Abstract
On April 20, 1999, two students killed twelve fellow students and a teacher and wounded twenty-one others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. In the years since, mass casualty shootings at schools have become a recurring tragedy across the country. From 2018 to 2024, 140 people were killed and 376 were injured in K-12 shootings in the United States. Suicide rates among teenagers have also been a source of great concern. In 2023, suicide was the second leading cause of death for children ages 10–14 and teenagers ages 15–19. In addition, between 2021 and 2022, approximately 19 percent of students ages 12–18 reported being bullied at school.
Schools are key stakeholders in keeping adolescents safe and healthy into adulthood, and the seemingly endless string of shootings and other tragic events at schools around the country prompted school officials to add security cameras, metal detectors, security staff, and active shooter drills. In the past decade, middle and high schools have widely adopted digital surveillance of students in an attempt to prevent gun violence, suicides, and bullying. Accelerated by the remote learning technologies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, surveillance measures received significant federal funding and propelled a growth industry of technology companies with annual revenues of $3.1 billion that aggressively market a variety of digital surveillance services to schools.
School-based digital surveillance technologies frequently involve software loaded onto laptops and other school-issued devices or embedded in school-mandated applications and websites. Surveillance companies under contract to school districts and schools monitor student communications (including emails, chats, text messages, and documents) and web browser activity. Some companies also monitor social media activity, including private social media postings, through student use of web browsers. Surveillance methods typically use artificial intelligence (AI) to process student online activity data by analyzing text-based data using natural language processing and image-based data using image recognition.
Large-scale implementation of surveillance programs raises important and novel issues of education policy, technology regulation, and law. Despite surveillance companies claims that their programs prevent violence, it is unclear whether or to what extent digital surveillance has been successful in improving school safety. Moreover, adoption of intrusive surveillance measures raises serious concerns about possible harms to students, including the following: (1) invading the privacy of students on-campus and off-campus by monitoring school-issued laptops and other devices; (2) limiting or chilling students’ freedom of inquiry, expression, thought, association, and communication; (3) surveilling or disciplining students more harshly based on race, ethnicity, sex, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, immigration status, or other discriminatory criteria; and (4) causing, aggravating, or inadequately addressing students’ mental health challenges.
Surveillance of students is subject to constitutional provisions as well as federal and state statutory and regulatory requirements. Students have well-established but limited constitutional rights to privacy, free speech, and nondiscrimination, yet the courts have not clearly defined how these broad legal principles apply to school-based digital surveillance.
In reporting key elements of a multiyear study, this interdisciplinary article discusses the adoption and operation of school-based digital surveillance programs. Section I discusses federal financial support for these programs, the range of services and policies provided by surveillance technology companies, and whether these measures have succeeded in preventing harms to students. Next, the article presents insights from original empirical research including interviews with school administrators and focus groups with students and parents. Section II also considers the potential liability of schools and school officials for student harms arising from assaults, bullying, suicides, and mass shootings. Section III explores the range of harms that surveillance poses to students, including legal issues of invasion of privacy, chilling of free inquiry and expression, discrimination against vulnerable students, and undermining mental health. The article concludes with considerations for law and technology policy for middle and high schools.
Link to Full Article:
Surveillance Technology in Schools: Empirical Insights and Legal Implications