Teacher Spying Is Instilling Surveillance Culture Into Students
“We totally stalked what they were doing on Google,” one teacher said.

For the teachers, it began in October at the California Teachers Association's 2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki explained how they identified potential new members of UBU, the school's club of LGBTQ supporters. "When we were doing our virtual learning—we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren't doing schoolwork," Caldeira said. "One of them was Googling 'Trans Day of Visibility.' And we're like, 'Check.' We're going to invite that kid when we get back on campus."
Whatever you think of LGBTQ issues, the fact that a teacher can remotely track what students do online should give you pause. This was not a case of a teacher reviewing the browser history on a classroom computer after school. As Caldeira said, albeit with her tongue in cheek, they were stalking the kids. (The title of Caldeira and Baraki's presentation declared that it was about running such clubs "in conservative communities." Needless to say, conservative teachers can snoop on kids' online activities too.)
The Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, California, where Caldeira is employed (and is currently on leave, following the uproar over the story), uses GoGuardian, a standard software tool for monitoring what students do during Zoom classes. GoGuardian, which promotes itself as powering "digital learning environments where every student can thrive," is being used in about 30,000 schools.
Schools do, of course, have a vested interest in protecting students. Defenders of programs like GoGuardian point out that it could catch a student searching for, say, "how to commit suicide." But as with law, extreme cases make bad policy. If "digital learning environment" tools also collect data related to non-life-threatening behavior, can we expect school authorities to hold a line on what to flag and when to interfere?
GoGuardian's website features a testimonial from a district administrator. A student, new to the district, revealed in his journal he was struggling to fit in. Certain words tripped an alert, and the administrator was able to connect the student to support services. Perhaps that worked out for the best for this student, but most kids probably don't want school administrators reading their journals. (GoGuardian was unable "to get any exec spokesperson availability" to respond to my inquiries.)
Justin Reich, a former teacher who spent 15 years as an education technology consultant and who now directs MIT's Teaching Systems Lab, says, "Generally speaking, I think school policy gives quite wide leeway for schools and districts to have the capacity to view almost anything that happens on school devices, networks and services." And that worries him. "We need to consider how schools help induct students into a surveillance culture," he says.
Chris Gilliard of Macomb Community College pointed out on Reich's podcast, TeachLab, that schools have long been "a place where people watch and are watched." The difference today lies in which realm, the physical or the virtual, the watching takes place. Students are watched at school and then beyond campus via devices they access at home. What lines are schools drawing between necessary monitoring of student behavior, the requirements of mandatory reporting, and student privacy? Are these lines being codified in policies? Or are schools flying by the seat of their pants?
"Many of these tools were adopted in a rush at the start of the pandemic," says Elana Zeide, an expert on student privacy and artificial intelligence at the University of Nebraska School of Law. "But after two years of remote learning, they should have gotten themselves together and ironed their policies out."
It's not even clear that the tools are working the way they are supposed to. For example, Zeide says, there is little evidence that "online proctoring reduced cheating."
There is also the question of equity. School-issued devices are like work-issued ones, which are expected to be used strictly for work. Many students have access to a second device at home for personal use, and thus can evade the prying eyes of school surveillance tools. But this, Zeide points out, disadvantages lower-income students "who might have only the school-issued machine."
And Zeide has a larger concern too. "Surveilling students has been shown to have a chilling effect on their speech and their curiosity, what might be called their intellectual privacy," she says. If students feel they are being watched, they may be less likely to explore less "acceptable" ideas or to search the internet with questions they are embarrassed to ask in class.
If schools won't abandone online surveillance altogether, are there smaller steps they can take? Zeide wants better teacher training, since how well these tools work depends in part on how they are used. Schools can also turn surveillance off after school hours. (GoGuardian offers such an option.) And then there's transparency: Schools, Zeide says, should explain to parents what data is being collected, even if the data is not part of the student's permanent educational record.
"It may be best practice, but how many schools are actually practicing it?" I ask.
"That's a great question," Zeide replies.
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Hey don’t ever say Reason is afraid to cover a story about spying!
The left haven’t changed in 100 years. This groomer is the same that would send you to the gulag to die or inform on you to Mao’s forces.
Their entire ideology is power and control. Separating kids from their evil parents and forcing their ideology on them. Persecuting those who differ in the slightest.
It’s why they are at DEFCON2 over transparency laws. They don’t want people to know what they are doing to their own children. And the evil enablers in the left wing industrial complex will lie and lie and lie to cover it up.
Unless you believe that splitting up your 5th grade class to have your white kids apologize to everyone else is “teaching history”
Probably so. The same teacher who's doing this as what they consider a good deed may well report you to authorities if you were someone not in a position of authority for recruiting teenagers into a homosexual organization. Because when you do it, you're a pervert and likely criminal, while when they do it, they're helping children cope with an oppressive society. Even though they are the authority figures who make it an oppressive society.
Reason #763 to avoid public schools.
You only started counting reasons this morning?
No, I was up to 762 yesterday, now I'm at 763.
Cats out of the bag. There is no going back. It's just too easy to use and justify this technology.
I was explaining the difference between the way the government treats people and private businesses treat people with a bureaucrat last week. He was complaining about the way senior bureaucrats reserved parking for themselves in his government employee only parking lot. I found this particularly galling since the only parking lots available to non-government employees was almost a mile away. I'd just walked a mile!
I explained to him that if you go to a private office building or a shopping mall, they typically require the employees to park as far away from the building as possible--so that their customers get the best parking. Their welfare depends on making customers happy, so retail establishments have the best interests of the customer in mind. Government offices, on the other hand, are generally run for the benefit of government employees--as demonstrated by their parking.
I think this applies to surveillance in schools, too. We should expect public schools to be run for the benefit of the bureaucrats who work there. Private schools are run for the benefit of whomever is paying the tuition. Don't expect the teachers in a private school to spy on the activities of the kids--unless parents want the school to spy on their kids. I once saw a teacher fired in the middle of a school year for going against the wishes of parents. I'd love to see the Republicans get behind a defund the public schools movement ahead of the midterms.
Teachers are experts in everything. They are apolitical and know what's best for your kids. - chemjeff
Even chemjeff level stupidity has to deal with reality eventually. If there were a market for parents who want teachers monitoring their children's online activities--so they can . . . ahem . . . introduce those children to LGBTQI+ activists at school--then I'm sure some private educational company would find a way to market themselves to those parents. If that business plan were to come across my desk as an investment opportunity, I'd say that's a definite pass. I can't imagine that ever becoming a legitimate business model in the real world.
"The Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, California, where Caldeira is employed (and is currently on leave, following the uproar over the story), . . .
They even got upset about that in Salinas, which is in Monterey County, just south of San Francisco.
They went 70% for Biden.
https://www.montereycountyelections.us/files/mced/Election_Info/past_results/SOV_2020-11-03.pdf
Teacher uses spy software to groom studdn
Totally NOT Stalking
Just a little recruiting and grooming of an 11 year old girl to gender transition while hiding it from her parents.
The public grooming that democrats are and have been pushing has been amazing. Watching them defend jazz Jennings on a catwalk shirtless getting dollar bills thrown at him... on t.v. They are truly trying to normalize pedophilia.
The most maddening thing about this article, beyond the personal tragedy, is at the very end.
That entire statement is political, complete with all the leftist buzzwords. “Safe”, “inclusive”, and “equitable” education are all staples in leftist orthodoxy, yet I’m supposed to believe that whatever it is they call education is free of politics.
Their entire operation of government schooling as it currently exists is borne of nothing but politics, as if it were the ring forged in Mount Doom.
Reading your anchor string, I thought that then this could be palmed off as merely the work of some rogue teacher, who they probably couldn't do anything about because of the union. But read the story and you see the school was on board with the agenda.
Wait a second....why shouldn't schools adopt the same policies as employers when it comes to provided devices? The device does not belong to the child, they do not own it. Therefore, EVERYTHING they do on the device is open to inspection.
Children are trainable. As a parent, I know this. You train your child: On the school computer, you do ONLY school work and NOTHING else. Period.
What is wrong with that outlook?
Exactly right. This and "social media is cancer" are the two messages about tech that we're beating into our kids.
You are correct. But it is also noteworthy that as an employee, the Teacher has a responsibility to properly use that equipment. They should not honestly have access to this data, for exactly the reason this article highlights. This would be like your creepy boss looking at your cell-phone records to figure out if you were out late with that guy last night. It is an unethical use of their tools.
School districts should have a policy for proper use of their equipment, and they should enforce it electronically (with firewalls, filtering, etc). Teachers are not IT Security professionals, and should never have the access necessary to mitigate these risks, and the privacy destroying powers it gives them.
From a normal person's point of view there's nothing wrong with that outlook. It wouldn't surprise me though if the groomers, er, teachers come to regard that outlook as "suspicious".
These aren't all school devices. My daughter had to download this shit on her personal laptop with remote schooling.
And yes it is removed now.
Except businesses don't do this. Well at least not most businesses. They'll put in filters to keep you from doing porn at work, but they really don't care if you takes a few minutes here and there to browse the web or comment at Reason. They're not actively spying on you.
The other big difference is that businesses make it clear to employees that their laptop is the company's laptop. Do schools do the same? Are these laptops the property of the school, or a required purchase by the school and belong to the students? I highly suspect the latter.
It's like me remoting into work from home from my own laptop. My employer has no fucking right to spy on my computer, and most especially NOT outside of work hours. Schools can't say the same. Schools are spying on students whenever the teachers or administrators feel like it.
It's time for the Left to realize that compulsory government education is a tool of the white patriarchy. And it's time for the Right to give up thinking their "school choice" bumper sticker is making a difference. The real solution is turning your back on public schools completely. Private schools, home schooling, unschooling, that's the answer. Not tax financed charter schools or changing neighborhoods or endless PTA meetings.
They're plainly the school's property around here. The librarian is responsible for the logistics of distribution and collection, and the school IT provides support.
The real solution is turning your back on public schools completely. Private schools, home schooling, unschooling, that's the answer. Not tax financed charter schools or changing neighborhoods or endless PTA meetings.
Most of us agree on point b, but until there's a critical mass which abandons the publics, they're going to be the default position. So without the latter how do you get the former?
As a wise man said, amateurs talk about strategy; professionals talk about logistics.
Some schools have made students install the software on their PERSONAL computers. My Great Niece had it until I changed the settings. Some of those settings would allow the remote activation of the computer's camera and microphone. There was NO evidence of that happening. When her Parents bought the computer and are paying for the internet EVERYTHING they do IS NOT open to inspection.
That being said, I CAN see how this is unfair to some students who have to use computers and internet provided by the schools.
The headline gets things backwards. Surveillance culture is already ingrained; GoGuardian and the like are simply allowing bad actors to more effectively behave badly.
Counterpoint: my wife loves GoGuardian - it allows her to terminate her students' attempts at self-distraction, thus giving them ample opportunity to embarrass themselves in front of their peers when they bitch about it. She's never going to check up on them after hours, that's neither her job nor her business.
The answer is total transparency.
Tell the students and parents what software is in use, and all of its capabilities.
Teach the kids that the school computer is for school, their phone is for everything else.
(and yes, event the "poor" kids have a phone)
Or make the schools open up and dump the "virtual" bullshit.
They’re never stopping it, because mission creep.
Now they have snow days based on nothing more than a forecast of 1/2 bad weather, because they can “just do virtual school.”
Home sick? Remember to log on for your classes so you don’t fall behind.
They’ll find every excuse they can to keep this tech in place.
"Generally speaking, I think school policy gives quite wide leeway for schools and districts to have the capacity to view almost anything that happens on school devices, networks and services."
That should include members of the Faculty and Administration as well if it applies to students.
How many layers of creepiness do you need?
Roberta,
Google "45 Goals of the Communist Party". It was read into the Congressional Record in 1963. Take a look into the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. One of the members of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayres, is big in Education Circles. Look at the ties between these groups and the Clintons and Obamas.
In the 45 Goals two stand out for this subject.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, and healthy."
Don't take my word for it. Look for yourself. There's a reason that they don't teach History of Critical Thinking anymore.
Imagine the mayhem a student could cause, knowing that he was being monitored like this.
Like the Surveillance Camera Players?
Why are schools handing kids computers to take home, anyway? Totally unnecessary. As are "Zoom classes."
You don't have to ban school surveillance on school device. Just support school choice. Wait 3,4 years until private schools that respect student privacy are opened, and then you can send your kids there.
See, it just doesn't work that way. School choice provides an alternative to the status quo. But (1) not all parents can afford alternatives and (2) private schools are still under the control and purview of the local government that helped spawn the public school monopoly. In other words, it is not comparable to immigration, that magical solution that makes all our problems go away.
Why some libertarians want to sidestep the current cultural battle over schools is baffling. Public schools aren't any different from public roads or the local police. They're the default option for the public funded by taxpayers. We as citizens have a vested interest in holding them accountable. Private options are one solution, not the only solution.
I would hope that some privacy-oriented engineers will release free software that blocks this type of monitoring. In those cases where this is installed on school-owned equipment, perhaps a cheap Raspberry Pi-type device could be interposed between the school computer and the internet to provide the same protection.
While I agree with you, in many places installing software blocks or blocking monitoring is considered a criminal offense. If you are going the Raspberry PI route, I'd recommend a LattePanda. It costs a little more but, it can run and some come with Windows 10. That, a cheap external hard drive, a monitor, keyboard and mouse is all you need.
There is a constitutional legal issue here. A teacher (or any other official) at a “public” school is a government official and the school is a government entity. As such the Bill of Rights is a legal “restraint” on government authority.
Right now - today - a constitutional attorney could argue that this practice is already illegal under the U.S. Supreme Court ruling “Carpenter v. US” ruling’s (totalitarian surveillance clause explicit wording). The court ruled essentially that totalitarian style surveillance that creates a “personal map” of any person is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment - requiring a probable cause warrant of a past crime, teachers would have to risk perjury/contempt to obtain a judicial warrant and a judge would have to approve it.
This case clearly meets the “personal mapping” wording of Carpenter’s surveillance clause. If not maybe this case should heard at the U.S. Supreme Court?
All of us need to remember history. Not that long ago LGBT Americans were viewed as mentally ill or moral degenerates. In many states, like Virginia, cohabitating” or living with an unmarried partner of the opposite sex was a felony crime. Less than 5 years ago some local court clerks, in some states, refused to follow U.S. Supreme Court rulings on marriage equality (it’s the law and the clerks refused to comply with laws). Today some Dark Ages-minded officials still hold this view - today in 2022.
So if this technology had existed merely decades ago, this technology would be used against LGBT-Americans, African-Americans or even women supporting voting rights in 1920.
Next time someone says “if you aren’t doing anything wrong or illegal there is no need for privacy” - history tells us the exact opposite. Right, wrong, legal or illegal only matters if officials are loyal to their Oath of Office. Many, if not most, officials don’t uphold that loyalty in real practice.
Liam Day looks a little fruity himself, has anyone check to see whats on his computer!
The only thing that actually works is to “legally” turn-the-tables on the hypocritical elites.
For example: in the 1970’s or early 1980’s there was a federal judge running for higher office and this guy was heavy on censorship and violating legal First Amendment speech (banning obscene but legal images & language).
The medicine that actually worked was journalists “legally” searched the judges trash and “legally” monitored the Puritan-minded judge. The Press found out the judge was visiting and purchasing pornographic material from an adult video store as he was standing in judgement of us peasants.
Very effective way to deal with those who value their own rights but hypocritically rob us peasants of ours. Let’s “legally” give these guys a taste of their own medicine!
Wasn't the trans day of visibility a Google doodle a while back? Poor kid is probably going to get reached out to because he or she accidentally clicked on the doodle that day.
Strikes me that these “educators”aka teachers, are needful of that proverbial Boot In The Tail.
Chris hayes highlighted a line from the report about Robert Nader and illegal donations from the UAE, saying they were trump donors. They were actually Clinton donors. Nader was charged woth child porn and setting up illegal donations from UAE. It was quite a self own from Chris Hayes.
https://mobile.twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1493368696395468802
Let's not forget the centuries of this behavior in the Catholic church!
And a high number in antifa protestors.
I still think opposition to socialism, being in favor of the First Amendment, and opposing elitist authoritarianism are reasons enough to oppose the DNC. Progressives are properly ranked among America's most horrible people even without the conspiracy theories.
Anyone still thinking it's *only* the DNC, is sleep walking.
I suspect the parents were creeped out by grown ups monitoring their kids' apparent interests for . . . um . . . signs that they might be open to . . . um . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_grooming#Over_the_Internet
Plenty of parents don't want adults monitoring their kids' online behavior to see if they might be the kind of kids who are . . . um . . . curious.
Plenty of them presumably think schools are supposed to be guarding against online threats like that--rather than presenting a potential threat.
Plenty of parents already have a paranoid mindset about predators coming after their kids, and this story was probably dancing all over those parents' preexisting paranoia.
"Maybe kids just need to figure out how to crack their schools systems like we did too. Hopefully theres still a few curious enough to try."
The problem is that this is now largely outsourced SaaS/PaaS service. That means there often isn't even anybody at the school with admin privileges. Most of the work is done at the district level.
The exploding budgets of schools has allowed them to staff their IT departments with many functionaries without having to rely on students any more.
I see that whole transgender bathroom issue as mostly just about progressives trolling the right. It's a wedge issue, and the more we talk about it, in an election year, the better it is for progressives.
It is a power play Ken. They know transgenderism isn't based on science, but of they can force rules from the ideology they get a certain level of supplication.
It is one of the tactics from Mao.
If they can force you into compliance against a truth, they can force you into compliance for anything.
Star Trek TNG - Chain of Command
Picard is tortured to admit there are 5 lights when in reality there are only 4
Same fucking issue here. A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man. All it is is a power play
As a savvy student I would be aware of this and shut off the computer outside of school hours, and used my own for anything else.
Which is why this enlightened policy by the schools disproportionately affects low income students who can't afford a second computer.
And as a savvy parent I would not allow the school to install any software on my child's property that I did not fully vet. If they're going to demand a special computer for schooling then they damned well better provide it for "free".
Of course, as a savvy parent my kids would not be attending public schools.
That's how you see it.
The upcoming election will be decided by how suburban women see things.
If the Republicans can't make their case on that issue in a way that's appealing to suburban women, then it's better for the Republicans to just STFU about it until after the election. Abortion and gay marriage, too.
There are so many great ways for Republicans to make their case for being the best choice for suburban women on issues surrounding public education. The Biden administration sicced the FBI's counterterrorism unit on parents for opposing their local school boards.
I've heard the progressives justified that shit by citing a case where a father was upset with his local school board in Virginia because his daughter was sexually assaulted in a girls' locker room by a man who was claiming to be a woman just to get access to the girls' locker room. When someone brings that story up to suburban women, they shouldn't emphasize the transgender aspect of that story. They should emphasize that the Biden administration sicced the FBI on parents for opposing their local school boards.
Trying to dictate terms to the market is a losing strategy. If suburban women react negatively to any story that puts transgender people in a bad light, then telling them they're wrong to feel the way they do is a great way to lose. And why push that story when defending their right to have their say at the local school board--without Biden and the progressives sending the FBI after them--is a big winner?
It's an election year, so the rules are different. It's like you've on a hot date. You wash your car. You take a shower. When you pick her up, you tell her she looks nice. If she cares about animals, you don't tell her about your favorite way to carve them up in the field. You ask her about her experience volunteering for dog rescue. She likes dogs! If you like dogs, you talk about dogs because you want her to like you. She may like you--if she thinks you care about her what she cares about.
Remember, kids: Google is evil.
The problem is that it is a crime to "crack school systems" anymore.
Power attracts the Corrupt.
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