Child's School Using Electronic Hall Passes

Blah463 to Privacy

Has anyone else dealt with these?? They're NFC, track how long they're in the bathroom, and where they are. I dont know what company this is through, nor what they are doing with all the data they're collecting. They also use things called smart passes. I'm thinking about emailing the school district and not allowing them to make my child use them. It seems invasive and creepy. :( If anyone has any advice how to approach this, please let me know. Or knows about them in general. I just don't trust it. Thank you!!

Edit for FAQ:

each kid gets an individual digital pass, it records their geolocation, behavioral problems, responses to medical questionnaires, and it can be shared with 3rd parties according to their privacy policy. (Students are considered "customers")
I'm from the US.
they are supposed to wear it all day, every day and check in every place they go with kiosks.
they are also being limited to 3 bathroom breaks a day... So I guess fuck you if you've got heavy periods or IBS. And you can't go in between classes. Bathrooms will be locked unless it's an emergency, but you have to have a teacher override the lock. Which isn't exactly how an emergency works.
one of my biggest concerns as someone in the US is a school shooter situation where they get access to this system and now they can pinpoint where every kid is and is going. Can prevent stragglers.

limiting bathroom breaks is child abuse

I agree. And to 3 a day is insane.

restricting phones in school would reduce time spent in bathrooms

and it would improve student privacy

You tell them you will absolutely not allow this. You simply do not agree to the terms of service, so you won't be doing it. End discussion.

And if they try and limit bathroom breaks, they can expect a letter from your lawyer. Ask for a key for your kid.

Went to high school in Germany. There were no hall passes.

Oh the horror!

I'm working on German citizenship (by ancestry). I yearn for public transport.

I yearn for public transport.

Do not go for Germany then! Their public transport is notoriously bad

I mean the infrastructure is there, but it's never on time, sometimes just doesn't drive at all, driving by car is usually cheaper and faster, the people are absolutely disgusting and so on. You are basically paying more just to have an unreliable and disgusting alternative. I'd love to use it more, but I don't, I still just drive by car, it might as well not be there in the first place.

WTF? Individual trackers? It would be creepy with temporary ones, but defensible. But full on tracking all the time?

Yep. They're expected to wear if on a lanyard at all times and check in to every place they go with "kiosks"

Sounds like it's time for those bathroom locks to have an accident.

Limiting bathroom access can have health consequences.

Seems a privacy concern in an active sh-r incident tbh. They just snoop with a radio sniffer, eep.

And what’ll they do if you give the kid a faraday bag? For safety.

Its supposed to stay on a lanyard

One idea for the bathrooms, is getting a doctor that knows your kids the most (most commonly that would be a family doctor, but if a kid has a reason to have a specialized doctor then go to that one) to get a signed letter that tells the school to give the kid(s) unrestricted access to the bathroom. Then give that to the school and the school basically has to do what the doctor says (because you or the doctor could put up a fight if they don't).

Kids could also make the data useless by checking in to multiple places, or leaving it somewhere in the school (for example).

Gotta make sure to teach kids early that they have no expectation of privacy no matter where they go and that their every movement and behaviour is tracked. No way in hell would I permit any child of mine to be tracked like that.

The entire situation sounds absolutely bonkers, are schools really that fucking draconian that they lock the bathrooms between classes?? Like that's when you're supposed to go so you don't leave during class and cause a disruption. Shit I had teachers tell me to wait until the next break!

Also limited bathroom breaks is absurd but also gotta train those future proles early so they don't get any ideas like "I should be able to go to the bathroom when I need to throughout the day"

They're 100% selling the children's info to any buyer they can

I remember the shitstorm when my middle school introduced ID lanyards that the kids were supposed to wear, but those didn't have any kind of tracking

I believe they tried that (or something similar) at my school.

Didn't work. Was logistically annoying. Failed after a week or something.

Cite religious beliefs and not wanting your kid forced to carry the Mark of the Beast. Rattle off some Bible verses from Revelations, complain about persecution of Christians, and you'll be set.

Or, you know, give actual reality-based reasons and hope for sensible school administrators. At the very least, I would expect them to share a privacy policy explaining what this third-party has access to and what they can do with the data.

Personally, a single "bathroom pass" NFC card that a teacher hands out to any student in their class that needs a bathroom visit wouldn't cause me much security consternation; that any student could be carrying the pass at any given time is enough anonymztion for my concerns. I'd be more concerned about germs; a group pass is going to get nasty.

No, every student gets one so it's unique to them. It tracks their geolocation, behavioral problems, responses to medical questionnaires. I read over the privacy policy and they are allowed to share this info with third parties. (As "customers" includes the kids under the schools)

Personally, a single “bathroom pass” NFC card that a teacher hands out to any student in their class that needs a bathroom visit wouldn’t cause me much security consternation; that any student could be carrying the pass at any given time is enough anonymztion for my concerns. I’d be more concerned about germs; a group pass is going to get nasty.

Add in a requirement that the scanners have to be connected to an airgapped system, and the system software ONLY reports/stores if a trip took more than X minutes, where X is some agreed upon time by teachers/parents/etc how long a trip should take, and I think that's a a decent basis for a product that most school districts will completely ignore while they get wined/dined by someone who completely intends to sell the system at a loss and profit off the data collected.

If you can't get out of it, get a faraday wallet.

What country are you in? If you're in the USA:

I would meet in person with the principal and politely but firmly opt your kid out of their use. If the school pushes back, you can try rallying other parents and/or getting local news media involved. The next escalation could be claiming that it violates your religious freedom, or is a 4th amendment violation of unreasonable search.

As a teacher, there are lots of reasons I'd like kids to have hall passes, so I guess I'll play the part of devil's advocate, here: If I'm responsible for the safety, learning, and emotional well-being of your kid, and several hundred other kids whose frontal lobes are still far from developed and vulnerable to unwise impulses, there are behaviors I'd like to discourage. I can't think of a single reason teachers would want to use a technology like this except to say "yeah, the bathroom trash caught fire at 12:20, when Markey Mark was out of Mrs. Doubtfire's class." Are there other reasons it shouldn't be used, though? Probably... But for this one, I'd like to say the underlying reason isn't for spying as much as for liability and (uggh...) safety, like knowing a kid had to go to the bathroom when the fire alarm went off and the FD is wondering if they need to send in someone to find them. Maybe I just work with well-intentioned people. Maybe I am one. I have seen kids more accountable for their actions when I use a sign-out sheet than not. I won't advocate any tech that puts kids names on a cloud or otherwise off-site network, though. It feels very different from the kind of privacy invasion a corpo or gov't agency might abuse. Maybe one of you comrades can help pin down why, though.

OK, I read over the privacy policy, and they are allowed to retain "customer's" (which includes students under the schools) medical responses to questionnaires, behavioral problems, geolocation, etc. I absolutely understand the need for student accountability, but I dont want some private company having ALL this info amalgamated. Plus, with how frequent school shooters are, if they get ahold of the password or someone who has it, they can pinpoint where kids are, and even prevent stragglers bc they know EXACTLY where they are.

I absolutely sympathize with teachers. I wish kids were better behaved

The cat has long been out of the bag. Only the cat is invisible (data) and the bag's a computer. This invisible collection, sale and synthesis of data has become a central component of modern economies now. People playing Pokemon Go didn't know (and the authors of the game-software probably didn't know either) that they were collecting data for the use of training autonomous-suicide-drones. This is the economy now. This is surveillance-capitalism.

You can't lobby for regulation, removedation or prohibition. Capital has invested large sums and that investment is paying dividends. Capital is flowing into this sector and something capitalists refrain from writing is that labour is subjugated entirely by capital. Capitalism is a dictatorship. That means scientists, engineers, technologists, marketers and others now find their jobs being: how can we make ever more sophisticated computers, networks and ways to surveil. This surveillance is done to generate data. Then capital is allocated in the pursuit of synthesizing this data into saleable products. One of its results is the 'AI' that you can use from ChatGPT or whatever it's called. A less known result is the AI being sold to nation-states that target and kill autonomously.

There's no going back. You and your child live under the dictatorship of capital. You live under capitalism. You are a commodity to be brought and sold by capitalists.

Aside from overwhelming collective-action this can not be stopped. The organization that brought these things are largely ignorant and non-caring. The most you'll get from them is usually a parroting of "we value your privacy and it's protected under some law" (which doesn't protect anything). They don't care. To care would be to prohibit all new procurements--this is what the market is now selling; this is what's cheapest. It does something beneficial for them so they brought it. The fact it came with a computer that surveils the children is besides the point. The data is invisible and the computer is small and hidden. Out of sight out of mind. The cat's invisible. It never purrs or meows. It only demands two things: electricity and a connection. But that's normal. Everything requires those.

I absolutely dont mind hall passes!

Just email them something like

I'm firmly against this system of timing bathroom usage of my child. They are not to be pressured or shamed if they need any amount of time in the washrooms. In the case that they need to use the washroom for a protracted period, I trust that they will ask for the nurse or contact me to take care of them.

Like how old are they? 5? There should be washrooms next to the room. 8? They need to be socialised enough to find the washroom on their own and return in a reasonable amount of time. If they aren't, having an ankle monitor does not address the real issue with the child/ skill gap etc.

Is every child given one? Or how do they know which child is in the bathroom at a given moment? Do they record identifying information when they hand it out? If not then I'd say no big issue as it could have been any child in that classroom. But if they record the child's ID number or something, or make them each carry a separate one, then might be an issue.

The smartpass privacy policy. https://apps.raptortech.com/About/Privacy

We use Customer Information to provide our Services as directed by our Customers. Depending on the Service this may include:

This means you need the policy from the school itself so you know what's actually been agreed to that is applicable to your kid's data.

Communicating with you about Services that may be of interest to you.

Meaning they can sell your data to any who will pay for it.

In the event of a corporate transaction. In the event of a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization, sale or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets, we may share Customer Information with acquirers and other relevant participants in the transaction.

Meaning they can pull a 23andMe; if they go bankrupt or whatever, they can sell your data and the buyers can do whatever they want with it.

I'd be defaulting to not allowing my kid's name to be entered into the program, with a steep uphill challenge to convince me with a very robust contract-specific privacy plan. A single, generic pass than any kid might be using at any given time, I'm still fine with that but no individual-assigned tags that get associated with my kid.

Yeah I'm going to have a meeting with the principal. I'm actually heated over this. My kids are of even higher concern for privacy as they're foster kids.

If they're foster kids, there's a good chance the whole system is illegal under laws protecting foster kid's privacy.

I would run the whole thing by an ally in the foster system, too. See if that doesn't shut it down.

I appreciate the advice. :)

That's could be a safety risk, ick

Good teachers: "It's broken again. That's on me. I don't know what I'm doing wrong with the passes. To shreds you say?"

schools need owned, self-hosted solutions to all the fucking commercial shit they buy and subscribe to 'on behalf of' their students and faculty.

You can argue that data is toxic, and therefore minimizing its collection or having very transparent systems so that they are auditable can work.

Check out Bruce Schneier’s work on this.

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