seeing the benefits of virtual instruction and hoping that some level of online learning continues after the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report from the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. However, almost half of teachers say they have not been trained to safeguard students' data during this period of remote instruction. Just 4 in 10 parents have said their school has explained how it protects student data. In focus groups, students also expressed little concern about data privacy and security, despite highlighting incidents where video calls were hacked or teachers exposed students’ grades while sharing their screens with the class.