Tag Archives: children

children, GDPR, privacy

Facebook View and Ray-Ban glasses: here’s looking at your kid

Ray-Ban (EssilorLuxxotica) is selling glasses with ‘Facebook View’. The questions have already been asked whether they  can be lawful in Europe, including in the UK, in particular in regards to enabling the processing of children’s personal data without consent.

The Italian data authority has asked the company to explain via the Irish regulator:

  • the legal basis on which Facebook processes personal data;
  • the measures in place to protect people recorded by the glasses, children in particular,
  • questions of anonymisation of the data collected; and
  • the voice assistant connected to the microphone in the glasses.

While the first questions in Europe may be bound to data protection law and privacy, there are also questions of why Facebook has gone ahead despite Google Glass that was removed from the market in 2013. You can see a pair displayed in a surveillance exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum (September 2021).

“We can’t wait to see the world from your perspective“, says Ray-ban Chief Wearables Officer Rocco Basilico in the promotional video together with Mark Zuckerberg.  I bet. But not as much as Facebook.

With cameras and microphones built-in, up to around 30 videos or 500 photos can be stored on the glasses, and shared with Facebook companion app. While the teensy light on a corner is supposed to be an indicator that recording is in progress, the glasses look much like any other and indistinguishable in the Ray-ban range. You can even buy them as prescription glasses, which intrigues me as to how that recording looks on playback, or shared via the companion apps.

While the Data Policy doesn’t explicitly mention Facebook View in the wording on how it uses data to “personalise and improve our Products,” and the privacy policy is vague on Facebook View, it seems pretty clear that Facebook will use the video capture to enhance its product development in augmented reality.

“We believe this is an important step on the road to developing the ultimate augmented reality glasses“, says Mark Zuckerberg.(05:46)

The company needs a lawful basis to be able to process the data it receives for those purposes. It determines those purposes, and is therefore a data controller for that processing.

In the supplemental policy the company says that “Facebook View is intended solely for users who are 13 or older.” Data Protection law does not care about the age of the product user, but it does regulate under what basis a child’s data may be processed and that may be the user, setting up an account. It is also concerned about the data of the children who are recorded. By recognising  the legal limitations on who can be an account owner, it has a bit of a self-own here on what the law says on children’s data.

Personal privacy may have weak protection in data protection laws that offer the wearer exemptions for domestic** or journalistic purposes, but neither the user nor the company can avoid the fact that processing video and audio recordings may be without (a) adequately informing people whose data is processed or (b) appropriate purpose limitation for any processing that Facebook the company performs, across all of its front end apps and platforms or back-end processes.

I’ve asked Facebook how I would, as a parent or child, be able to get a wearer to destroy a child’s images and video or voice recorded in a public space, to which I did not consent. How would I get to see that content once held by Facebook, or request its processing be restricted by the company, or user, or the data destroyed?

Testing the Facebook ‘contact our DPO’ process as if I were a regular user, fails. It has sent me round the houses via automated forms.

Facebook is clearly wrong here on privacy grounds but if you can afford the best in the world on privacy law, why would you go ahead anyway? Might they believe after nearly twenty years of privacy invasive practice and a booming bottom line, that there is no risk to reputation, no risk to their business model, and no real risk to the company from regulation?

It’s an interesting partnership since Ray-Ban has no history in understanding privacy. Facebook has a well known controversial one.  Reputational risk shared, will not be reputational risk halved. And EssilorLuxottica has a share price to consider.  I wonder if they carried out any due diligence risk assessment for their investors?

If and when enforcement catches up and the product is withdrawn, regulators must act as the FTC did on the development of the product (in that case algorithms) from “ill gotten data”. (In the Matter of Everalbum and Paravision Commission File No. 1923172).

Destroy the data, destroy the knowledge gained, and remove it from any product development to  date.  All “Affected Work Product.”

Otherwise any penalty Facebook will get from this debacle, will be just the cost of doing business to have bought itself a very nice training dataset for its AR product development.

Ray-Ban of course, will take all the reputational hit if found enabling strangers to take covert video of our kids. No one expects any better from Facebook.  After all, we all know, Facebook takes your privacy, seriously.

Reference:  Rynes: On why your ring video doorbell may make you a controller under GDPR.

https://medium.com/golden-data/rynes-e78f09e34c52 (Golden Data, 2019)

Judgment of the Court (Fourth Chamber), 11 December 2014 František Ryneš v Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů Case C‑212/13. Case file

exhibits from the Victoria and Albert museum (September 2021)
care.data, children, deregulation, National Pupil Database

Data Protection law is being set up as a patsy.

After Dominic Cummings’ marathon session at the Select Committee, the Times published an article on,”The heroes and villains of the pandemic, according to Dominic Cummings”

One of Dom’s villains left out, was data protection law. He claimed, “if someone somewhere in the system didn’t say, ‘ignore GDPR’ thousands of people were going to die,” and that “no one even knew if that itself was legal—it almost definitely wasn’t.”

Thousands of people have died since that event he recalled from March 2020, but as a result of Ministers’ decisions, not data laws.

Data protection laws are *not* barriers, but permissive laws to *enable* use of personal data within a set of standards and safeguards designed to protect people. The opposite of what its detractors would have us believe.

The starting point is fundamental human rights. Common law confidentially. But the GDPR and its related parts on public health, are in fact specifically designed to enable data processing that overrules those principles for pandemic response purposes . In recognition of emergency needs for a limited time period, data protection laws permit interference with our fundamental rights and freedoms, including overriding privacy.

We need that protection of our privacy sometimes from government itself. And sometimes from those who see themselves as “the good guys” and above the law.

The Department of Health appears to have no plan to tell people about care.data 2,  the latest attempt at an NHS data grab, despite the fact that data protection laws require that they do. From September 1st (delayed to enable it to be done right, thanks to campaign efforts from medConfidential et supporters) all our GP medical records will be copied into a new national database for re-use, unless we actively opt out.

It’s groundhog day for the Department of Health. It is baffling why the government cannot understand or accept the need to do the right thing, and instead is repeating the same mistake of recent memory, all over again. Why the rush without due process and steamrollering any respect for the rule of law?

Were it not so serious, it might amuse me that some academic researchers appear to fail to acknowledge this matters, and they are getting irate on Twitter that *privacy* or ‘campaigners’ will prevent them getting hold of the data they appear to feel entitled to. Blame the people that designed a policy that will breach human rights and the law, not the people who want your rights upheld. And to blame the right itself is just, frankly, bizarre.

Such rants prompt me to recall the time when early on in my lay role on the Administrative Data Research Network approvals panel, a Director attending the meeting *as a guest* became so apoplectic with rage, that his face was nearly purple. He screamed, literally, at the panel of over ten well respected academics and experts in research and / or data because he believed the questions being asked over privacy and ethics principles in designing governance documents were unnecessary.

Or I might recall the request at my final meeting two years later in 2017 by another then Director, for access to highly sensitive and linked children’s health and education data to do (what I believed was valuable) public interest research involving the personal data of children with Down Syndrome. But the request came through the process with no ethical review. A necessary step before it should even have reached the panel for discussion.

I was left feeling from those two experiences, that both considered themselves and their work to be in effect “above the law” and expected special treatment, and a free pass without challenge. And that it had not improved over the two years.

If anyone in the research community cannot support due process, law, and human rights when it comes to admin data access, research using highly sensitive data about people’s lives with potential for significant community and personal impacts, then you are part of the problem.  There was extensive public outreach in 2012-13 across the UK about the use of personal if de-identified data in safe settings. And in 2014 the same concerns and red-lines were raised by hundreds of people in person, almost universally with the same reactions at a range of care.data public engagement events. Feedback which institutions say matters, but continue to ignore.

It seems nothing has changed since I wrote,

“The commercial intermediaries still need to be told, don’t pee in the pool. It spoils it, for everyone else.”

We could also look back to when Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education, changed the law in 2012 to permit pupil level, identifying and sensitive personal data to be given away to third parties. Journalists. Charities. Commercial companies, even included an online tutoring business, pre-pandemic and an agency making heat maps of school catchment areas from identifying pupil data for estate agents — notably, without any SEND pupils’ data. (Cummings was coincidentally a Gove SpAd at the Department for Education.)  As a direct result of that decision to give away pupils’ personal data in 2012, (in effect ‘re-engineering’ how the education sector was structured and the roles of the local authority and non-state providers and creating a market for pupil data)  an ICO audit of the DfE in February 2020 found unlawful practice and made 139 recommendations for change. We’re still waiting to see if and how it will be fixed.  At the moment it’s business as usual. Literally. The ICO don’t appear even to have stopped further data distribution until made lawful.

In April 2021, in answer to a written Parliamentary Question Nick Gibb, Schools Minister, made a commitment to “publish an update to the audit in June 2021 and further details regarding the release mechanism of the full audit report will be contained in this update.”  Will they promote openess, transparency, accountablity,or continue to skulk from publishing the whole truth?

Children have lost control of their digital footprint in state education by their fifth birthday.  The majority of parents polled in 2018 do not know the National Pupil Database even exists. 69% of over 1,004 parents asked, replied that they had not been informed that the Department for Education may give away children’s data to third-parties at all.

Thousands of companies continue to exploit children’s school records, without opt-in or opt-out, including special educational needs, ethnicity, and other sensitive data at pupil level.

Data protection law alone is in fact so enabling of data flow, that it is inadequate to protect children’s rights and freedoms across the state education sector in England; whether from public interest, charity or commercial research interventions without opt in or out, without parental knowledge. We shouldn’t need to understand our rights or to be proactive, in order to have them protected by default but data protection law and the ICO in particular have been captured by the siren call of data as a source of ‘innovation’ and economic growth.

Throughout 2018 and questions over Vote Leave data uses, Cummings claimed to know GDPR well. It was everyone else who didn’t. On his blog that July he suggested, “MPs haven’t even bothered to understand GDPR, which they mis-explain badly,” and in April he wrote,  “The GDPR legislation is horrific. One of the many advantages of Brexit is we will soon be able to bin such idiotic laws.” He lambasted the Charter of Fundamental Rights the protections of which the government went on to take away from us under European Union Withdrawal Act.

But suddenly, come 2020/21 he is suggesting he didn’t know the law that well after all, “no one even knew if that itself was legal—it almost definitely wasn’t.”

Data Protection law is being set up as a patsy, while our confidentiality is commodified. The problem is not the law. The problem is those in power who fail to respect it, those who believe themselves to be above it, and who feel an entitlement to exploit that for their own aims.

Added 21/06/2021: Today I again came across a statement that I thought worth mentioning, from the Explanatory Notes for the Data Protection Bill from 2017:

“Accordingly, Parliament passed the Data Protection Act 1984 and ratified the Convention in 1985, partly to ensure the free movement of data. The Data Protection Act 1984 contained principles which were taken almost directly from Convention 108 – including that personal data shall be obtained and processed fairly and lawfully and held only for specified purposes.”

“The Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) (“the 1995 Directive”) provides the current basis for the UK’s data protection regime. The 1995 Directive stemmed from the European Commission’s concern that a number of Member States had not introduced national law related to Convention 108 which led to concern that barriers may be erected to data flows. In addition, there was a considerable divergence in the data protection laws between Member States. The focus of the 1995 Directive was to protect the right to privacy with respect to the processing of personal data and to ensure the free flow of personal data between Member States. “

children, human rights, Online harms, privacy, pupils, surveillance

The Rise of Safety Tech

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At the CRISP hosted, Rise of Safety Tech, event  this week,  the moderator asked an important question: What is Safety Tech? Very honestly Graham Francis of the DCMS answered among other things, “It’s an answer we are still finding a question to.”

From ISP level to individual users, limitations to mobile phone battery power and app size compatibility, a variety of aspects within a range of technology were discussed. There is a wide range of technology across this conflated set of products packaged under the same umbrella term. Each can be very different from the other, even within one set of similar applications, such as school Safety Tech.

It worries me greatly that in parallel to the run up to the Online Harms legislation that their promotion appears to have assumed the character of a done deal. Some of these tools are toxic to children’s rights because of the policy that underpins them. Legislation should not be gearing up to make the unlawful lawful, but fix what is broken.

The current drive is towards the normalisation of the adoption of such products in the UK, and to make them routine. It contrasts with the direction of travel of critical discussion outside the UK.

Some Safety Tech companies have human staff reading flagged content and making decisions on it, while others claim to use only AI. Both might be subject to any future EU AI Regulation for example.

In the U.S. they also come under more critical scrutiny. “None of these things are actually built to increase student safety, they’re theater,” Lindsay Oliver,  project manager for the Electronic Frontier Foundation was quoted as saying in an article just this week.

Here in the U.K. their regulatory oversight is not only startlingly absent, but the government is becoming deeply invested in cultivating the sector’s growth.

The big questions include who watches the watchers, with what scrutiny and safeguards? Is it safe, lawful, ethical, and does it work?

Safety Tech isn’t only an answer we are still finding a question to. It is a world view, with a particular value set. Perhaps the only lens through which its advocates believe the world wide web should be seen, not only by children, but by anyone. And one that the DCMS is determined to promote with “the UK as a world-leader” in a worldwide export market.

As an example one of the companies the DCMS champions in its May 2020 report, ‘‘Safer technology, safer users” claims to export globally already. “eSafe Global is now providing a service to about 1 million students and schools throughout the UK, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia and has been used in schools in Australia since 2011.“

But does the Department understand what they are promoting? The DCMS Minister responsible, Oliver Dowden said in Parliament on December 15th 2020: “Clearly, if it was up to individuals within those companies to identify content on private channels, that would not be acceptable—that would be a clear breach of privacy.”

He’s right. It is. And yet he and his Department are promoting it.

So how is this going to play out if at all, in the Online Harms legislation expected soon, that he owns together with the Home Office? Sadly the needed level of understanding by the Minister or in the third sector and much of the policy debate in the media, is not only missing, but is actively suppressed by the moral panic whipped up in emotive personal stories around a Duty of Care and social media platforms. Discussion is siloed about identifying CSAM, or grooming, or bullying or self harm, and actively ignores the joined-up, wider context within which Safety Tech operates.

That context is the world of the Home Office. Of anti-terrorism efforts. Of mass surveillance and efforts to undermine encryption that are as nearly old as the Internet. The efforts to combat CSAM or child grooming online, operate in the same space. WePROTECT for example, sits squarely amid it all, established in 2014 by the UK Government and the then UK Prime Minister, David Cameron. Scrutiny of UK breaches of human rights law are well documented in ECHR rulings. Other state members of the alliance including the UAE stand accused of buying spyware to breach activists’ encrypted communications. It is disingenuous for any school Safety Tech actors to talk only of child protection without mention of this context. School Safety Tech while all different, operate by tagging digital activity with categories of risk, and these tags can include terrorism and extremism.

Once upon a time, school filtering and blocking services meant only denying access to online content that had no place in the classroom. Now it can mean monitoring all the digital activity of individuals, online and offline, using school or personal devices, working around encryption, whenever connected to the school network. And it’s not all about in-school activity. No matter where a child’s account is connected to the school network, or who is actually using it, their activity might be monitored 24/7, 365 days a year. A user’s activity that matches with the thousands of words or phrases on watchlists and in keyword libraries gets logged, and profiles individuals with ‘vulnerable’ behaviour tags, sometimes creating alerts. Their scope has crept from flagging up content, to flagging up children. Some schools create permanent records including false positives because they retain everything in a risk-averse environment, even things typed that a child subsequently deleted, and may be distributed and accessible by an indefinite number of school IT staff and stored in further third parties’ systems like CPOMS or Capita SIMS.

A wide range of the rights of the child are breached by mass monitoring in the UK, such as outlined in the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No.25 which states that, “Any digital surveillance of children, together with any associated automated processing of personal data, should respect the child’s right to privacy and should not be conducted routinely, indiscriminately or without the child’s knowledge or, in the case of very young children, that of their parent or caregiver; nor should it take place without the right to object to such surveillance, in commercial settings and educational and care settings, and consideration should always be given to the least privacy-intrusive means available to fulfil the desired purpose.” (para 75)

Even the NSPCC, despite their recent public policy that opposes secure messaging using end-to-send encryption, recognises on its own Childline webpage the risk for children from content monitoring of children’s digital spaces, and that such monitoring may make them less safe.

In my work in 2018, one school Safety Tech company accepted our objections from defenddigitalme, that this monitoring went too far in its breach of children’s confidentially and safe spaces, and it agreed to stop monitoring counselling services. But there are roughly fifteen active companies here in the UK and the data protection regulator, the ICO despite being publicly so keen to be seen to protect children’s rights, has declined to act to protect children from the breach of their privacy and data protection rights across this field.

There are questions that should be straightforward to ask and answer, and while some CEOs are more willing to engage constructively with criticism and ideas for change than others, there is reluctance to address the key question: what is the lawful basis for monitoring children in school, at home, in- or out-side school hours?

Another important question often without an answer, is how do these companies train their algorithms whether in age verification or child safety tech?  How accurate are the language inferences for an AI designed to catch children out who are being deceitful and where  are assumptions, machine or man-made, wrong or discriminatory? It is overdue that our Regulator, the ICO, should do what the FTC did with Paravision, and require companies that develop tools through unlawful data processing to delete the output from it, the trained algorithm, plus products created from it.

Many of the harms from profiling children were recognised by the ICO in the Met Police gangs matrix: discrimination, conflation of victim and perpetrator, notions of ‘pre-crime’ without independent oversight,  data distributed out of context, and excessive retention.

Harm is after all why profiling of children should be prohibited. And where, in exceptional circumstances, States may lift this restriction, it is conditional that appropriate safeguards are provided for by law.

While I believe any of the Safety Tech generated category profiles could be harmful to a child through mis-interventions, being treated differently by staff as a result, or harm a trusted relationship,  perhaps the potentially most devastating to a child’s prospects are from mistakes that could be made under the Prevent duty.

The UK Home Office has pushed its Prevent agenda through schools since 2015, and it has been built into school Safety Tech by-design. School Safety Tech while all different, operate by tagging digital activity with categories of risk, and these tags can include terrorism and extremism.  I know of schools that have flags attached to children’s records that are terrorism related, but who have had no Prevent referral. But there is no transparency of these numbers at all. There is no oversight to ensure children do not stay wrongly tagged with those labels. Families may never know.

Perhaps the DCMS needs to ask itself, are the values of the UK Home Office really what the UK should export to children globally from “the UK as a world-leader” without independent legal analysis, without safeguards, and without taking accountability for their effects?

The Home Office values are demonstrated in its approach to the life and death of migrants at sea, children with no recourse to public funds, to discriminatory stop and search, a Department that doesn’t care enough to even understand or publish the impact of its interventions on children and their families.

The Home Office talk is of safeguarding children, but it is opposed to them having safe spaces online. School Safety Tech tools actively work around children’s digital security, can act as a man-in-the-middle, and can create new risks. There is no evidence I have seen that on balance convinces me that school Safety Tech does in fact make children safer. But plenty of evidence that the Home Office appears to want to create the conditions that make children less secure so that such tools could thrive, by weakening the security of digital activity through its assault on end-to-end encryption. My question is whether Online Harms is to be the excuse to give it a lawful basis.

Today there are zero statutory transparency obligations, testing or safety standards required of school Safety Tech before it can be procured in UK state education at scale.

So what would a safe and lawful framework for operation look like? It would be open to scrutiny and require regulatory action, and law.

There are no published numbers of how many records are created about how many school children each year. There are no safeguards in place to protect children’s rights or protection from harm in terms of false positives, error retention, transfer of records to the U.S. or third party companies, or how many covert photos they have enabled to be taken of children via webcam by school staff.  There is no equivalent of medical device ‘foreseeable misuse risk assessment’  such as ISO 14971 would require, despite systems being used for mental health monitoring with suicide risk flags. Children need to know what is on their record and to be able to seek redress when it is wrong. The law would set boundaries and safeguards and both existing and future law would need to be enforced. And we need independent research on the effects of school surveillance, and its chilling effects on the mental health and behaviour of developing young people.

Companies may argue they are transparent, and seek to prove how accurate their tools are. Perhaps they may become highly accurate.

But no one is yet willing to say in the school Safety Tech sector, these are thousands of words that if your child types may trigger a flag, or indeed, here’s an annual report of all the triggered flags and your own or your child’s saved profile. A school’s interactions with children’s social care already offers a framework for dealing with information that could put a child at risk from family members, so reporting should be do-able.

At the end of the event this week, the CRISP event moderator said of their own work, outside schools, that, “we are infiltrating bad actor networks across the globe and we are looking at everything they are saying. […] We have a viewpoint that there are certain lines where privacy doesn’t exist anymore.”

Their company website says their work involves, “uncovering and predicting the actions of bad actor, activist, agenda-driven and interest groups“. That’s a pretty broad conflation right there.  Their case studies include countering social media activism against a luxury apparel brand. And their legal basis of ‘legitimate interests‘ for their data processing might seem flimsy at best, for such a wide ranging surveillance activity where, ‘privacy doesn’t exist anymore’.

I must often remind myself that the people behind Safety Tech may epitomise the very best of what some believe is making the world safer online as they see it. But it is *as they see it*.  And if  policy makers or CEOs have convinced themselves that because ‘we are doing it for good, a social impact, or to safeguard children’, that breaking the law is OK, then it should be a red flag that these self-appointed ‘good guys’ appear to think themselves above the law.

My takeaway time and time again, is that companies alongside governments, policy makers, and a range of lobbying interests globally, want to redraw the lines around human rights, so that they can overstep them. There are “certain lines” that don’t suit their own business models or agenda. The DCMS may talk about seeing its first safety tech unicorn, but not about the private equity funding, or where they pay their taxes. Children may be the only thing they talk about protecting but they never talk of protecting children’s rights.

In the school Safety Tech sector, there is activity that I believe is unsafe, or unethical, or unlawful. There is no appetite or motivation so far to fix it. If in upcoming Online Harms legislation the government seeks to make lawful what is unlawful today, I wonder who will be held accountable for the unsafe and the unethical, that come with the package deal—and will the Minister run that reputational risk?

care.data, human rights, surveillance, transparency, trust

Thoughts from the YEIP Event: Preventing trust.

Here’s some thoughts about the Prevent programme, after the half day I spent at the event this week, Youth Empowerment and Addressing Violent Youth Radicalisation in Europe.

It was hosted by the Youth Empowerment and Innovation Project at the University of East London, to mark the launch of the European study on violent youth radicalisation from YEIP.

Firstly, I appreciated the dynamic and interesting youth panel. Young people, themselves involved in youth work, or early researchers on a range of topics. Panelists shared their thoughts on:

  • Removal of gang databases and systemic racial targeting
  • Questions over online content takedown with the general assumption that “someone’s got to do it.”
  • The purposes of Religious Education and lack of religious understanding as cause of prejudice, discrimination, and fear.

From these connections comes trust.

Next, Simon Chambers, from the British Council, UK National Youth Agency, and Erasmus UK, talked about the programme of Erasmus Plus, under the striking sub theme, from these connections comes trust.

  • 42% of the world’s population are under 25
  • Young people understand that there are wider, underlying complex factors in this area and are disproportionately affected by conflict, economic change and environmental disaster.
  • Many young people struggle to access education and decent work.
  • Young people everywhere can feel unheard and excluded from decision-making — their experience leads to disaffection and grievance, and sometimes to conflict.

We then heard a senior Home Office presenter speak about Radicalisation: the threat, drivers and Prevent programme.

On Contest 2018 Prevent / Pursue / Protect and Prepare

What was perhaps most surprising was his statement that the programme believes there is no checklist, [but in reality there are checklists] no single profile, or conveyer belt towards radicalisation.

“This shouldn’t be seen as some sort of predictive model,” he said. “It is not accurate to say that somehow we can predict who is going to become a terrorist, because they’ve got poor education levels, or because necessarily have a deprived background.”

But he then went on to again highlight the list of identified vulnerabilities in Thomas Mair‘s life, which suggests that these characteristics are indeed seen as indicators.

When I look at the ‘safeguarding-in-school’ software that is using vulnerabilities as signals for exactly that kind of prediction of intent, the gap between theory and practice here, is deeply problematic.

One slide included Internet content take downs, and suggested 300K pieces of illegal terrorist material have been removed since February 2010. That number he later suggested are contact with CTIRU, rather than content removal defined as a particular form. (For example it isn’t clear if this is a picture, a page, or whole site). This is still somewhat unclear and there remain important open questions, given its focus  in the online harms policy and discussion.

The big gap that was not discussed and that I believe matters, is how much autonomy teachers have, for example, to make a referral. He suggested “some teachers may feel confident” to do what is needed on their own but others, “may need help” and therefore make a referral. Statistics on those decision processes are missing, and it is very likely I believe that over referral is in part as a result of fearing that non-referral, once a computer has tagged issues as Prevent related, would be seen as negligent, or not meeting the statutory Prevent duty as it applies to schools.

On the Prevent Review, he suggested that the current timeline still stands, of August 2020, even though there is currently no Reviewer. It is for Ministers to make a decision, who will replace Lord Carlile.

Safeguarding children and young people from radicalisation

Mark Chalmers of Westminster City Council., then spoke about ‘safeguarding children and young people from radicalisation.’

He started off with a profile of the local authority demographic, poverty and wealth, migrant turnover,  proportion of non-English speaking households. This of itself may seem indicative of deliberate or unconscious bias.

He suggested that Prevent is not a security response, and expects  that the policing role in Prevent will be reduced over time, as more is taken over by Local Authority staff and the public services. [Note: this seems inevitable after the changes in the 2019 Counter Terrorism Act, to enable local authorities, as well as the police, to refer persons at risk of being drawn into terrorism to local channel panels. Should this have happened at all, was not consulted on as far as I know]. This claim that Prevent is not a security response, appears different in practice, when Local Authorities refuse FOI questions on the basis of security exemptions in the FOI Act, Section 24(1).

Both speakers declined to accept my suggestion that Prevent and Channel is not consensual. Participation in the programme, they were adamant is voluntary and confidential. The reality is that children do not feel they can make a freely given informed choice, in the face of an authority and the severity of the referral.  They also do not understand where their records go to, how confidential are they really, and how long they are kept or why.

The  recently concluded legal case and lengths one individual had to go to, to remove their personal record from the Prevent national database, shows just how problematic the mistaken perception of a consensual programme by authorities is.

I knew nothing of the Prevent programme at all in 2015. I only began to hear about it once I started mapping the data flows into, across and out of the state education sector, and teachers started coming to me with stories from their schools.

I found it fascinating to hear those speak at the conference that are so embedded in the programme. They seem unable to see it objectively or able to accept others’ critical point of view as truth. It stems perhaps from the luxury of having the privilege of believing you yourself, will be unaffected by its consequences.

“Yes,” said O’Brien, “we can turn it off. We have that privilege” (1984)

There was no ground given at all for accepting that there are deep flaws in practice. That in fact ‘Prevent is having the opposite of its intended effect: by dividing, stigmatising and alienating segments of the population, Prevent could end up promoting extremism, rather than countering it’ as concluded in the 2016 report  Preventing Education: Human Rights and Countering terrorism in UK Schools by Rights Watch UK .

Mark Chalmers conclusion was to suggest perhaps Prevent is not always going to be the current form, of bolt on ‘big programme’ and instead would be just like any other form of child protection, like FGM. That would mean every public sector worker, becomes an extended arm of the Home Office policy, expected to act in counter terrorism efforts.

But the training, the nuance, the level of application of autonomy that the speakers believe exists in staff and in children is imagined. The trust between authorities and people who need shelter, safety, medical care or schooling must be upheld for the public good.

No one asked, if and how children should be seen through the lens of terrorism, extremism and radicalisation at all. No one asked if and how every child, should be able to be surveilled online by school imposed software and covert photos taken through the webcam in the name of children’s safeguarding. Or labelled in school, associated with ‘terrorist.’ What happens when that prevents trust, and who measures its harm?

smoothwall monitor dashboard with terrorist labels on child profile

[click to view larger file]

Far too little is known about who and how makes decisions about the lives of others, the criteria for defining inappropriate activity or referrals, or the opacity of decisions on online content.

What effects will the Prevent programme have on our current and future society, where everyone is expected to surveil and inform upon each other? Failure to do so, to uphold the Prevent duty, becomes civic failure.  How is curiosity and intent separated? How do we safeguard children from risk (that is not harm) and protect their childhood experiences,  their free and full development of self?

No one wants children to be caught up in activities or radicalisation into terror groups. But is this the correct way to solve it?

This comprehensive new research by the YEIP suggests otherwise. The fact that the Home Office disengaged with the project in the last year, speaks volumes.

“The research provides new evidence that by attempting to profile and predict violent youth radicalisation, we may in fact be breeding the very reasons that lead those at risk to violent acts.” (Professor Theo Gavrielides).

Current case studies of lived experience, and history also say it is mistaken. Prevent when it comes to children, and schools, needs massive reform, at very least, but those most in favour of how it works today, aren’t the ones who can be involved in its reshaping.

“Who denounced you?” said Winston.

“It was my little daughter,” said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. “She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.” (1984).

 

The event was the launch of the European study on violent youth radicalisation from YEIP:  The project investigated the attitudes and knowledge of young Europeans, youth workers and other practitioners, while testing tools for addressing the phenomenon through positive psychology and the application of the Good Lives Model.

Its findings include that young people at risk of violent radicalisation are “managed” by the existing justice system as “risks”. This creates further alienation and division, while recidivism rates continue to spiral.

engagement, privacy, trust

Is Hancock’s App Age Appropriate?

What can Matt Hancock learn from his app privacy flaws?

Note: since starting this blog, the privacy policy has been changed since what was live at 4.30 and the “last changed date” backdated on the version that is now live at 21.00. It shows the challenge I point out in 5:

It’s hard to trust privacy policy terms and conditions that are not strong and stable. 

The Data Protection Bill about to pass through the House of Commons requires the Information Commissioner to prepare and issue codes of practice — which must be approved by the Secretary of State — before they can become statutory and enforced.

One of those new codes (clause 124) is about age-appropriate data protection design. Any provider of an Information Society Service — as outlined in GDPR Article 8, where a child’s data are collected on the legal basis of consent — must have regard for the code, if they target the site use at a child.

For 13 -18 year olds what changes might mean compared with current practices can be demonstrated by the Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s new app, launched today.

This app is designed to be used by children 13+. Regardless that the terms say, [more aligned with US COPPA laws rather than GDPR] the app requires parental approval 13-18, it still needs to work for the child.

Apps could and should be used to open up what politics is about to children. Younger users are more likely to use an app than read a paper for example. But it must not cost them their freedoms. As others have written, this app has privacy flaws by design.

Children merit specific protection with regard to their personal data, as they may be less aware of the risks, consequences and safeguards concerned and their rights in relation to the processing of personal data. (GDPR Recital 38).

The flaw in the intent to protect by age, in the app, GDPR and UK Bill overall, is that understanding needed for consent is not dependent on age, but on capacity. The age-based model to protect the virtual child, is fundamentally flawed. It’s shortsighted, if well intentioned, but bad-by-design and does little to really protect children’s rights.

Future age verification for example; if it is to be helpful, not harm, or  a nuisance like a new cookie law, must be “a narrow form of ‘identity assurance’ – where only one attribute (age) need be defined.” It must also respect Recital 57, and not mean a lazy data grab like GiffGaff’s.

On these 5 things this app fails to be age appropriate:

  1. Age appropriate participation, privacy, and consent design.
  2. Excessive personal data collection and permissions. (Article 25)
  3. The purposes of each data collected must be specified, explicit and not further processed for something incompatible with them. (Principle 2).
  4. The privacy policy terms and conditions must be easily understood by a child, and be accurate. (Recital 58)
  5. It’s hard to trust privacy policy terms and conditions that are not strong and stable. Among things that can change are terms on a free trial which should require active and affirmative action not continue the account forever, that may compel future costs.  Any future changes, should also be age-appropriate of themselves,  and in the way that consent is re-managed.

How much profiling does the app enable and what is it used for? The Article 29 WP recommends, “Because children represent a more vulnerable group of society, organisations should, in general, refrain from profiling them for marketing purposes.” What will this mean for any software that profile children’s meta-data to share with third parties, or commercial apps with in-app purchases, or “bait and switch” style models? As this app’s privacy policy refers to.

The Council of Europe 2016-21 Strategy on the Rights of the Child, recognises “provision for children in the digital environment ICT and digital media have added a new dimension to children’’s right to education” exposing them to new risk, “privacy and data protection issues” and that “parents and teachers struggle to keep up with technological developments. ” [6. Growing up in a Digital World, Para 21]

Data protection by design really matters to get right for children and young people.

This is a commercially produced app and will only be used on a consent and optional basis.

This app shows how hard it can be for people buying tech from developers to understand and to trust what’s legal and appropriate.

For developers with changing laws and standards they need clarity and support to get it right. For parents and teachers they will need confidence to buy and let children use safe, quality technology.

Without relevant and trustworthy guidance, it’s nigh on impossible.

For any Minister in charge of the data protection rights of children, we need the technology they approve and put out for use by children, to be age-appropriate, and of the highest standards.

This app could and should be changed to meet them.

For children across the UK, more often using apps offers them no choice whether or not to use it. Many are required by schools that can make similar demands for their data and infringe their privacy rights for life. How much harder then, to protect their data security and rights, and keep track of their digital footprint where data goes.

If the Data protection Bill could have an ICO code of practice for  children that goes beyond consent based data collection; to put clarity, consistency and confidence at the heart of good edTech for children, parents and schools, it would be warmly welcomed.

Here’s detailed examples what the Minister might change to make his app in line with GDPR, and age-appropriate for younger users.

1. Is the app age appropriate by design?

Unless otherwise specified in the App details on the applicable App Store, to use the App you must be 18 or older (or be 13 or older and have your parent or guardian’s consent).

Children over 13 can use the app, but this app needs parental consent. That’s different from GDPR– consent over and above the new laws as will apply in the UK from May. That age will vary across the EU. Inconsistent age policies are going to be hard to navigate.

Many of the things that matter to privacy, have not been included in the privacy policy (detailed below), but in the terms and conditions.

What else needs changed?

2. Personal data protection by design and default

Excessive personal data collection cannot be justified through a “consent” process, by agreeing to use the app. There must be data protection by design and default using the available technology. That includes data minimisation, and limited retention. (Article 25)

The apps powers are vast and collect far more personal data than is needed, and if you use it, even getting permission to listen to your mic. That is not data protection by design and default, which must implement data-protection principles, such as data minimisation.

If as has been suggested, in the newest version of android each permission is asked for at the point of use not on first install, that could be a serious challenge for parents who think they have reviewed and approved permissions pre-install (and fails beyond the scope of this app). An app only requires consent to install and can change the permissions behind the scenes at any time. It makes privacy and data protection by design even more important.

Here’s a copy of what the android Google library page says it can do. Once you click into “permissions” and scroll. This is excessive. “Matt Hancock” is designed to prevent your phone from sleeping, read and modify the contents of storage, and access your microphone.

Version 2.27 can access:
 
Location
  • approximate location (network-based)
Phone
  • read phone status and identity
Photos / Media / Files
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Camera
  • take pictures and videos
Microphone
  • record audio
Wi-Fi connection information
  • view Wi-Fi connections
Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity
Other
  • control vibration
  • manage document storage
  • receive data from Internet
  • view network connections
  • full network access
  • change your audio settings
  • control vibration
  • prevent device from sleeping

“Matt Hancock” knows where you live

The app makers – and Matt Hancock – should have no necessity to know where your phone is at all times, where it is regularly, or whose other phones you are near, unless you switch it off. That is excessive.

It’s not the same as saying “I’m a constituent”. It’s 24/7 surveillance.

The Ts&Cs say more.

It places the onus on the user to switch off location services — which you may expect for other apps such as your Strava run — rather than the developers take responsibility for your privacy by design. [Click image to see larger] [Full source policy].

[update since writing this post on February 1, the policy has been greatly added to]

It also collects ill-defined “technical information”. How should a 13 year old – or parent for that matter – know what these information are? Those data are the meta-data, the address and sender tags etc.

By using the App, you consent to us collecting and using technical information about your device and related information for the purpose of helping us to improve the App and provide any services to you.

As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, has famously said, “We kill people based on metadata.”

If you use this app and “approve” the use, do you really know what the location services are tracking and how that data are used? For a young person, it is impossible to know, or see where their digital footprint has gone, or knowledge about them, have been used.

3. Specified, explicit, and necessary purposes

As a general principle, personal data must be only collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. The purposes of these very broad data collection, are not clearly defined. That must be more specifically explained, especially given the data are so broad, and will include sensitive data. (Principle 2).

While the Minister has told the BBC that you maintain complete editorial control, the terms and conditions are quite different.

The app can use user photos, files, your audio and location data, and that once content is shared it is “a perpetual, irrevocable” permission to use and edit, this is not age-appropriate design for children who might accidentally click yes, or not appreciate what that may permit. Or later wish they could get that photo back. But now that photo is on social media potentially worldwide —  “Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and on the Publisher’s own websites,” and the child’s rights to privacy and consent, are lost forever.

That’s not age appropriate and not in line with GDPR on rights to withdraw consent, to object or to restrict processing. In fact the terms, conflict with the app privacy policy which states those rights [see 4. App User Data Rights] Just writing “there may be valid reasons why we may be unable to do this” is poor practice and a CYA card.

4. Any privacy policy and app must do what it says

A privacy policy and terms and conditions must be easily understood by a child, [indeed any user] and be accurate.

Journalists testing the app point out that even if the user clicks “don’t allow”, when prompted to permit access to the photo library, the user is allowed to post the photo anyway.

What does consent mean if you don’t know what you are consenting to? You’re not. GDPR requires that privacy policies are written in a way that their meaning can be understood by a child user (not only their parent). They need to be jargon-free and meaningful in “clear and plain language that the child can easily understand.” (Recital 58)

This privacy policy is not child-appropriate. It’s not even clear for adults.

5. What would age appropriate permissions for  charging and other future changes look like?

It should be clear to users if there may be up front or future costs, and there should be no assumption that agreeing once to pay for an app, means granting permission forever, without affirmative action.

Couching Bait-and-Switch, Hidden Costs

This is one of the flaws that the Matt Hancock app terms and conditions shares with many free education apps used in schools. At first, they’re free. You register, and you don’t even know when your child  starts using the app, that it’s a free trial. But after a while, as determined by the developer, the app might not be free any more.

That’s not to say this is what the Matt Hancock app will do, in fact it would be very odd if it did. But odd then, that its privacy policy terms and conditions state it could.

The folly of boiler plate policy, or perhaps simply wanting to keep your options open?

Either way, it’s bad design for children– indeed any user — to agree to something that in fact, is meaningless because it could change at any time, and automatic renewals are convenient but who has not found they paid for an extra month of a newspaper or something else they intended to only use for a limited time?  And to avoid any charges, you must cancel before the end of the free trial – but if you don’t know it’s free, that’s hard to do. More so for children.

From time to time we may offer a free trial period when you first register to use the App before you pay for the subscription.[…] To avoid any charges, you must cancel before the end of the free trial.

(And on the “For more details, please see the product details in the App Store before you download the App.” there aren’t any, in case you’re wondering).

What would age appropriate future changes be?

It should be clear to parents that what they consent to on behalf of a child, or if a child consents, at the time of install. What that means must empower them to better digital understanding and to stay in control, not allow the company to change the agreement, without the user’s clear and affirmative action.

One of the biggest flaws for parents in children using apps is that what they think they have reviewed, thought appropriate, and permitted, can change at any time, at the whim of the developer and as often as they like.

Notification “by updating the Effective Date listed above” is not any notification at all.  And PS. they changed the policy and backdated it today from February 1, 2018, to July 2017. By 8 months. That’s odd.

The statements in this “changes” contradict one another. It’s a future dated get-out-of-jail-free-card for the developer and a transparency and oversight nightmare for parents. “Your continued use” is not clear, affirmative, and freely given consent, as demanded by GDPR.

Perhaps the kindest thing to say about this policy, and its poor privacy approach to rights and responsibilities, is that maybe the Minister did not read it. Which highlights the basic flaw in privacy policies in the first place. Data usage reports how your personal data have actually been used, versus what was promised, are of much greater value and meaning. That’s what children need in schools.

change, children, datasharing, empowerment, ethics, pupils

Failing a generation is not what post-Brexit Britain needs

Basically Britain needs Prof. Brian Cox shaping education policy:

“If it were up to me I would increase pay and conditions and levels of responsibility and respect significantly, because it is an investment that would pay itself back many times over in the decades to come.”

Don’t use children as ‘measurement probes’ to test schools

What effect does using school exam results to reform the school system have on children? And what effect does it have on society?

Last autumn Ofqual published a report and their study on consistency of exam marking and metrics.

The report concluded that half of pupils in English Literature, as an example, are not awarded the “correct” grade on a particular exam paper due to marking inconsistencies and the design of the tests.
Given the complexity and sensitivity of the data, Ofqual concluded, it is essential that the metrics stand up to scrutiny and that there is a very clear understanding behind the meaning and application of any quality of marking.  They wrote that, “there are dangers that information from metrics (particularly when related to grade boundaries) could be used out of context.”

Context and accuracy are fundamental to the value of and trust in these tests. And at the moment, trust is not high in the system behind it. There must also be trust in policy behind the system.

This summer two sets of UK school tests, will come under scrutiny. GCSEs and SATS. The goal posts are moving for children and schools across the country. And it’s bad for children and bad for Britain.

Grades A-G will be swapped for numbers 1 -9

GCSE sitting 15-16 year olds will see their exams shift to a numerical system, scoring from the highest Grade 9 to Grade 1, with the three top grades replacing the current A and A*. The alphabetical grading system will be fully phased out by 2019.

The plans intended that roughly the same proportion of students as have achieved a Grade C will be awarded a new Grade 4 and as Schools Week reported: “There will be two GCSE pass rates in school performance tables.”

One will measure grade 5s or above, and this will be called the ‘strong’ pass rate. And the other will measure grade 4s or above, and this will be the ‘standard’ pass rate.

Laura McInerney summed up, “in some senses, it’s not a bad idea as it will mean it is easier to see if the measures are comparable. We can check if the ‘standard’ rate is better or worse over the next few years. (This is particularly good for the DfE who have been told off by the government watchdog for fiddling about with data so much that no one can tell if anything has worked anymore).”

There’s plenty of confusion in parents, how the numerical grading system will work. The confusion you can gauge in playground conversations, is also reflected nationally in a more measurable way.

Market research in a range of audiences – including businesses, head teachers, universities, colleges, parents and pupils – found that just 31 per cent of secondary school pupils and 30 per cent of parents were clear on the new numerical grading system.

So that’s a change in the GCSE grading structure. But why? If more differentiators are needed, why not add one or two more letters and shift grade boundaries? A policy need for these changes is unclear.

Machine marking is training on ten year olds

I wonder if any of the shift to numerical marking, is due in any part to a desire to move GCSEs in future to machine marking?

This year, ten and eleven year olds, children in their last year of primary school, will have their SATs tests computer marked.

That’s everything in maths and English. Not multiple choice papers or one word answers, but full written responses. If their f, b or g doesn’t look like the correct  letter in the correct place in the sentence, then it gains no marks.

Parents are concerned about children whose handwriting is awful, but their knowledge is not. How well can they hope to be assessed? If exams are increasingly machine marked out of sight, many sent to India, where is our oversight of the marking process and accuracy?

The concerns I’ve heard simply among local parents and staff, seem reflected in national discussions and the assessor, Oftsed. TES has reported Ofsted’s most senior officials as saying that the inspectorate is just as reluctant to use this year’s writing assessments as it was in 2016. Teachers and parents locally are united in feeling it is not accurate, not fair, and not right.

The content is also to be tougher.

How will we know what is being accurately measured and the accuracy of the metrics with content changes at the same time? How will we know if children didn’t make the mark, or if the marks were simply not awarded?

The accountability of the process is less than transparent to pupils and parents. We have little opportunity for Ofqual’s recommended scrutiny of these metrics, or the data behind the system on our kids.

Causation, correlation and why we should care

The real risk is that no one will be able to tell if there is an error, where it stems from, and where there is a reason if pass rates should be markedly different from what was expected.

After the wide range of changes across pupil attainment, exam content, school progress scores, and their interaction and dependencies, can they all fit together and be comparable with the past at all?

If the SATS are making lots of mistakes simply due to being bad at reading ten year’ old’s handwriting, how will we know?

Or if GCSE scores are lower, will we be able to see if it is because they have genuinely differentiated the results in a wider spread, and stretched out the fail, pass and top passes more strictly than before?

What is likely, is that this year’s set of children who were expecting As and A star at GCSE but fail to be the one of the two children nationally who get the new grade 9, will be disappointed to feel they are not, after all, as great as they thought they were.

And next year, if you can’t be the one or two to get the top mark, will the best simply stop stretching themselves and rest a bit easier, because, whatever, you won’t get that straight grade As anyway?

Even if children would not change behaviours were they to know, the target range scoring sent by third party data processors to schools, discourages teachers from stretching those at the top.

Politicians look for positive progress, but policies are changing that will increase the number of schools deemed to have failed. Why?

Our children’s results are being used to reform the school system.

Coasting and failing schools can be compelled to become academies.

Government policy on this forced academisation was rejected by popular revolt. It appears that the government is determined that schools *will* become academies with the same fervour that they *will* re-introduce grammar schools. Both are unevidenced and unwanted. But there is a workaround.  Create evidence. Make the successful scores harder to achieve, and more will be seen to fail.

A total of 282 secondary schools in England were deemed to be failing by the government this January, as they “have not met a new set of national standards”.

It is expected that even more will attain ‘less’ this summer. Tim Leunig, Chief Analyst & Chief Scientific Adviser Department for Education, made a personal guess at two reaching the top mark.

The context of this GCSE ‘failure’ is the changes in how schools are measured. Children’s progress over 8 subjects, or “P8” is being used as an accountability measure of overall school quality.

But it’s really just: “a school’s average Attainment 8 score adjusted for pupils’ Key Stage 2 attainment.” [Dave Thomson, Education Datalab]

Work done by FFT Education Datalab showed that contextualising P8 scores can lead to large changes for some schools.  (Read more here and here). You cannot meaningfully compare schools with different types of intake, but it appears that the government is determined to do so. Starting ever younger if new plans go ahead.

Data is being reshaped to tell stories to fit to policy.

Shaping children’s future

What this reshaping doesn’t factor in at all, is the labelling of a generation or more, with personal failure, from age ten and up.

All this tinkering with the data, isn’t just data.

It’s tinkering badly with our kids sense of self, their sense of achievement, aspiration, and with that; the country’s future.

Education reform has become the aim, and it has replaced the aims of education.

Post-Brexit Britain doesn’t need policy that delivers ideology. We don’t need “to use children as ‘measurement probes’ to test schools.”

Just as we shouldn’t use children’s educational path to test their net worth or cost to the economy. Or predict it in future.

Children’s education and human value cannot be measured in data.

children, commercial, datasharing, privacy, Tech

Google Family Link for Under 13s: children’s privacy friend or faux?

“With the Family Link app from Google, you can stay in the loop as your kid explores on their Android* device. Family Link lets you create a Google Account for your kid that’s like your account, while also helping you set certain digital ground rules that work for your family — like managing the apps your kid can use, keeping an eye on screen time, and setting a bedtime on your kid’s device.”

John Carr shared his blog post about the Google Family Link today which was the first I had read about the new US account in beta. In his post, with an eye on GDPR, he asks, what is the right thing to do?

What is the Family Link app?

Family Link requires a US based google account to sign up, so outside the US we can’t read the full details. However from what is published online, it appears to offer the following three key features:

“Approve or block the apps your kid wants to download from the Google Play Store.

Keep an eye on screen time. See how much time your kid spends on their favorite apps with weekly or monthly activity reports, and set daily screen time limits for their device. “

and

“Set device bedtime: Remotely lock your kid’s device when it’s time to play, study, or sleep.”

From the privacy and disclosure information it reads that there is not a lot of difference between a regular (over 13s) Google account and this one for under 13s. To collect data from under 13s it must be compliant with COPPA legislation.

If you google “what is COPPA” the first result says, “The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a law created to protect the privacy of children under 13.”

But does this Google Family Link do that? What safeguards and controls are in place for use of this app and children’s privacy?

What data does it capture?

“In order to create a Google Account for your child, you must review the Disclosure (including the Privacy Notice) and the Google Privacy Policy, and give consent by authorizing a $0.30 charge on your credit card.”

Google captures the parent’s verified real-life credit card data.

Google captures child’s name, date of birth and email.

Google captures voice.

Google captures location.

Google may associate your child’s phone number with their account.

And lots more:

Google automatically collects and stores certain information about the services a child uses and how a child uses them, including when they save a picture in Google Photos, enter a query in Google Search, create a document in Google Drive, talk to the Google Assistant, or watch a video in YouTube Kids.

What does it offer over regular “13+ Google”?

In terms of general safeguarding, it doesn’t appear that SafeSearch is on by default but must be set and enforced by a parent.

Parents should “review and adjust your child’s Google Play settings based on what you think is right for them.”

Google rightly points out however that, “filters like SafeSearch are not perfect, so explicit, graphic, or other content you may not want your child to see makes it through sometimes.”

Ron Amadeo at Arstechnica wrote a review of the Family Link app back in February, and came to similar conclusions about added safeguarding value:

“Other than not showing “personalized” ads to kids, data collection and storage seems to work just like in a regular Google account. On the “Disclosure for Parents” page, Google notes that “your child’s Google Account will be like your own” and “Most of these products and services have not been designed or tailored for children.” Google won’t do any special content blocking on a kid’s device, so they can still get into plenty of trouble even with a monitored Google account.”

Your child will be able to share information, including photos, videos, audio, and location, publicly and with others, when signed in with their Google Account. And Google wants to see those photos.

There’s some things that parents cannot block at all.

Installs of app updates can’t be controlled, so leave a questionable grey area. Many apps are built on classic bait and switch – start with a free version and then the upgrade contains paid features. This is therefore something to watch for.

“Regardless of the approval settings you choose for your child’s purchases and downloads, you won’t be asked to provide approval in some instances, such as if your child: re-downloads an app or other content; installs an update to an app (even an update that adds content or asks for additional data or permissions); or downloads shared content from your Google Play Family Library. “

The child “will have the ability to change their activity controls, delete their past activity in “My Activity,” and grant app permissions (including things like device location, microphone, or contacts) to third parties”.

What’s in it for children?

You could argue that this gives children “their own accounts” and autonomy. But why do they need one at all? If I give my child a device on which they can download an app, then I approve it first.

If I am not aware of my under 13 year old child’s Internet time physically, then I’m probably not a parent who’s going to care to monitor it much by remote app either. Is there enough insecurity around ‘what children under 13 really do online’, versus what I see or they tell me as a parent, that warrants 24/7 built-in surveillance software?

I can use safe settings without this app. I can use a device time limiting app without creating a Google account for my child.

If parents want to give children an email address, yes, this allows them to have a device linked Gmail account to which you as a parent, cannot access content. But wait a minute, what’s this. Google can?

Google can read their mails and provide them “personalised product features”. More detail is probably needed but this seems clear:

“Our automated systems analyze your child’s content (including emails) to provide your child personally relevant product features, such as customized search results and spam and malware detection.”

And what happens when the under 13s turn 13? It’s questionable that it is right for Google et al. to then be able draw on a pool of ready-made customers’ data in waiting. Free from COPPA ad regulation. Free from COPPA privacy regulation.

Google knows when the child reaches 13 (the set-up requires a child’s date of birth, their first and last name, and email address, to set up the account). And they will inform the child directly when they become eligible to sign up to a regular account free of parental oversight.

What a birthday gift. But is it packaged for the child or Google?

What’s in it for Google?

The parental disclosure begins,

“At Google, your trust is a priority for us.”

If it truly is, I’d suggest they revise their privacy policy entirely.

Google’s disclosure policy also makes parents read a lot before you fully understand the permissions this app gives to Google.

I do not believe Family Link gives parents adequate control of their children’s privacy at all nor does it protect children from predatory practices.

While “Google will not serve personalized ads to your child“, your child “will still see ads while using Google’s services.”

Google also tailors the Family Link apps that the child sees, (and begs you to buy) based on their data:

“(including combining personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services) to offer them tailored content, such as more relevant app recommendations or search results.”

Contextual advertising using “persistent identifiers” is permitted under COPPA, and is surely a fundamental flaw. It’s certainly one I wouldn’t want to see duplicated under GDPR. Serving up ads that are relevant to the content the child is using, doesn’t protect them from predatory ads at all.

Google captures geolocators and knows where a child is and builds up their behavioural and location patterns. Google, like other online companies, captures and uses what I’ve labelled ‘your synthesised self’; the mix of online and offline identity and behavioural data about a user. In this case, the who and where and what they are doing, are the synthesised selves of under 13 year old children.

These data are made more valuable by the connection to an adult with spending power.

The Google Privacy Policy’s description of how Google services generally use information applies to your child’s Google Account.

Google gains permission via the parent’s acceptance of the privacy policy, to pass personal data around to third parties and affiliates. An affiliate is an entity that belongs to the Google group of companies. Today, that’s a lot of companies.

Google’s ad network consists of Google services, like Search, YouTube and Gmail, as well as 2+ million non-Google websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads.

I also wonder if it will undo some of the previous pro-privacy features on any linked child’s YouTube account if Google links any logged in accounts across the Family Link and YouTube platforms.

Is this pseudo-safe use a good thing?

In practical terms, I’d suggest this app is likely to lull parents into a false sense of security. Privacy safeguarding is not the default set up.

It’s questionable that Google should adopt some sort of parenting role through an app. Parental remote controls via an app isn’t an appropriate way to regulate whether my under 13 year old is using their device, rather than sleeping.

It’s also got to raise questions about children’s autonomy at say, 12. Should I as a parent know exactly every website and app that my child visits? What does that do for parental-child trust and relations?

As for my own children I see no benefit compared with letting them have supervised access as I do already.  That is without compromising my debit card details, or under a false sense of safeguarding. Their online time is based on age appropriate education and trust, and yes I have to manage their viewing time.

That said, if there are people who think parents cannot do that, is the app a step forward? I’m not convinced. It’s definitely of benefit to Google. But for families it feels more like a sop to adults who feel a duty towards safeguarding children, but aren’t sure how to do it.

Is this the best that Google can do by children?

In summary it seems to me that the Family Link app is a free gift from Google. (Well, free after the thirty cents to prove you’re a card-carrying adult.)

It gives parents three key tools: App approval (accept, pay, or block), Screen-time surveillance,  and a remote Switch Off of child’s access.

In return, Google gets access to a valuable data set – a parent-child relationship with credit data attached – and can increase its potential targeted app sales. Yet Google can’t guarantee additional safeguarding, privacy, or benefits for the child while using it.

I think for families and child rights, it’s a false friend. None of these tools per se require a Google account. There are alternatives.

Children’s use of the Internet should not mean they are used and their personal data passed around or traded in hidden back room bidding by the Internet companies, with no hope of control.

There are other technical solutions to age verification and privacy too.

I’d ask, what else has Google considered and discarded?

Is this the best that a cutting edge technology giant can muster?

This isn’t designed to respect children’s rights as intended under COPPA or ready for GDPR, and it’s a shame they’re not trying.

If I were designing Family Link for children, it would collect no real identifiers. No voice. No locators. It would not permit others access to voice or images or need linked. It would keep children’s privacy intact, and enable them when older, to decide what they disclose. It would not target personalised apps/products  at children at all.

GDPR requires active, informed parental consent for children’s online services. It must be revocable, personal data must collect the minimum necessary and be portable. Privacy policies must be clear to children. This, in terms of GDPR readiness, is nowhere near ‘it’.

Family Link needs to re-do their homework. And this isn’t a case of ‘please revise’.

Google is a multi-billion dollar company. If they want parental trust, and want to be GDPR and COPPA compliant, they should do the right thing.

When it comes to child rights, companies must do or do not. There is no try.

image source: ArsTechnica

children, GDPR, ICO, National Pupil Database, politics, privacy

Information society services: Children in the GDPR, Digital Economy Bill & Digital Strategy

In preparation for The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there  must be an active UK decision about policy in the coming months for children and the Internet – provision of ‘Information Society Services’. The age of consent for online content aimed at children from May 25, 2018 will be 16 by default unless UK law is made to lower it.

Age verification for online information services in the GDPR, will mean capturing parent-child relationships. This could mean a parent’s email or credit card unless there are other choices made. What will that mean for access to services for children and to privacy? It is likely to offer companies an opportunity for a data grab, and mean privacy loss for the public, as more data about family relationships will be created and collected than the content provider would get otherwise.

Our interactions create a blended identity of online and offline attributes which I suggested in a previous post, create synthesised versions of our selves raises questions on data privacy and security.

The goal may be to protect the physical child. The outcome will mean it simultaneously expose children and parents to risks that we would not otherwise be put through increased personal data collection. By increasing the data collected, it increases the associated risks of loss, theft, and harm to identity integrity. How will legislation balance these risks and rights to participation?

The UK government has various work in progress before then, that could address these questions:

But will they?

As Sonia Livingstone wrote in the post on the LSE media blog about what to expect from the GDPR and its online challenges for children:

“Now the UK, along with other Member States, has until May 2018 to get its house in order”.

What will that order look like?

The Digital Strategy and Ed Tech

The Digital Strategy commits to changes in National Pupil Data  management. That is, changes in the handling and secondary uses of data collected from pupils in the school census, like using it for national research and planning.

It also means giving data to commercial companies and the press. Companies such as private tutor pupil matching services, and data intermediaries. Journalists at the Times and the Telegraph.

Access to NPD via the ONS VML would mean safe data use, in safe settings, by safe (trained and accredited) users.

Sensitive data — it remains to be seen how DfE intends to interpret ‘sensitive’ and whether that is the DPA1998 term or lay term meaning ‘identifying’ as it should — will no longer be seen by users for secondary uses outside safe settings.

However, a grey area on privacy and security remains in the “Data Exchange” which will enable EdTech products to “talk to each other”.

The aim of changes in data access is to ensure that children’s data integrity and identity are secure.  Let’s hope the intention that “at all times, the need to preserve appropriate privacy and security will remain paramount and will be non-negotiable” applies across all closed pupil data, and not only to that which may be made available via the VML.

This strategy is still far from clear or set in place.

The Digital Strategy and consumer data rights

The Digital Strategy commits under the heading of “Unlocking the power of data in the UK economy and improving public confidence in its use” to the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation by May 2018. The Strategy frames this as a business issue, labelling data as “a global commodity” and as such, its handling is framed solely as a requirements needed to ensure “that our businesses can continue to compete and communicate effectively around the world” and that adoption “will ensure a shared and higher standard of protection for consumers and their data.”

The GDPR as far as children goes, is far more about protection of children as people. It focuses on returning control over children’s own identity and being able to revoke control by others, rather than consumer rights.

That said, there are data rights issues which are also consumer issues and  product safety failures posing real risk of harm.

Neither The Digital Economy Bill nor the Digital Strategy address these rights and security issues, particularly when posed by the Internet of Things with any meaningful effect.

In fact, the chapter Internet of Things and Smart Infrastructure [ 9/19]  singularly miss out anything on security and safety:

“We want the UK to remain an international leader in R&D and adoption of IoT. We are funding research and innovation through the three year, £30 million IoT UK Programme.”

There was much more thoughtful detail in the 2014 Blackett Review on the IoT to which I was signposted today after yesterday’s post.

If it’s not scary enough for the public to think that their sex secrets and devices are hackable, perhaps it will kill public trust in connected devices more when they find strangers talking to their children through a baby monitor or toy. [BEUC campaign report on #Toyfail]

“The internet-connected toys ‘My Friend Cayla’ and ‘i-Que’ fail miserably when it comes to safeguarding basic consumer rights, security, and privacy. Both toys are sold widely in the EU.”

Digital skills and training in the strategy doesn’t touch on any form of change management plans for existing working sectors in which we expect to see machine learning and AI change the job market. This is something the digital and industrial strategy must be addressing hand in glove.

The tactics and training providers listed sound super, but there does not appear to be an aspirational strategy hidden between the lines.

The Digital Economy Bill and citizens’ data rights

While the rest of Europe in this legislation has recognised that a future thinking digital world without boundaries, needs future thinking on data protection and empowered citizens with better control of identity, the UK government appears intent on taking ours away.

To take only one example for children, the Digital Economy Bill in Cabinet Office led meetings was explicit about use for identifying and tracking individuals labelled under “Troubled Families” and interventions with them. Why, when consent is required to work directly with people, that consent is being ignored to access their information is baffling and in conflict with both the spirit and letter of GDPR. Students and Applicants will see their personal data sent to the Student Loans Company without their consent or knowledge. This overrides the current consent model in place at UCAS.

It is baffling that the government is pursuing the Digital Economy Bill data copying clauses relentlessly, that remove confidentiality by default, and will release our identities in birth, marriage and death data for third party use without consent through Chapter 2, the opening of the Civil Registry, without any safeguards in the bill.

Government has not only excluded important aspects of Parliamentary scrutiny in the bill, it is trying to introduce “almost untrammeled powers” (paragraph 21), that will “very significantly broaden the scope for the sharing of information” and “specified persons”  which applies “whether the service provider concerned is in the public sector or is a charity or a commercial organisation” and non-specific purposes for which the information may be disclosed or used. [Reference: Scrutiny committee comments]

Future changes need future joined up thinking

While it is important to learn from the past, I worry that the effort some social scientists put into looking backwards,  is not matched by enthusiasm to look ahead and making active recommendations for a better future.

Society appears to have its eyes wide shut to the risks of coercive control and nudge as research among academics and government departments moves in the direction of predictive data analysis.

Uses of administrative big data and publicly available social media data for example, in research and statistics, needs further new regulation in practice and policy but instead the Digital Economy Bill looks only at how more data can be got out of Department silos.

A certain intransigence about data sharing with researchers from government departments is understandable. What’s the incentive for DWP to release data showing its policy may kill people?

Westminster may fear it has more to lose from data releases and don’t seek out the political capital to be had from good news.

The ethics of data science are applied patchily at best in government, and inconsistently in academic expectations.

Some researchers have identified this but there seems little will to action:

 “It will no longer be possible to assume that secondary data use is ethically unproblematic.”

[Data Horizons: New forms of Data for Social Research, Elliot, M., Purdam, K., Mackey, E., School of Social Sciences, The University Of Manchester, 2013.]

Research and legislation alike seem hell bent on the low hanging fruit but miss out the really hard things. What meaningful benefit will it bring by spending millions of pounds on exploiting these personal data and opening our identities to risk just to find out whether X course means people are employed in Y tax bracket 5 years later, versus course Z where everyone ends up self employed artists? What ethics will be applied to the outcomes of those questions asked and why?

And while government is busy joining up children’s education data throughout their lifetimes from age 2 across school, FE, HE, into their HMRC and DWP interactions, there is no public plan in the Digital Strategy for the coming 10 to 20 years employment market, when many believe, as do these authors in American Scientific, “around half of today’s jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today’s top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.”

What benefit will it have to know what was, or for the plans around workforce and digital skills list ad hoc tactics, but no strategy?

We must safeguard jobs and societal needs, but just teaching people to code is not a solution to a fundamental gap in what our purpose will be, and the place of people as a world-leading tech nation after Brexit. We are going to have fewer talented people from across the world staying on after completing academic studies, because they’re not coming at all.

There may be investment in A.I. but where is the investment in good data practices around automation and machine learning in the Digital Economy Bill?

To do this Digital Strategy well, we need joined up thinking.

Improving online safety for children in The Green Paper on Children’s Internet Safety should mean one thing:

Children should be able to use online services without being used and abused by them.

This article arrived on my Twitter timeline via a number of people. Doteveryone CEO Rachel Coldicutt summed up various strands of thought I started to hear hints of last month at #CPDP2017 in Brussels:

“As designers and engineers, we’ve contributed to a post-thought world. In 2017, it’s time to start making people think again.

“We need to find new ways of putting friction and thoughtfulness back into the products we make.” [Glanceable truthiness, 30.1.2017]

Let’s keep the human in discussions about technology, and people first in our products

All too often in technology and even privacy discussions, people have become ‘consumers’ and ‘customers’ instead of people.

The Digital Strategy may seek to unlock “the power of data in the UK economy” but policy and legislation must put equal if not more emphasis on “improving public confidence in its use” if that long term opportunity is to be achieved.

And in technology discussions about AI and algorithms we hear very little about people at all.  Discussions I hear seem siloed instead into three camps: the academics, the designers and developers,  the politicians and policy makers.  And then comes the lowest circle, ‘the public’ and ‘society’.

It is therefore unsurprising that human rights have fallen down the ranking of importance in some areas of technology development.

It’s time to get this house in order.

privacy

Children’s private chats and personal data lost through VTech toys

If you’ve got young children who have an Innotab console  or other ed tech apps and games from Vtech, then you need to pay attention.

Your and your children’s personal data may have been stolen. The Vtech security breach has exposed private data of more than six million children worldwide, including 700,000 British customers.IMG_3125

The games are designed for children age 2-9. The loss reportedly includes thousands of pictures of children and parents, as well as a year’s worth of chat logs, names and addresses.

Where from? Well, the information that parents and children entered in set up or created using the games like Innotab for example.  The Innotab using an apps allows children to record voice and text messages, take photos and send these to the matching app on the parents’ phone. The data from both users has been lost. The link is the registered email account that connects both child’s toy, and parent’s phone, via the downloaded app.

And why kids’ photos may be included, is that during the set up, a profile photo can be taken by the child, and stored and used in a similar way to social media sites.

VTech’s Learning Lodge app store customer database is affected and VTech Kid Connect servers accessed. As a precautionary step, Vtech says on their website, they have suspended Learning Lodge, the Kid Connect network and a dozen websites temporarily whilst they ‘conduct a thorough security assessment’.

Reactions

One mum spoke to Good Morning Britain about how she felt when she discovered information about her child may have been stolen.

She says she hadn’t received any notification about the loss from VTech and didn’t know about it until she saw it on the six o’clock news. She then pro-actively contacted VTech customer services.

VTech’s response was confused, first telling her they had not lost data related to the KidConnect app – but in a later email say they did.

What’s disappointing in GMB’s coverage they focused in the VTech story on how disappointing this would be for the toymaker VTech in the run up to Christmas.

There was little information for families on what this could mean for using the toys safely in future.  They went on to talk about some other web based tools, but didn’t talk about data protection which really should be much stronger for children’s data.

While parents must take an active role in thinking ahead for our children and how their digital identities can be compromised, we also need to be able to rely on organisations with whom we entrust our own and our children’s personal data, and know that when they ask us for data that they will look after it securely, and use it in ways we expect. On the technical side, data security systems need to be proportionate to the risks they place children in, if data are breached. This is true of commercial companies and public bodies.

On the human side, public transparency and good communication are key to managing expectations, to ensure we know what users sign up to, and to know what happens if things go wrong.

Sadly VTech is continuing to downplay the loss of children’s personal data. In their first statement their focus was to tell people not to worry because credit card details were not included.

When I asked five days after the breach was announced, VTech declined to confirm to me whether avatars and profile pictures had been accessed, arguing that its internal investigation is still ongoing. That’s now two weeks ago.

Their FAQs still say this is unknown. If this is true it would appear surprisingly incompetent on the part of VTech to know that all the other items have been lost in detail, but not profile pictures.

That it is possible for personal details that include date of birth, address and photo to all be lost together is clearly a significant threat for identity theft. It shows one risk of having so much identifiable personal data stored in one place.

The good news, is that it appears not to have any malicious motive. According to the report in Motherboard; “The hacker who broke into VTech’s systems […] that he never intended to release the data to the public.

”Frankly, it makes me sick that I was able to get all this stuff,” the hacker told [Motherboard] in an encrypted chat on Monday.

Could this be the biggest consumer breach of children’s personal data in history?

What now for the 700,000 users of the systems?

Parent accounts need to be directly and fully informed by VTech:

a) what was compromised, by platform, by website, or by customer

b) if and how they will be able to use their equipment again

c) how children’s data would be made safe in future and what Vtech are doing that will different from how they handled data before

Any organisation needs to demonstrate through full transparency and how it acts in the event of such a breach, that it is worthy of trust.

The children’s toys and systems appear to have been shut down.

They’re not cheap with the Innotab coming in at around £90 and its cartridge games upwards of £17 each.  Toy sellers will be in the front line for public facing questions in the shops. Anyone that had already bought these just before Christmas will be wondering what to do now, if access to the systems and the apps have been shut down, they won’t work.

And if and when they do work, will they work securely?

Did Vtech contact you and tell you about the breach?

The sensible thing is to stop using that email address, change the password at very minimum and not only on the adult’s phone and child’s game app, but also anywhere else you use it.

What else do you need to know?

What do parents do when their child’s digital identity has been compromised?

More information is needed from the company, and soon.

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If you want to get in touch, come over and visit defenddigitalme.com You can also sign up to the Twitter group, support the campaign to get 8 million school pupils’ data made safe, or leave a comment.

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References:

VTech website FAQs as of December 3, 2015

November 28, 2015: blog TryHunt.com by Microsoft MVP for Developer Security

December 1, 2015: Motherboard report by @josephfcox

December 1, 2015: Motherboard article by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

 

 

 

words

That their sighs should not blow there. My hope in haiku.

No sanctuary
but for a stone of stumbling
a rock of offence.

Houses of Israel
mercy from a gin and snare.
All your peoples

broken bodies strewn
bloodied ashen dust blows hot
bomb blasted towers

children, children lost.
Images. Lives left ruins
ragdolls photographs.

And after these things
I saw four angels standing
on the four corners of Earth:

no more dirt tunnels
no din of drone nor ambulance
no burial wail

holding the four winds
that their sighs should not blow there.
In peace, revelation.

 

(AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)

Refs: Isaiah 8:14 / Revelations 7:1