Should the principal of a public school be able to go into a student’s locker and open their sealed letters whenever they want to? Probably not. Opening the locker is fair game — that belongs to the school after all, but barring some exigent circumstances, students should have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to snooping in their messages. Right? A recent case out of Kansas is testing that common sense assumption about student privacy at public schools. Lawrence Times has coverage:
Nine current and former students have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Lawrence Public Schools, alleging the district’s use of a controversial AI surveillance tool violates student privacy.
The AI tool, called Gaggle, sifts through anything connected to the district’s Google Workspace — which includes Gmail, Drive and other products — and flags content it deems a safety risk, such as allusions to self-harm, depression, drug use and violence. But Gaggle also censors “messages containing innocuous phrases such as ‘called me a,’ ‘called her a,’ ‘very uncomfortable,’ and ‘my mental health’,” the lawsuit alleges.
Should be an open and shut case right? Well, it gets worse — the lawsuit alleges that the tool was used to intercept attempts at student journalism:
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“Students’ journalism drafts were intercepted before publication, mental health emails to trusted teachers disappeared, and original artwork was seized from school accounts without warning or explanation,” said Harrison M. Rosenthal, an attorney representing the students.
You may wonder how this should pan out considering that it’s an AI program opening the emails instead of a zealous principal. The hope is that AI doing the filtering shouldn’t change the nature of the peeping in any real way given that it is being done on the district’s behalf. And if some judge bungles this case up and rules in the school’s favor, it could set precedent for other public high schools, or even colleges, to use AI to snoop through their students’ communications. Given that we’ve already crossed the “you face deportation for writing opinion pieces contrary to state doxa” part of the alt-right take over, the chilling effect that that could have on student journalists nationwide is mind-boggling. In the meantime, the Kansas students would probably be better off communicating on Signal or — God forbid — using pen and paper.
In Federal Lawsuit, Students Allege Lawrence School District’s AI Surveillance Tool Violates Their Rights [Lawrence Times]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.