USING GOOGLE APP RAISES SCHOOL PRIVACY ISSUES
Collection of personal information a concern, Hamish Telford writes.
When my son started middle school last month, he brought home a slew of consent forms for this, that and the other. Most weren’t problematic, but one was deeply troubling to me — the consent form for the Google Education App.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the form explained that the Google Education App requires the collection of personal information — student name, school name and grade level, as well as content created by the user.
It also informed parents that this information will be stored on servers outside of Canada, and thus will be subject to law enforcement in the U.S., including the Patriot Act.
Problematically, the consent form didn’t give parents the option to say “no,” other than not returning the form. And the form didn’t provide any indication of how the learning needs of students will be accommodated should parents opt not to provide consent.
It seems that there was an expectation that all parents would consent, as many required classroom activities have been developed by my son’s teachers on this platform, and no accommodation plans were in place, at least in my son’s school. All of this is problematic.
I believe that the use of the Google App might be a violation of the B.C. School Act, principally Section 79.1.b that requires school boards to “ensure the confidentiality of the information contained in the student records and ensure privacy for students and their families.”
I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that my son’s school work is part of his student record. And the school board simply can’t guarantee the confidentiality of information stored on servers in the U.S., and I don’t think parental consent relieves them of that obligation.
More broadly, the School Act guarantees children free access to the province’s public schools. The act explicitly states that boards must provide students free of charge “instruction in an education program sufficient to meet the general requirements for graduation.”
I would argue by the same token that schools can’t expect parents to sign away the privacy rights of their kids in the pursuit of a public education in B.C.
That is an unreasonable request and constitutes, in my view, a barrier to education.
I have asked the minister of education and the Attorney General of B.C. to determine if the use of the Google Education App in the province’s public schools is consistent with the terms of the School Act.
If the Google App is permissible at all under the School Act, it can’t be used for regular course instruction. At best, it can only be used as a supplementary tool on a voluntary basis (with parental consent).
As an educator in the university system, I’m well aware of the problem. Since some students will consent to use these sorts of platforms and others will not, we can’t, as a matter of practice, build course activities on computer applications with data stored in foreign jurisdictions. We have to search for platforms with Canadian servers, which may not be as effective or they may not exist at all, in which case we have to forgo the technology entirely.
These are conversations that we have had at the university level since the Patriot Act was first enacted in 2001. I’m shocked and disappointed that the same conversations have evidently not been happening in the Abbotsford school district. My son’s teachers seemed to be wholly unaware of these issues.
I find it deeply problematic that Canadian universities have eschewed this kind of technology in the classroom with adult students because of the serious privacy implications, but that the matter seems entirely unproblematized in the K-12 system.
I think it’s wrong in principle to subject students to law enforcement in a foreign jurisdiction while in pursuit of a public education in B.C. No parent would consent to send their child to the U.S. on a daily basis to get their education in this province, but we are virtually sending our kids across the border every day.
However, there is nothing virtual about the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
When our kids are on computer servers in America, they’re subject to American law. Period.
I think the probability of the U.S. government taking an interest in my son’s Grade 6 projects is very small, but it would be a very big problem if they do take an interest.
And spare me the trope that if students are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Little children in Canada and the U.S. have had their names placed on no-fly lists. Clearly, these kids did nothing wrong, but they and their families are stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
The risk here isn’t negligible. The virtual world is monitored by computer algorithms, and it isn’t difficult to trigger an investigation.
By way of example, when I was planning my summer vacation last June, I went online and purchased train tickets from Montreal to Ottawa. A few minutes later, I tried to buy tickets from Ottawa to Cobourg, Ont., but Visa declined to process the second payment — its computer thought something suspicious was happening. I’m sure by now just about everybody has experienced this problem.
We need to have a serious conversation in this province about the appropriateness of using online technology in our public schools. This matter has been discussed extensively in the country’s universities, but primary schools are teaching even more vulnerable citizens — our children.
Schools can’t expect parents to sign away the privacy rights of their kids in the pursuit of a public education in B.C.