Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:05:31 -0500 From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) Subject: Big Brother is at it again. This time he's watching where your To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:02:37 -0500 From: "Thomas G. Burke" <thomas_g_burke@mail.northgrum.com> Organization: Northrop Grumman ESSS To: freematt@coil.com Subject: TechTV | Big Brother's Watching Your Kids
http://www.techtv.com/print/story/0,23102,3312263,00.html
Big Brother's Watching Your Kids
Schools are required to install Web filtering software. But that software is being used to track the surfing habits of school kids, without the schools' knowledge.
By Michelle C.I. Feldman February 16, 2001
Big Brother is at it again. This time he's watching where your kids surf on the Web.
Schools are required to install Web filtering software in order to protect children from the dark side of the Internet. One such filtering program is Bess, which is used by 16 million schoolchildren from kindergartners through high school seniors.
N2H2 is the company responsible for installing and running Bess on proxy servers in schools. While acting as an Internet hall monitor, Bess also keeps track of which sites students visit and how much time they spend on each page.
N2H2 uses that information to create a database called Class Clicks. According to the Wall Street Journal, Class Clicks has been purchased by the Pentagon. At this time, however, the Pentagon has released no information on what it plans to do with the students' information.
Several schools claim they were never told about the information-gathering aspect of the software. The Seattle school district has been using Bess for nearly two years, but school officials say they had no idea what the company was doing with Class Clicks until informed by TechTV News.
Considering the ethical issues in question, should this practice be stopped?
"It's the same old privacy debate," Spin panelist Tia O'Brien from SV Magazine told host John C. Dvorak, Andrew Anker from August Venture Capital, Hans Peter Brondmo of Netcentives, and Andy Kurtzig from eBenefits. "Who are they to sell a bunch of information about kids?"
"They need to ask permission of the school to resell the data," Kurtzig said. However, he added, "I don't think there is any problem reselling the data since the data is not tied to the individual school kids."
"In this case the schools didn't have to buy the software [if they didn't like what the company was going to do wih it]," Anker added.
Panelists agreed that the larger-picture issue here is the role of the government in privacy, but they didn't necessarily agree about how that issue should be resolved.
"The real issue is there is no regulation, no government regulation," Brondmo said. "[We need] some guidelines and some structure."
"I don't think we need to regulate it," Kurtzig retorted. "What's the real problem here is the schools didn't look at the contract before signing it."
"Until we find out if data is private information we're going to keep having this debate," O'Brien concluded.
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