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76 Stan. L. Rev. 1439 (2024)
The Surveilled Student

handle is hein.journals/stflr76 and id is 1439 raw text is: ESSAY The Surveilled Student Danielle Keats Citron* Abstract. We live in an age of student surveillance. Once student surveillance just involved on-campus video cameras, school resource officers, and tip lines, but now, it extends beyond school hours and premises. Corporate monitoring software, installed on school-provided laptops, does two things. First, it blocks objectionable material, informing administrators about content that students tried to access. Second, it scans students' searches, browsing, files, emails, chats, and geolocation to detect problematic material. For many students, school-provided laptops are their only computing device. They use that device to complete homework, as they must; they use it to chat with friends, explore ideas, and play. For those students, the surveillance is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Totalizing surveillance makes student intimate privacy impossible and undermines the school's crucial role in educating democratic citizens. Student surveillance chills children's willingness to engage in expressive activities, including experimenting with nonmainstream ideas. Self-censorship is even more likely for disabled and LGBTQ+ students who fear judgment and reprisal. Student surveillance corrodes students' relationships with teachers. It raises the risk of suspension for Black and Hispanic students for minor infractions like profanity, a blow to equality. Companies promise that their surveillance systems can detect suicidal ideation, threats, and bullying, but little evidence shows that they work as intended. We need robust, substantive protections for student intimate privacy for the good of free expression, democracy, and equality. Schools should not use surveillance software unless companies can show * Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law and Caddell & Chapman Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law; Vice President, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative; 2019 MacArthur Fellow. Thank you to the Stanford Law Review, to Bella Ryb, Julia Gokhberg, Madison Marko, and to the rest of the editorial team for superb feedback. I am grateful to Caroline Corbin Mala and Alexander Tsesis for their leadership and creativity; to Mary Rose Papandrea for talking to me at length about the paper; to Eleanor Citron for her wisdom; to Jeff Stautberg and Taylor Stenberg for terrific research assistance; to Benjamin Klein, a high school senior who helped me understand his experience with student surveillance; to Kathryn Boudouris, librarian, thinker, and researcher extraordinaire; to Billi Jo Morningstar for savvy editing; to Ryan Calo, Naomi Cahn, Justin Driver, Evelyn Douek, Hany Farid, Alison Gocke, Woodrow Hartzog, Robert Post, Richard Schragger, Amelia Vance, Catharine Ward, Ari Waldman, and the participants in the 2024 Privacy Law Scholars conference for helpful suggestions; and to Dean Risa Goluboff for boundless support. 1439

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