Protecting Students from Faulty Software and Legislation: 2023 Year in Review

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Lawmakers, schools districts, educational technology companies and others keep rolling out legislation and software that threatens students’ privacy, free speech, and access to social media, in the name of “protecting” children. At EFF, we fought back against this overreach and demand accountability and transparency.

Bad bills and invasive monitoring systems, though sometimes well-meaning, hurt students rather than protect them from the perceived dangers of the internet and social media. We saw many efforts to bar young people, and students, from digital spaces, censor what they are allowed to see and share online, and monitor and control when and how they can do it. This makes it increasingly difficult for them to access information about everything from gun violence and drug abuse to politics and LGBTQ+ topics, all because some software or elected official considers these topics “harmful.”

In response, we doubled down on exposing faulty surveillance software, long a problem in many schools across the country. We launched a new project called the Red Flag Machine, an interactive quiz and report demonstrating the absurd inefficiency—and potential dangers—of student surveillance software that schools across the country use and that routinely invades the privacy of millions of children.

We’ll continue to fight student surveillance and censorship, and we are heartened to see students fighting back

The project grew out of our investigation of GoGuardian, computer monitoring software used in about 11,500 schools to surveil about 27 million students—mostly in middle and high school—according to the company. The software allows school officials and teachers to monitor student’s computers and devices, talk to them via chat or webcam, block sites considered “offensive,” and get alerts when students access content that the software, or the school, deems harmful or explicit.

Our investigation showed that the software inaccurately flags massive amounts of useful material. The software flagged sites about black authors and artists, the Holocaust, and the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The software flagged the official Marine Corps’ fitness guide and the bios of the cast of Shark Tank. Bib

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