by runjake | 2025-11-27 18:40:01+00:00
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.