An online “proctor” who can survey a student’s home and manipulate the mouse on their computer as the student takes an exam. A remote-learning platform that takes face scans and voiceprints of students. Virtual classrooms where strangers can pop up out of the blue and see who’s in class.
These three unnerving scenarios are not hypothetical. Rather, they stand as stark, real-life examples of how remote learning during the pandemic – both at the K-12 and college levels – has become riddled with threats to students’ privacy.
I believe all the electronic eyes watching students these days have created privacy concerns that merit more attention.
That is why, increasingly, you will see aggrieved students, parents and digital privacy advocates seeking to hold schools and technology platforms accountable for running afoul of student privacy law.
For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has accused that state of lacking sufficient measures to protect the privacy of school and college students.
All the electronic eyes watching students … merit more attention.
Students are taking measures to force universities to stop the use of invasive software such as proctoring apps, which some schools and colleges use to make sure students don’t cheat on exams. They have filed numerous petitions asking administrators and teachers to end the use of these apps. In a letter to the California Supreme Court, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international nonprofit that defends digital rights, wrote that the use of remote-proctoring technologies is basically the same as spying.
A series of security breaches serves to illustrate why students and privacy advocates are fighting against online proctor apps.
For instance, in July 2020, online proctoring service ProctorU suffered a cyberbreach in which sensitive personal information for 444,000 students – including their names, email address, home addresses, phone numbers and passwords – was leaked.
Some online proctoring companies have engaged in activities that violate students’ privacy. The online proctoring software Proctorio’s CEO, for example, violated a student’s privacy by posting the student’s chats on the social news forum Reddit.
To use online proctoring apps, students are required to provide full access to their devices including all personal files. They are also asked to turn on their computer’s video camera and microphone. Some national advocacy groups of parents, teachers and community members argue that requiring students to turn on their cameras with rooms in the background during virtual classes or exams for a stranger to watch would violate their civil rights.
Fair information practices, a set of principles established by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, require that information be collected by fair means. Online proctoring apps use methods that can cause anxiety and stress among many students and are thus unfair.
And these privacy-invasive proctoring tools rely on artificial intelligence, which affects certain groups more adversely.
Artificial intelligence performs poorly in identifying the faces of students who are ethnic minorities or darker-skinned individuals. In some cases, such students go through extra hassles. They may also need to contact the technical support team to resolve the problem and get less than the allotted time to complete the exam.
One student who experienced this snafu blamed the situation on “racist technology.”
Providers of remote learning and technology solutions and schools are facing several lawsuits and regulatory actions.
For example, an Illinois parent has sued Google. The lawsuit alleged that Google’s G Suite for Education apps illegally collected children’s biometric data, such as facial scans and voiceprints. Such practices violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
The increasing scrutiny of and criticism for privacy-invasive software, which resembles spyware, could force schools and universities to reconsider their use.
Nir Kshetri is professor of management at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Distributed by The Associated Press.
