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1,100 Schools Now Scan Social Media For Violent Students - and Alcohol Use (usatoday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the not-saved-by-the-bell dept.

In the hunt for potential acts of student violence, "schools are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-backed solutions," reports USA Today. Bark Technologies, Gaggle.Net, and Securly Inc. are three companies that employ AI and machine learning to scan student emails, texts, documents, and in some cases, social media activity. They look for warning signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, depression, and to flag students who may pose a violent risk not only to themselves, but classmates. When potential problems are found, and depending on the severity, school administrators, parents -- and under the most extreme cases -- law enforcement officials, are alerted. In the fall of 2017, Bark ran a test pilot with 25 schools. "We found some pretty alarming issues, including a bombing and school shooting threat," says Bark chief parent officer, Titania Jordan....

The Bark product [which monitors more than 25 social media platforms] is free to schools in the U.S. for perpetuity. The company says it can afford to give the service away to schools, because of the money it makes from a version aimed at parents... Bark is currently used in more than 1,100 school districts, covering 2.6 million children. If it detects something that is considered exceedingly severe such as a child abduction or school shooting threat, the issue is escalated to the FBI. According to Jordan, Bark sends out between 35,000 and 55,000 alerts each day, many just instances of profanity. But 16 plausible school shootings have been reported to the FBI since Bark launched its school product last February, she says.
The article notes these solutions have three major limitations:
  • "A school can't police a student's smartphone or other devices outside the ones it issued, unless the student signed into a social media, or other account, using the email or credentials the school provided."
  • "None of the companies USA TODAY talked to for this story claim the ability to catch suspect behavior every time."
  • "Students also are often more tech savvy than their parents and won't tell them about every account they have."

6 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Good!

    If only they had done this when I was a kid going to school in the Santa Clara county, maybe I would still have my upper teeth.

  2. Why didn't they do something about it! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is the logical end to those "why didn't they do something about it, all the warning signs were all over social media." Well, now they're doing something about it. They've started - and will never stop - surveillance of human activity for deviant behaviors. If you're thinking this is ripe for abuse by being the one able to define deviant behaviors, you're right. It's basically what happened to England in the plot of "1984". I hope you're happy and you got what you asked for.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Why didn't they do something about it! by stephanruby · · Score: 2

      unless the student signed into a social media, or other account, using the email or credentials the school provided

      Tell me. If you create a private social media account online using your work email address, do you expect your work to reset your password and access that private online account you created? No, right? At least, not unless that account was work related.

      If anyone should have access to that secondary account, it should be the parents, not the school.

      Remember that incident where the school would spy on their students using the camera of the school issued laptops while the kids were in the privacy of their own bedrooms. If that incident taught me anything, and numerous other incidents like that one, it's that school administrators/staff are not properly trained to handle the private information of their pupils and also they're definitely not mature enough to handle that information professionally.

  3. They Automated Carl! by lobiusmoop · · Score: 2

    "ou guys think I'm just some untouchable peasant? Peon? Huh? Maybe so, but following a broom around after shitheads like you for the past eight years I've learned a couple of things. I look through your letters, I look through your lockers. I listen to your conversations. You don't know that, but I do. I am the eyes and ears of this institution my friends. By the way, that clock's twenty minutes fast!"

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  4. Not good, but survival. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is the reality we are facing, lord knows we aren't gonna take away dangerous individuals rights to commit mass murder with guns.

  5. Next steps by kaur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Students will shift away from public media / platforms to new semi-private networks
    2) OSINT surveillance services try to follow, but are blocked by privacy rules
    3) Surveillance tries legal hacks to get backdoor access to networks and students' media

    We will have a society where everyone is aware of someone listening in and potentiall taking action.

    I have lived through the Soviet times in ex-USSR. We have been there and this is not nice.

    I also have three kids (two teenagers and one younger). I strongly believe they should have options for privacy both from us the parents, the school and authorities.