Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen report: The courthouse lobby echoed like a crowded school cafeteria. Teenagers in sweatshirts and sneakers gossiped and scrolled on their phones as they clutched the yellow tickets that police had issued them at school. Abigail, a 16-year-old facing a $200 penalty for truancy, missed school again while she…
Category: Youth & Schools
U.S. State Legislative and Industry Self-Regulatory Efforts to Fill Gaps in Children’s Online Privacy
Hunton Andrews Kurth writes: On April 19, 2022, the California state legislature and an industry self-regulatory group each separately took steps to enhance online privacy protections for children who are not covered by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), which applies only to personal information collected online from children under the age of 13….
US schools are using smart cameras to target students without face masks
Didi Rankovic reports: A US school district with 95,000 students switched during the pandemic to using its “swarm” of automated surveillance tech to identify children who showed up at school without wearing a mask. The “smart cameras,” produced by Motorola’s Avigilon and capable of facial recognition and gun detection, were catching even those students who…
Senate Inquiry Warns About Harms of Digital School Surveillance Tools, Calls on FCC to Clarify Student Monitoring Rules
Mark Keierleber reports: Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to clarify how schools should monitor students’ online activities, arguing in a new report that educators’ widespread use of digital surveillance tools could trample students’ civil rights. They also want the U.S. Education Department to start collecting data on…