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i haven't seen anyone else talk about this, and maybe it's small potatoes to some people, but the nl government spending money on chromebooks for schools is really concerning to me. #nlpoli
chromebooks are some of the cheapest computers on the market - by design. by offering the most affordable laptops available (and sometimes by giving them to school districts outright) we, most of the time unknowingly, put our children's information and data at risk.
chromebooks have very little hard storage (storage within the device itself) and purposely incentivizes users to use Google cloud services. this means any assignments, documentation, forms, saved on the computer are likely going to be saved in the cloud (again, likely Google).
Google Chrome is the only internet browser that can be used on the device. this means that better alternatives for user data protection (e.g. Firefox, Tor) aren't on the table.
Anything saved in the Google Suite, or the Google Education suite (tools designed specifically for schools and educational groups) is saved and archived indefinitely. there are already questions about the privacy of these programs themselves ( https://www.hotspotshield.com/blog/chromebook-google-spyware-machine/)
So, in addition to children's assignments and all school forms being mined for keywords to advertise to students, a digital profile is created by Google for each student using a chromebooks. Google has long mined user data and browsing habits to create profiles of individuals.
PII, or Personally Identifiable Information, includes anything that can be used to identify a person. this includes addresses, phone numbers, SIN, emails, bank account or drivers license number, etc. they collect as much as possible to target ads to users, even students.
PII is incredibly valuable to companies like Google bc it gives them even more information on individuals and makes them easier to advertise to. eg, knowing someone's geographic location makes it easier to know if they would be likely to buy snowshoes over an air conditioner
putting students in a position where they have no choice but to have a multinational digital tech company mine their data to create profiles on them before they're old enough to even vote, or face being left out of class, is unethical.
this on top of the fact that school districts often "provide inadequate privacy policies or no privacy policy at all" ( https://www.eff.org/wp/school-issued-devices-and-student-privacy). i'd imagine this isn't a priority for our cash-strapped school districts in NL.
if you're not concerned with digital privacy, i get it. often the response i get when talking about this is, 'i have nothing to hide,' 'we're being spied on all the time anyway,' which is probably true. but that doesn't make it ok, esp for our kids.
in canada we have a right to privacy under Section 7 of the charter of rights and freedoms (the right to life, liberty and the security of the person), and Section 8 (the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure).
being online shouldn't require us to give away our rights, especially the rights of minors - there are virtually no restrictions for tech companies on user data collection in canada. if you're interested, the EU instated the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, it's good.
i think it's wrong to be giving minors these devices without also educating them about what is happening with their information and how they can protect themselves and their data online. it's unfair to students that we aren't teaching them abt digital privacy. anyway. /fin
