Advanced Search
Content Type: Examples
Months after a District Court judgment that Cleveland State University violated student privacy in requiring the use of an online proctoring service that required a scan of students' rooms, some professors California colleges were still using such software for remote exams. Privacy rights campaigners argue that the software is invasive and discriminatory and a violation of the Fourth Amendment; e-proctoring companies reply that the data they collect is limited.Article: California colleges use…
Content Type: Examples
New research shows that schools' scramble to adopt new technologies in schools have given for-profit companies a massive opening into the data of young people's everyday lives and created an $85 billion industry that has brought security and privacy risks for all concerned. Schools, meanwhile, lack the resources and knowledge to manage security vulnerabilities. Article: Edtech gives technology companies portal into students' lives Publication: LA School ReportWriter: Mark Keierleber…
Content Type: Examples
The New York State Department of Education has prohibited schools in New York State from purshasing or using facial recognition technology. Schools can use other types of biometric identifying technology as long as they consider the privacy implications. Article: New York State bans facial recognition in schoolsPublication: New York State Education DepartmentWriter: NYSED
Content Type: Examples
Human Rights Watch called on the national government of Brazil to amend the country's data protection law to add new safeguards to protect children online following the discovery that seven educational webistes directed at Brazilian students, including two created by state education secretariats, used tracking developed for advertising purposes to surveil children, harvested their personal data, and sent it to third-party companies. The websites watched children in their online classrooms and…
Content Type: Examples
Following a report from Human Rights Watch, The Public Ministry of São Paolo began an investigation to find out whether government education platforms and services collected students' personal data and sent it to adtech companies in violation of the General Data Protection Law. Article: São Paolo ministry investigates education websites for dataveillance Publication: G1Writer: Arthur Stabile
Content Type: Examples
Education experts and publishers in Brazil are warning of the negative consequences of a decision by the São Paolo state government to replace textbooks with ebooks for students over 14 starting in 2024. Many students have no Internet access, and publishers argue it will irreparably damage the testbook industry.Article: Brazilian educators oppose ebook replacement for textbooks Publication: Phys.org Writer: Phys.org
Content Type: Examples
After an in-person auction in São João let Brazilian technology companies bid for a contract to supply facial recognition technology to the public school system. PontoID, which won the $162,000 contract, began secretly rolling out the technology without informing parents or students in advance. The goal was to help track school attendance; parents would receive a text message when students arrive and leave school. In some towns, more than 80% of the population are of African descent; facial…
Content Type: Examples
The Court of Appeals for British Columbia rejected the claim made by whistleblower Ian Linkletter that linking to freely available materials from the remote proctoring company Proctorio was legitimate criticism. The company has a history of attacking those who criticise it and its products. Linklater, while working as Learning Technology Specialist at the University of British Columbia in 2020, issued a number of criticisms of its approach on Twitter, and linked to "unlisted" (public but not…
Content Type: Examples
An administrative court in Montreil, France issued a preliminary ruling ordering the Paris-based Distance Learning Institute to suspend its use of the e-proctoring platform TestWe, which uses facial recognition and algorithmic analysis to monitor students.Video and sound analysis track students' eye movements and their surroundings, a practice the court ruled disproportionate. The case was brought by a group of students represented by La Quadrature du Net and casts doubt on the legality of…
Content Type: Examples
An app used by more than 100 Bristol schools has raised concern among criminal justice and anti-racism campaigners that the easy access it gives safeguarding leads to pupils' and their families' contacts with police, child protection, and welfare services risks increasing discrimination against those of minority ethnic or working class backgrounds. Staff using the app say the app is often kept secret from parents and carers. The council website says the Think Family database, which the app…
Content Type: Examples
UK government ministers are seeking to ensure schools benefit financially from any future use of pupils’ data by large language models such as those behind ChatGPT and Google Bard. Data from the national pupil database is already available to third-party organisations. The BCS head of education recommends that the Department of Education should write a clear public benefits statement to ensure that initiatives benefit pupils as well as providing financial benefits.https://schoolsweek.co.uk/…
Content Type: Examples
The UK's Behavioural Insights ("Nudge") Unit has trialled machine learning models to help automate some decisions made by regulators such as Ofsted (schools), and the Care Quality Commission (health and social care in England). The resulting algorithm uses data such as the number of children are on free school meals, teachers' pay, the number of teachers for each subject, and parents' reviews of schools in order to predict which schools' performance might be suffering. The dataset deliberately…
Content Type: Examples
The UK’s education watchdog, Ofsted, is considering checking pupils’ and parents’ social media pages to ensure that schools maintain their standards. Privacy campaigners oppose the plan as overreach, while representatives of teachers’ unions warned the information would be unreliable. https://inews.co.uk/news/education/ofsted-snoop-parents-pupils-social-media-56319Publication: i NewsWriter: Richard Vaughan
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI), Big Brother Watch (BBW), StopWatch, CopWatch, Defend Digital Me, Liberty and Statewatch have written to Home Secretary James Cleverly to raise concerns over the danger posed to UK society by Facial Recognition Technology (FRT).In a letter sent on 18 January 2024, the signatories raised concerns over the escalating use of FRT and warned the Home Secretary that "The indiscriminate use of this dystopian biometric technology to identify people in public spaces is a form…
Content Type: Examples
English school head teachers were asked to fill out a census form designed in partnership with the Department of Education and hosted by Capita that included fields asking for pupils’ asylum status, ethnicity, and passport numbers and export dates. Families are meant to be advised it’s not mandatory to supply the information, but when they don’t schools “ascribe” - that is, guess - children’s ethnicity. Privacy campaigners expressed concern that the census data would be used for immigration…
Content Type: Examples
ICO warns North Ayrshire Council for adopting facial recognition in schools without parental consent
The Office of the Information Commissioner has warned Scotland's North Ayrshire council that it has likely infringed data protection law by using facial recognition technology in nine schools. North Ayrshire used the iPayimpact contactless system for payment for meals, and claimed that 97% of parents had given consent. The ICO said that although consent was the appropriate legal basis, the requirements had not been met, and the council needed to explain how students' data will be collected,…
Content Type: Examples
According to police plans to enhance “school safety”, security cameras and facial recognition will monitor children in Hong Kong in class and around educational facilities. The move is part of a trend also found in China, India, and the US toward mining children’s data, even though few benefits have been found.Article: Hong Kong schools adopt facial recognition and security camerasPublication: Biometric UpdateWriter: Christ Burt
Content Type: Examples
The Focus1, or FuSi, from the US-based startup BrainCo, claims to measure how closely students are paying attention via electrodes that detect brain activity and send the data to teachers’ computers or a mobile app. Lights on the headband glow red, yellow, or blue to signify the level of engagement. A backlash against the headband has begun in China, where a local authorities ordered a school to suspend its use after it was profiled in the Wall Street Journal. Among other issues, it’s not clear…
Content Type: People
Sana is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International where she works on the strategic areas ‘Demanding State Accountability’ and ‘Dignity’. Before joining PI, Sana led the Policy and Advocacy team at Justice Project Pakistan, where she engaged in domestic and international advocacy to reform the criminal justice system in areas including the death penalty, prison reform, torture, and consular protection. In the past, she has led the litigation team at Justice Project Pakistan, supported…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International's response to the call of submissions of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association on the tools and guidelines which may assist law enforcement in promoting and protecting human rights in the context of peaceful protests. The Special Rapporteur's report will be presented at the 55th session of the UN Human Rights Council.While PI recognises the role of law enforcement can play in facilitating the enjoyment of freedom of…
Content Type: Examples
Data-driven wellbeing audits are becoming common in classrooms in Denmark, which has long invested heavily in digital teaching aids and interactive learning. In the last few decades, depression among Danish children has sextupled, and a quarter of ninth-graders report having attempted self-harm. Platforms such as Woof offer teachers regular feedback based on anonymous self-reports. Similar systems in the US extend to surveilling students' emails, chat, and searches.Experts are concerned that…
Content Type: Examples
The facial recognition system the Indian state of Telangana intends to adopt for taking attendance in schools will be AI-enhanced, eliminate the paper register via an Android app, serve 2.6 million students in 26,000 schools, and be extended to teachers after it has been successfully implemented for students. The system will capture a secured binary template based on 72 points on the face rather than photos of end users.Article: Telengana facial recognition system will include…
Content Type: Examples
Following pilots in Nirmal and Jayashankar Bhupalpally districts, the government of the Indian state of Telangana is planning on adopting facial recognition software to manage attendance in the schools. Officials have said the system should ensure every transaction is transparent and traceable and work in all environments with low-configuration mobiles and tablets. The existing biometric system has had technical issues.Article: Telangana adopts facial recognition for taking…
Content Type: Examples
Since launching its The Learning App in 2015, the Indian EdTech company Byju's had grown to serve more than 80 million users and 5.5 million paid subscribers by 2021; it provides learning programs for students aged four years old and up. However, former employees say that underpinning the company's growth is a hard-selling culture that takes advantage of underprivileged families who can't afford their products but in India's hyper-competitive environment take out loans they can't afford to…
Content Type: Examples
The Nigerian startup uLesson, which began by offering pre-recorded lessons on dongles, now delivers livestreamed interactive video classes to learners in a number of African countries as well as the US and UK. One of uLesson's investors is Tencent, which also backed at least three Chinese EdTech companies between 2018 and 2021 before China began requiring companies teaching compulsory primary and middle school subjects in China to register as "nonprofit institutions".Article: Chinese-backed…
Content Type: Examples
Under a five-year $20.7 million contract, the US state of Utah is allowing the AI company Banjo real time access to numerous sources of state-owned camera and location data, among other types and combine it with information collected from social media, satellites, and other apps in order to use its algorithms to detect "anomalies" and alert law enforcement to crimes as they take place. Banjo claims to be able to do this while stripping personal information from its "Live Time Intelligence"…
Content Type: Examples
The Greek defence startup Lambda Automata is putting up "Outpost" autonomous observation towers to enhance monitoring of the country's numerous islands in the Aegean Sea, important in territorial conflicts with Turkey. The towers use computer vision algorithms to turn CCTV cameras into situational awareness tools; they are solar-powered and can accommodate third-party sensors to expand their functions. https://greekcitytimes.com/2022/10/04/autonomous-greek-islands-threats-tec/…
Content Type: Examples
Cellebrite, which provides technology to unlock phones and access their data, asks its government agency customers to keep both its technology and the fact that they used it secret, a leaked company training video shows. Such a request violates the rights of the public to expect that authorities are transparent when asking judges to authorise searches. In the video, the company employee claims that disclosure could hinder law enforcement and help criminals.https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/19/…
Content Type: Examples
Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 between 2009 and 2014, set up a meeting between Palantir CEO Alex Karp and the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, John Manzoni, in 2019; a year later the US-based company was awarded a £27 million contract to process border and customs data without competitive tender. Palantir's strategy appears to be to offer £1 contracts to provide services to gain a footing, and then raise prices once established. It has also hired former public servants and NHS executives.…
Content Type: Examples
Republic Squiare, one of the cultural and social hubs of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is under constant surveillance by equipment made by the Chinese company Huawei that recognises faces, identifies vehicle number plates, and judges whether activities are "suspicious". Despite controversy over the cameras, Belgrade plans to extend the network to 8,000 cameras as part of a "safe city" partnership with Huawei. Similar installations are taking place across the world, exporting China's values to…