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Google Accused of Tracking School Kids After Promising Not To (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: In a complaint (PDF) filed Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claims that "despite publicly promising not to, Google mines students' browsing data and other information, and uses it for the company's own purposes." The EFF says Google's practice of recording everything students do while they're logged into their Google accounts, regardless of the device or browser they're using, puts the company in breach of Section 5 of the Federal Communications Act.
Perhaps you should read the claim more closely. Google *agreed* not to spy on students (and yes I did use the word spy because that is what they're doing). This formed part of the basis for which Schools used their services. Since schools have a legal obligation to keep private student data private, this was essential to them.
Yet Google doesn't honor that agreement, and thus exposes the schools to legal consequence:
"Google’s practices fly in the face of commitments made when it signed the Student Privacy Pledge, a legally enforceable document whereby companies promise to refrain from collecting, using, or sharing students’ personal information except when needed for legitimate educational purposes or if parents provide permission."
"EFF’s filing with the FTC also reveals that the administrative settings Google provides to schools allow student personal information to be shared with third-party websites in violation of the Student Privacy Pledge. The ability to collect and potentially share student information follows children whenever they use Chrome to log into their Google accounts, whether on a parents’ Apple iPad, friend’s smartphone or home computer."
"EFF's cloud "sync" argument isn't too solid. Google's system of syncing data between devices is the entire point of Google Apps and their Chrome OS system"
No, its an OPTIONAL feature that is turned on by default for School Chromebooks. Sure this might be the point of Chrome from Google's perspective (gaining market advantage by having access to private data), but that does not make it the schools entire purpose!
"Why in the hell are schools requiring students to use Chromebooks?" Cost. Less technical problems than MacOS/Windows/Linux. Easy to collaborate with others, etc. And yes, I'm the IT guy for a school handing out Chromebooks. Two full time IT employees, 1500 students, 300 staff. Chromebooks just do the job well.
No sense of reality?
Our local elementary school run Linux PCs with LibreOffice. These PCs are actually used for teaching and the transition from Windows went rather smoothly.
It helps that there is a computer guy available to administrate the machines and offer basic training the the teachers.