What the FBI Is Not Telling Parents about Student Data Security

by Alison McDowell (First published at Wrench in the Gears)

On September 13, 2018, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation released a public service announcement outlining risks associated with the collection of sensitive student data through educational technologies. Many applaud the FBI’s actions. I do not. I believe it to be yet another calculated move in a long range campaign to misdirect the public and goad us into accepting the inevitability of cloud-based computing as the primary method of delivering educational content in our nation’s public schools.

It is a diffuse campaign carried out across many platforms by a range of interest groups, each gently but insistently nudging us towards a box canyon where the fin-tech elite anticipate we’ll eventually give in and accept the constraints of algorithmic data-driven learning. There will be, of course, a tacit, mutual agreement that data will be “secured” (though I suspect that won’t preclude it from being searchable with a FISA court order).

This “security” will exact a terribly high price. Submitting to the bullying behavior of Silicon Valley will erode children’s rights to humane, face-to-face instruction and siphon critical funds away from offline-activities like art, recess, music, libraries, and sports. The precious, small pots of education funding we have left will be directed into vast, impenetrable sinkholes of cyber-security.

The FBI’s alert discusses examples of data stored online, the ways data breaches and hacking have harmed students, and recommendations to parents about what they should be doing. One suggestion was to purchase identity theft monitoring services for children. How did this become the new normal?

While the FBI wants to foster the appearance they’re concerned about student wellbeing, the Bureau is not about to go out on a limb and state the obvious. The most effective way to protect children’s personal data is to not collect it or store it in the cloud in the first place. Rather than signing up for a Life Lock subscription, families would be better served by demanding schools stop using digital devices as a primary mode of education delivery.

The third sentence of the FBI’s PSA offers a not-so-subtle pitch touting the benefits of online education: “EdTech can provide services for adaptive, personalized learning experiences, and unique opportunities for student collaboration.” What is the business of the FBI? Surveillance. Do we think the Bureau would be inclined to recommend dialing back one of the most expansive flows of information ever? No. Consider the data lakes of personally identifiable information pouring out of our nation’s schools. The FBI doesn’t want to turn off that tap. They want us to ask them to protect us, to make the collection “safe” and “secure” from child predators and the Dark Web. It is an approach that will conveniently permit a steady stream of information to be channeled into Bluffdale’s server farms waiting out there in the Utah foothills. It’s a facility that has the capacity to hold a century’s worth of digital data on every citizen.

More on the NSA Data Center here.

Many in the education activist community felt validated by the fact that the FBI officially recognized the severity of this threat. But pause for a moment and look at what just happened. The education reform community keeps winning because they are strategic and disciplined and get out and frame the discussion to their advantage.

What the widespread sharing and support of the FBI’s PSA did, in my opinion, was further entrench the perceived inevitability of data-driven online education, even if it is horrible for children, for teachers, and for the future of our economic system. It also painted the FBI as the good guy, while glossing over the Bureau’s abhorrent history of infiltrating, threatening and even murdering political dissidents. We must view this “alert” within the context of state surveillance, Cointelpro, threats to Dr. King, and the murder of Chicago Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton. It is a pattern of behavior not limited to some distant past, but one that continues in the present as demonstrated by the set up of activists like Red Fawn Fallis, a water protector at Standing Rock. The FBI wants to keep this educational data “safe” for themselves. They are looking out for their own interests, not those of our children. . . . .

Read the rest here.

Big Data and Small Junkies

If you are a reluctant teacher or parent now being inundated with reasons you should embrace more computer screen time for school kids, there are good reasons for your skepticism.  Here's one:

Most people are shocked to hear that a video game can actually be more potent than morphine. While this is a phenomenal advance in pain management medicine and for use with burn victims, it begs the question: Just what effect is this digital drug—a digital drug that’s more powerful than morphine—having on the brains and nervous systems of seven-year-olds who are ingesting very similar digital drugs on their glowing screens?  And, if stimulating screens are indeed more powerful than morphine, can they be just as addicting?

As I discuss in my book, Glow Kids, screen tech can affect the brain just like a digital drug: Gaming raises dopamine levels by 100 percent and activates the H-P-A (the Hypothalmus-Pituatary-Adrenal Axis, otherwise known as the "fight or flight" response). Shockingly, recent brain imaging has shown that excessive gaming negatively impacts the frontal cortex—the executive functioning region of the brain which also controls impulsivity—in exactly the same way that cocaine does. This is why Peter Whybrow, head of neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, calls screens "electronic cocaine" and other researchers call video games "digital heroin."

Many of us who research tech addiction and work with screen-addicted kids understand that screens can be addicting. We didn't know that they are so powerful that they can be used as digital morphine. Do you want your child digitally ingesting something that has such a powerful neurobiological effect?

The People that Games Play

If you know anyone who takes the Facebook game seriously, please share this with them so they can see how "social" media works.  Or if you have ever been ostracized, lost "friends" or "followers" based on sharing a minority viewpoint or saying something you knew was true but unpopular, you might find this report interesting.  

Or if you think this dystopian system laid bare here is somewhere in the foggy future or in another part of the world where bad things happen, think again.  

And if you are allowing your children to be hooked up to screens at school where their intellectual, behavioral, and moral data are being collected, then you really need to see this.

Perhaps Bill and Melinda Gates need their folly expressed in a more familiar format to understand it?

“Philanthropy is not progressive and never has been.” — Tiffany Lethabo King and Ewuare Osayande

Seems Bill and Melinda Gates have great difficulty learning from their myriad mistakes. Our Professor Stephen Krashen is frequently reminding them and their fellow neoliberal corporate education reformers of what the real problem is. While the convicted predatory monopolist has no degree, Melinda Gates actually attended and graduated college, so one would think the two of them could sort these issues out. Despite this, the Gates Foundation duo are demanding yet more data, as if that doubling down on their poorly-thought-out ideas will work.

Since they're both computer science types, the problem may just be that they need to see their folly expressed in code. To that end, I've written a short program illustrating what the two Gates Foundation plutocrats do.

If I were more cynical, given their behavior in the face of overwhelming evidence discrediting their ideas and ideology, I think that their constant calls for more data are an attempt to rationalize their conduct, rather than actually trying to help anyone.

Big Data Needs Your Personalized Data Points

As you take a few moments to listen to this super snail oil salesman, think about the implications of this technology in the hands of Zuckerberg and the Wall Street crime bosses who want to control the worldwide education industry. 

The battle to preserve student autonomy and anonymity from the efficiency zealots running Big Data will be the next great battle for teachers, parents, civil libertarians, and all freedom-loving people. 

The war against high stakes testing is now even more critical than before.  The expansion of opt out options will be required for parents who will need to have other alternatives to this kind of "schooling."  

While middle class parents will find options and, thus, be in positions to refuse this kind of dystopian plan for their schools, urban parents face socioeconomic obstacles that could allow for the imposition of fine-grained paternalistic treatments that will make the present-day "no excuses" chain gangs seem primitive by comparison.
 


The video above is from 2012, and since then Knewton has moved aggressively to partner with more textbook companies like Harcourt, technology giants like Microsoft (surprise!), gaming companies, online giants like Arizona State U, and various boutique tech companies.  

The key to Knewton's kingdom is what they call adaptive learning, which is refined by more and more data points that can only result from student (or other human) interactions with the technology. The more time students spend plugged in, the more their "personalized" learning plans become. 

Our technology allows us to personalize online education for our users. When it is integrated with online learning materials, our technology causes the presentation and focus of the course materials to adapt based on the user’s needs and how they learn best, and also provides analytic reporting to help track the user’s progress. This technology is key to most of our Service offerings.

It is fair to say that teachers and other humans get in the way of the accumulation of data points, as that time does not feed directly into the ongoing collection of data points that are used by Knewton's adaptive algorithms to fine tune its analysis and predictions. 

Since 2012, Knewton has expanded its consumer services so that anyone with a Knewton account is subject to having data used by their Consumer Services:"

We create a personalized learning profile for each user based on their interactions with online learning materials that use our adaptive learning technology (a “Learning Profile”). In cases where a Knewton Account or Child Account (as described below) has been created, we may be able to apply and link this Learning Profile across multiple online learning courses and subject domains that a user interacts with (including the Consumer Service and third party online learning applications) and which use our adaptive learning technology.

 

Nevada Dad Asked to Pay $10,194 to See Common Core Data on His Children

Bill Gates is a master at using his calculated generosity to make the world dependent upon the technologies that his drones are engineering and his worker bees are mass producing.  Common Core’s move to online testing and the federal extortion efforts to require massive data collection systems on students and teachers are but two small examples.  

If the oligarchs get their way, by the time your kindergartner gets ready for a career, he will not need a resume—our corporate government will have a full dossier on every child in America that ever went to school, with full profiles on personality, academics, "character," behavior, learning patterns, strengths, and weaknesses.

If Bill Gates decided to give all his money away today, he would have to dish $10 million a day for the next 33 years to accomplish the feat.  Or if he was asked to pay the $10,194 that John Eppolito was asked to pay to see what data is being kept on his children in some corporate cloud in Utah, Gates could earn that pittance in less than 10 minutes, based on nothing but interest that is accumulating on his billions. 

By the way, Bill Gates ranks 37^th among nations of the world in total wealth.

Story below the video:

. . . . John Eppolito has four children in the Washoe County School District where a pilot program for Common Core is being tested this school year. "I just want to see any information that the state of Nevada is tracking on my children and any information that could be shared with others," said Eppolito.

The father contacted the Washoe County School District to see this information. The district directed him to the Nevada Department of Education, where he was given a price tag of $10,194.

Public Information Officer Judy Osgood responded to Eppolito’s request via email:

"The Department’s Director of Information Technology, Glenn Myer, has reviewed your request to receive reports of data for each of your four children that is contained in the SLDS. He has estimated that the cost will be approximately $10,194, which represents at least three solid weeks (120 hours) of dedicated staff time (billed at $84.95/hour) to build, test and validate a new application that will be able to display individual student data in a readable format. Payment of this fee must be made in full before work can begin."

Eppolito said he was shocked when he found out how much he needed to pay.

In a statement released to News 4, Osgood says the Department of Education needs a special computer system to accommodate Eppolito’s request:

"The data system is secure and private, but has not been built with an application to create confidential education records for individual students. The system is a warehouse of literally millions of pieces of data, but not the education records of students as that term is defined by law. Mr. Eppolito demanded to know how much it would cost for the Department to build a brand-new search engine to compile individual student records for his children, and that estimate was provided as a courtesy."

Eppolito has not paid the $10,000 bill, and is instead forming the group "Stop Common Core Nevada."

"This data will follow these kids the rest of their lives, so what if the data is not correct," asked Eppolito. "What if it is wrong information?"

Duncan Warns Data Predators to Whom He Gave Privileges in 2009

At the behest of the Silicon Valley billionaires and the testing giants, the Obama Administration gutted FERPA protections for children in schools soon after coming into office, so that now corporate privateers and data predators have rich feeding grounds to collect, sift, and mine student and teacher data for whatever purposes they see fit.

With parents and school boards with their hair on fire about cameras in the classroom and "cloud" data storage, Obama's corporate stooge, Arne Duncan, is trying to pretend to address the problem that his office directly caused.

What is he doing?  Essentially, he is giving the billionaire technocrats like Gates a wag of his finger by urging them to self-regulate.  Wonder how Arne would ever know if they did or didn't. Especially since there is no regulation!

A clip from HuffPo:

. . . .In guidance issued Tuesday, the Education Department encouraged districts to look closely at what online services are already in use within their schools. The guidelines suggest that districts develop procedures to evaluate and approve educational services and, when possible, use a written contract or legal agreement. They also spell out applicable federal laws.

Douglas Levin, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, said the new guidance doesn't go far enough in providing applicable advice to districts. He said districts are dealing with complex questions, such as whether to take advantage of free educational programs available online and deciding what programs should be downloaded on tablets and other devices increasingly used in schools.

"I think if you are a district it is easy to be confused about what your obligations are," Levin said.

James Steyer, the chief officer of the advocacy group Common Sense Media, praised the recommendations and said they come at an important time as schools look for ways to expand learning using technology.

"It's still the wild, wild west out there, but it can be fixed," Steyer said.

The guidance comes one day after Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke at a student privacy data conference and encouraged technology companies to do more to ensure student data is secure.

"There's plenty of energy, in this room and around the country, for stronger regulation of your work. Let me say this clearly: It is in your interest to police yourselves before other do," Duncan said.