we know from past news reports (http://goo.gl/5awR), such breaches of
privacy can happen with via internal school staff as well as hosted
solutions.
And don't even get me starteed on what ISPs, the NSA, and Homeland Security
can tap into if they so desire.
Any of us who have been involved with employee firings know that are hands
are tied when it comes to how much information can be revealed about
employees. I can appreciate Google's reluctance to say more about the
situation.
s
-----
Steve Taffee | Director of Strategic Projects
Castilleja School | staffee@castilleja.org
1310 Bryant Street | www.castilleja.org
Palo Alto, CA 94301 | taffee.edublogs.org
650.924.1040 (Google Voice)
Women Learning, Women Leading
<http://twitter.com/sjtaffee> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetaffee>
On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Bill Fitzgerald <dwfitzgerald@yahoo.com>wrote:
> While this is likely an isolated incident, it certainly raises questions
> about
> what happens to our student's personal information (also known as their
> thoughts, and portions of the intellectual explorations that make up their
> life)
> are sent to a large company. In this case, an engineer at Google was
> allegedly
> fired for accessing the accounts of minors:
>
>
> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats-2010-9
>
>
> "In other cases involving teens of both sexes, Barksdale exhibited a
> similar
> pattern of aggressively violating others' privacy, according to our
> source. He
> accessed contact lists and chat transcripts, and in one case quoted from
> an IM
> that he'd looked up behind the person's back. (He later apologized to one
> for
> retrieving the information without her knowledge.) In another incident,
> Barksdale unblocked himself from a Gtalk buddy list even though the teen
> in
> question had taken steps to cut communications with the Google engineer."
>
> So, as schools make decisions to outsource essential services to external
> companies (aka the cloud), it's worth remembering that there are people
> working
> around the clock to keep the cloud running. Most of these people do the
> right
> thing all of the time, but for schools rolling these services out (and
> requiring
> students to use them as part of their school work) what recourse would you
> have
> if your student's privacy was violated? Is there even any guarantee that
> you
> would be told?
>
> At what point does convenience trump the ability to guarantee your students
> and
> your parents that you have taken reasonable steps to ensure the privacy and
> integrity of work done within your school?
>
>
>
>
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see https://www.gds.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128874]
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>
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