Monitoring tools used by schools have long been a privacy concern.
But now, they could also have legal consequences for students.
States are adopting anti-LGBTQ laws and sweeping abortion bans. The digital footprint students leave may come back to harm them, privacy and civil rights advocates warn, and it could be their school-issued devices that end up exposing them to legal peril.
For years, schools across the country have used digital surveillance tools that collect information about youth sexuality. They collect intimate details from students’ conversations with friends, diary entries sand search histories. Student information is collected by surveillance companies, and regularly shared with the police, new research has shown.
These two realities are extremely concerning in the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to an abortion.
Information about youth sexuality could soon be weaponized.
Experts have warned that students in a state with a law that criminalizes abortion, the surveillance tools could be used to enforce the laws.
Teens across the country are already organizing and disseminating information to fill the void for themselves and their peers in the current climate.
Police have long used social media and other online platforms to investigate people for suspected violations of abortion laws, including a recent case in Nebraska where police obtained a teen’s private Facebook messages through a search warrant before charging the then-17-year-old and her mother with violating the state’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
LGBTQ students face similar risks. Lawmakers are imposing rules that prohibit classroom discussion about sexuality and gender. In 2022 alone, lawmakers have proposed 300 anti-LGBTQ bills and about a dozen are already law.
Digital surveillance tools could be used to out LGBTQ students Ann’s put them in danger. Companies are unable to control how officials use that information gathered in an era where teachers, administrators, and fellow students are encouraged to out other students or blame them somehow to get them into trouble for their identity.
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