A majority of the Rhode Island school districts with “1-1” programs
where each student is issued a laptop have a blanket policy of spying on
the students and everything they do on their laptops, during, before
and after school hours, on or off school premises, without any evidence
(or even suspicion ) of wrongdoing.
The schools analogize this to school locker searches, in which students
are denied any Fourth Amendment protections. But that (very dubious)
principle is being stretched beyond the breaking point, as school
lockers are in schools, whereas these laptop searches are being carried out remotely, everywhere, anywhere.
This isn’t so different from the policies asserted by employers who require workers to take devices home,
then assert the right to spy on them using those devices, installing
their own certificates so they can stage “man-in-the-middle”
interceptions of private sessions between employees and their email
providers, financial institutions, etc.
Employers say that employees should just maintain two separate
constellations of devices, one personal, and not conduct any personal
business on them. This is at best unrealistic, and at worst cynical
bullshit. Every study conducted of these situations shows that no one –
not careful lawyers, not secrecy-conscious spies, not criminals, not
government employees – can reliably separate their work and personal
business on separate devices.
Worse yet is the idea – further normalized by the school districts –
that your employer has the absolute right to spy on everything you do
while you’re on the job. If intercepting and reading your personal email
is fair game, then why not install hidden mics in the parking lot to
listen in when your spouse drops in to discuss their cancer diagnosis
during a tense one-on-one by the car?
Schools have long been accused of serving as a kind of training ground
for the depredations of the industrial workplace – regimented places of
silent sitting in neatly squared-up rows where even going to the toilet
requires permission and a clanging bell signals the start and end of
your tasks. But this is some next-level 21st century stuff.
The ACLU of Rhode Island points out that rich kids will get to bring
their own devices to school and opt out of the surveillance. They’ve
drafted model legislation
that “would limit when an administrator or third party can remotely
access devices to instances where there is reasonable belief that
misconduct, as spelled out in school policies, took place, or if a
warrant is present.”
ACLU-RI raises the spectre of the Lower Merion School District, a story I broke in 2010,
in which the wealthiest school district in America issued mandatory
laptops to its students, then secretly operated their webcams to shoot
thousands of covert photos of disfavored students – in states of
undress, asleep, awake, at home and at school.
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