Electronic surveillance

Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on 

There is still no independent evaluation of whether this kind of surveillance technology actually works to reduce violence and self-harm. Privacy experts say pervasive monitoring may hurt children, and may be particularly dangerous for students with disabilities and students of color.

Despite the lack of research evidence, tech companies are marketing school monitoring technologies with bold claims of hundreds of lives saved, mostly through prevention of youth suicide attempts.

Gaggle, a leading provider of school email and shared document monitoring, says its technology is currently used to monitor 4.5 million students across 1,400 school districts. The company claims that in the last academic year alone its technology “helped districts save the lives of more than 700 students who were planning or actually attempting suicide”.

Bark says it works with at least 1,400 school districts across the country, and claims its technology has helped prevent “16 credible school shootings” and detected “twenty thousand severe self-harm situations”.

Securly, another leading provider, says its products are used to protect 10 million students across 10,000 individual schools. In the past year, Securly said it helped school officials intervene in 400 situations that presented an “imminent threat”.

millions of kids