[stupidcar]

It's funny how every society has its own way of mistreating children, yet never considers it a problem at the time. We look at the ways children were harmed and exploited throughout history and shake our heads at how our morally underdeveloped forebears could be so cruel and misguided. Then we turn around and declare that our children have no right whatsoever to privacy, and that everything they read and write should be surveilled 24/7 by teams of strangers, for their "own good".

I firmly believe that a hundred years, people will look back on practices like this and shake their heads at the appalling attitudes their primitive ancestors had towards children. But I imagine that's little comfort to the kids subject to this kind of abuse.

[TeMPOraL]

I strongly agree with your entire comment. That said, I think this:

> that everything they read and write should be surveilled 24/7 by teams of strangers, for their "own good"

Are actually two separate problems with our society.

Problem 1: denying privacy to children, various forms of helicopter parenting. This you've covered, and I agree this is our era's way of mistreating children.

Problem 2: "by team of strangers". as a Service. This is a much broader topic to cover it all here, but constrained to the context of data processing and children - social-wide, we're too eager to entrust sensitive matters to random strangers, giving them too much leeway, as if they weren't incentivized to abuse it in every way they can get away with.

People are having ridiculously inconsistent "trust functions" here. You wouldn't give this level of access to a small shop from your neighborhood that offered you a service, but you give it to a random tech startup from far away, just because the guy looks kind of creepy and the startup has a shiny web page. Even though a realistic threat model would suggest the former can be trusted way more than the latter (less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you). It's like most people can't internalize the lesson, even though they're being repeatedly screwed over by almost every business they interact with.

What pisses me off more, is when it's the other party that inserts some third parties into the process. When you have a kid attending a school, there's a degree of trust and responsibility shared between you and the school. But then the school outsources data management or remote learning to some random vendors, vendors who absolutely cannot be trusted. And as a parent, you can't do much about it.

One day in the future people will look back at our times and think about all of us and most of the market the way we today think about literal snake oil salesmen and people duped by them.

[lamontcg]

> What pisses me off more, is when it's the other party that inserts some third parties into the process. When you have a kid attending a school, there's a degree of trust and responsibility shared between you and the school. But then the school outsources data management or remote learning to some random vendors, vendors who absolutely cannot be trusted. And as a parent, you can't do much about it.

I don't understand why the parents are letting the school into their kids heads while they're at home to begin with. School administrators shouldn't be parenting (and we should ask ourselves why this seems reasonable for them to explicitly assume parenting roles over all the kids), and they should probably be more concerned about what kinds of porn their teachers are watching. They should never, ever be concerned with the question of which kids are watching which porn unless it somehow literally cannot be avoided because the kid drags it explicitly into the classroom.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I’m guessing the article leaves out the part where this monitoring occurs on school-issued devices that children use at home.

If so, this is no different than your employer actively monitoring your activity on their devices.

[ClumsyPilot]

"If so, this is no different than your employer actively monitoring your activity on their devices"

When I was 12, I didn't sign an employment contract with my school and they didn't pay me. Have times changed so much? Why would you imply that two relationships are in any way comparable?

Owning a device does not grant you a right to violate people's privacy - if you lease a car, is it okay for the rental company to install cameras in it and record you having sex in it?

[ziddoap]

Surely you understand why a school-owned and school-provided device is monitored by the school, and why this scenario is not directly comparable to a car lease (with a lease being quite a different contract, with different goals and legal mechanisms)?

Whether or not you are being paid is irrelevant - the key part is that some other entity is providing hardware that they own and allowing you to use it under certain conditions. Those conditions are: use it for the purposes agreed upon, and the device will be monitored to ensure it is being used for only the purposes agreed upon.

I certainly don't think we're doing our kids any favors with the constant and forced surveillance 24/7. But I can understand why an organization wants to keep their hardware managed.

[ClumsyPilot]

Not at all, I do not see how a school's interest in monitoring a measly $300 chromebook outweighs a child's privacy. Meanwhile sportscars are used to break the actuall law, not T&C, daily, and occasionally kills people, yet company's interest in monitoring their $150,000 vehicle doesn't seem to matter.

The only difference here is that kids are powerless, unlike customers renting sportscars for $$.

[jjav]

> Surely you understand why a school-owned and school-provided device is monitored by the school

Not at all, no. Ownership of the device (worth very little, maybe I'd feel different if it was a $100+K instrument on loan) should morally grant no spying rights whatsoever to the owner.

Privacy of the person, but particularly a child, far outweighs the importance of any cheap gadget.

[lamontcg]

The fact that we think that either of those are okay is wrong.

The fact that you're sitting there wondering how I could possibly object to something so normal and obviously correct is precisely the entire fucking problem.

None of these invasions of privacy should be allowed or considered normal.

[iainmerrick]

I don't understand why the parents are letting the school into their kids heads while they're at home to begin with.

Homework, no?

[lamontcg]

Deliberate misreading of what I meant. No.

[interpol_p]

I value the privacy of my children and have trusted them with their devices for the most part. I avoided parental controls and blocking applications, I don't monitor them or know their passwords

But once my oldest (9) started disappearing with his iPad for too often and too long, I did browse his YouTube history (I had to ask him to unlock his iPad, as I don't have or know the passcode). And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old. I have also made it a rule that computing and screen time needs to happen in family areas

I still feel like I violated his trust. But I also feel like I can't responsibly allow him to have access to YouTube or the full Internet without experiencing negative effects to his emotional development. I am unsure if I am a helicopter parent in this situation, and if I went too far

[VRay]

ah, your parents probably didn't let you rent whatever you wanted from Blockbuster or buy porno magazines at the convenience store, seems like it's basically the same thing

[shantnutiwari]

> And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old.

Did the same for my 6 year old. Yes, there is a lot of stuff I dont want my kid watching.

He used to watch video game videos, mainly by other kids, so I didnt mind.

Then one day, I heard him swearing. Looks like some (a lot?) of these kids swear, even in games like minecraft. And they use sexist language; again, these are videos by kids, some just a few years older than my son.

And now Youtube is banned.

I dont understand where this "helicopter" parent thing comes from. Like another commenter says, will you let you kids eat anything they want? Watch TV till 11 in the night?

[leppr]

I'm curious what do you mean by "adult content" on YouTube? Like sexually explicit or suggestive things, music videos, etc, or rather some other too mature topics?

[interpol_p]

There are a lot of sexually explicit videos on YouTube. I didn't realise and it was totally my fault for not looking into it as soon as YouTube usage started going up

[leppr]

Ok, I guess some slip through because they should normally require age verification. Even medical videos like breast cancer screening are classified.

[TeMPOraL]

Does Google have a reliable way of doing age verification on YouTube these days, or is it still as easy as creating a new GMail account?

[hkt]

For what it is worth, I have a son a little younger than yours and have decided I will do the same.

My reasoning is that these platforms (as we've recently seen) know full well that they cause harm. That gets verified pretty regularly by independent researchers. Standing by and letting a preteen deal with that on their own has predictable enough results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life and part of that involves deploying myself as a kind of surrogate sense of self regulation when his fails. I'm pretty liberal and allow privacy on most things (I would never read a diary etc) but draw a line between what he consumes and produces. Privacy is for production, at the moment. Private consumption can come later.

tl;dr you did right, imo.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life

Yes and also to protect him from the adults who author addictive, compelling content that a 9-year old can’t be mature enough to protect against.

If you don’t regulate his internet activity, why do you regulate his diet? Why not allow him to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants?

[asddubs]

I think it's kind of a reverse anthromorphization, where you don't really think about the specific thing that's happening (some random person getting access to your kids private communication), but think of it as just some abstract thing

[streamofdigits]

Alas not enough people are "pissed off". Societies, in particular the US, are now taking unprecedented risks, dissolving long-standing practices, trampling on moral standards, pursuing massive violations of trust, all in the name of profit making (that - in the scheme of things - is actually quite puny).

Now, it is clear that the diffusion of digital technology invariably takes us to different pastures. We are not in Kansas anymore when everybody carries a connected supercomputer. Both parenting and education will be impacted and will never be the same again. A new equilibrium must be found. But what is happening in the past decade or so is just an unwarranted wild west that capitalizes (literally) on ignorance, inertia, confusion, regulatory capture and political dysfunction.

[bryanrasmussen]

>(less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you).

Most services do not have the direct and easy to apply capability to physically harm you or your family.

[ClumsyPilot]

They do, someone got a loan in my friends name and racked up debt, and they probably got his data from a data leak - ofcourse its impossible to prove.

[bryanrasmussen]

the words physically is generally not considered synonymous with financially.

[judge2020]

> the former can be trusted way more than the latter (less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you).

How is this remotely true? The stranger, after you stop paying them for the service, might spread lies about you, treat your child badly, show your child things you wouldn’t want (guns, drugs, movies, etc). The faceless corporation directly profits off the information it gains, but you can be sure the access control and security measures taken by them mean it’ll never be used to oust something embarrassing about you to your community. Only a dozen or so engineers at Google have direct database access and all of that access is logged and audited.

[ClumsyPilot]

"you can be sure the access control and security measures taken by them"

How could you possible write this, did you live under a rock for the past 10 years?

Big Co's have literally extorted people and leaked their sex tapes, Vigilante placed bounties on people's heads, Equifax left national databases unsecured, phone operstors have sold realtime location to the highest bigger and left the website to access it unsecured, the list goes on an on. Unbelievable!

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-shells-out-millions-of-d...

[pomian]

Not in a hundred years. Now. Today. Yesterday. We people, are appalled. Yet we still see the creep of ever surveillance. No privacy = no freedom.

[onethought]

I agree with you. I'm not sure I see the direct link between privacy and freedom.

I can be free to do what ever I like, with a complete lack of privacy. Inversely I can lose all my freedom but have relative privacy (i.e solitary confinement). It seems more, repercussion curtails freedom, not privacy. (Perhaps a pointless distinction).

[rocqua]

No privacy means you need to consider what you do in light of who might judge you for it. That very strongly stifles dissent, just because people self-censor out of fear.

Imagine the principal was a bit of a bully, and students knew he could sometimes read their chat messages. They would probably be a lot less likely to talk with each other, or even with their parents, about the bad behavior of the principal. To my mind, this would make the students less free.

[onethought]

Yes, It was probably a silly distinction. But I think trust is what leads to freedom, and privacy is used to reduce the need for trust. But there are other ways to build strong trust (or trust-less) networks.

[ClumsyPilot]

"I'm not sure I see the direct link between privacy and freedom."

Have you seen "never talk to the police" video, explaining that not even congress know how many different crimes/laws are on the books?

Explaining how easy it is to charge a random person with a crime and get a conviction based on just ill reflection of their character?

Can you draw the logical connection between lack of privacy and how easy it makes it to charge random people arbitrarily? How this could be used for political gain, profit or to supress dissent?

[onethought]

But you are merging issues. The US having complicated sets of laws isn't really an argument for/against privacy... it's an argument for reform.

I can definitely see how a lack of privacy can be used against you. But I'm just saying it's correlative or causative. i.e you can be fairly transparent with a group, and still be relatively free with that group. The privacy isn't what leads to that freedom, it is trust.

At the government level, that is possibly non-existent. But I think it's important to remember that it's trust (or not needing trust) that is the driver of freedom, not other factors.

[ClumsyPilot]

In principle your arguments are reasonable, but i don't think they are achievable.

Trust is cool, but it's a system designed for friends and family. Can you trust 300 million people with you internet banking password? It's statistically inevitable that some or them are dumb, evil, crazy, or all of the above.

"isn't really an argument for/against privacy... it's an argument for reform."

I don't think its possible to reduce laws to such an extent, lawyers can't know all the laws in the same way developers can't know all the code, and you can't fit all the code of a modern computer into something manageable. Every country I know of is in a similar situation.

Basically thats why we have warrants for search, right to silence and make dragnets illegal.

Also world without privacy is a world where anyone can impersonate you and commit fraud, and anyone can sue you, and even if they loose, financially ruin you.

[onethought]

I agree on all fronts. I don't think we should aim for zero privacy... and you are right it could be a dystopia existence.

But there is a balance where if we view trust as the key, and privacy as the ability to control trust. Then we can come up with solutions that may compromise privacy to some degree but maintain trust. (I don't know what they are, I'm speaking in the rather useless abstract).

More we might miss some good solutions if we are blindly protecting privacy (which is the natural knee jerk I end up with)

[webreac]

Privacy never existed. When everybody knew each other in a village, kids were under many eyes.

[bmn__]

> Privacy never existed.

False.

Correct is: privacy as a concept already existed in the Ancient era. It is one of the younger human rights, it gained wide-spread adoption in society/culture and accompanying recognition in law about 200 to 100 years ago.

[okamiueru]

If you define privacy as to be "when watched", then, sure, we've never had privacy. But that I don't think that definition is accepted by many, and it'll lead to an unproductive discussion.

The expectation of privacy has always been when traditionally not under the eyes of others. We've always had this in villages where kids sneak away from supervision.

[bencollier49]

What we're talking about now is different. It's non-privacy without community. Humans function properly in small tribal groups. If the person invading your privacy is a faceless bureaucrat, then you're much more likely to be misjudged. That's the problem.

[watwut]

> Humans function properly in small tribal groups. If the person invading your privacy is a faceless bureaucrat, then you're much more likely to be misjudged. That's the problem.

Small closed groups feature bullying or enable serious abusers fairly often. Misjudging kids or mistreating them, domestic violence, guys beating weaker guys were just fact of life in villages.

[ekianjo]

even in a village nobody knew what you were doing inside your home. lets not forget that.

[JumpCrisscross]

> its own way of mistreating children

I am unsurprised that the Minneapolis public school system deploys Gaggle while New York private schools implement no-screen policies.

[samstave]

And how invariably, some groups find away to spy on children in a sexualized manner

[popcube]

I trust the more important problem is education of kids, kids will not always grow and become a virtuous guy. they need help and teach, but now parents even argue to teacher for let their do not need to write homework...

[petermcneeley]

This has nothing to do with the rights of children. This is about the school system as an ever present overbearing parent in place of the Childs real parents. Children do not have the right to privacy they are not adults.

[cybernautique]

I disagree, emphatically. Privacy _is_ a human right; nobody has the right, privilege, or ability to intrude and exfiltrate data from my mind. Computers are nothing less and nothing more than an amplification system for the mind. It ought to share the same privileged status as our deepest, innermost thoughts.

Children have a right to privacy.

[jbpnoy6fifty]

My biggest concern regards the balance between privacy and monitoring is that children nowadays (and even adults) are highly enabled to commit social bullying. Nothing is really disciplining them properly, causing recurring “bowling for Columbine” events we see almost bi-monthly.

It doesn’t help that foreign states are probably working to purposely inhibit or even disable American society as a community function. (See news about Russian state companies and Facebook manipulation from more recent news)

Privacy is important, but public safety has a higher priority.

The biggest risk is abuse of the data, not the basic mission of these monitoring services

[JumpCrisscross]

> children nowadays (and even adults) are highly enabled to commit social bullying

Do we have any evidence that Gaggle-like services reduce bullying?

[cybernautique]

Yes, the biggest risk is abuse of the data- but the basic mission of monitoring is also an unacceptable risk. To me, this is similar to the notion: "Yeah, we're building a nitrous fertilizer bomb in the shed, but the _real risk_ is if our neighbor tosses a smoldering cigarette butt into the yard. The grass could catch fire!"

I also respectfully disagree. I'm a sincere egoist, so I say that: no, public safety is not a "higher priority" than _my_ rights, nor is it of a higher priority than any individuals' rights.

I think the solution to bullying, and generally the unwelcome encroachment of others into our spaces, is some ability to rebuke the interlocutors' access to our space entirely, permanently, and even prematurely. You'll notice that the goal of surveillance is antithetical to this, entirely; I take it to mean that the possibility of bullying is endemic to surveillance. You can not have surevillance without the opportunity for gross abuses.

Don't get me wrong, I do care for public safety and the collective well-being. But that is because I choose to care, because I choose to sacrifice of my means and materials in the times and places that I find necessary. The goal should not be, that we allow people their freedoms except where it is inconvenient to the collective purpose. The goal should be, to empower upright and moral citizens to understand their innate ability to make the world better.

Yes, this is an imperfect solution to the collective well-being. There will often be times where such individuals do not understand or accept their privilege to enrich the world of themselves; and, at the end of the cultural moment when the cards are dealt and the pot is dealt, we might find that such an approach is utterly immeritous toward the goal of preserving our common heritage. If this should happen, then that will be a great tragedy indeed; yet it won't be so great by half as the tragedy of even a single human being denied the full fruit and art of living with their full power.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to draw a line between privacy and anonymity. Privacy means I ought to have a space where nobody can exfiltrate resources from. This does not enable bullying, because bullying requires some degree of interconnection, whereas privacy must be specifically preserved where intercomnectivity is the state of business. Anonymity, I grant you, does allow bullying (to the degree that anonymity allows you to interconnect while refusing to allow other parties to identify you.) I will entertain conversations about the dangers of anonymity, because I think there is a happy middle between "don't track me" and "interact with me as a known quantity."

Surveillance is antithetical to both privacy and anonymity. To the degree it is antithetical to privacy, I will fight it tooth and nail, and forever condemn the sniveling ne'er-do-wells that think themselves privileged in _my_ spaces.

[onethought]

> I also respectfully disagree. I'm a sincere egoist, so I say that: no, public safety is not a "higher priority" than _my_ rights, nor is it of a higher priority than any individuals' rights.

Isn't the problem with this position that you cannot reach "universal rights" if you approach from individual self-interest. What if my particular circumstances mean that I don't want everyone to have Right X? I see egoism and universal rights as incompatible. Perhaps I look at it the wrong way.

> I think the solution to bullying, and generally the unwelcome encroachment of others into our spaces, is some ability to rebuke the interlocutors' access to our space entirely, permanently, and even prematurely.

This doesn't handle the very real threat of Grooming, or unrecognised bullying. Children will tolerate quite a lot before they even realise it's not healthy.

I am a strong proponent of privacy, but I don't see an easy solution to children online. It shouldn't be black box, as they can easily end up on the wrong side of the internet. But it equally should not be a white box.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I’m guessing you don’t have any kids age 5 or older.

[riversflow]

>Privacy _is_ a human right.

>Children have a right to privacy.

I can't agree with this. I'm a staunch privacy advocate by normal millennial standards(by HN standards I'm probably middle of the road for the privacy concerned group) But certainly privacy is a privilege, maybe one you get de facto at some point, somewhat akin to voting, but obviously in certain situations people lose their privacy rights. In an extreme situation you could look at a prisoner, but also consider that we allow people to be monitored at work - and we have legal methods of removing privacy as well - a search warrant for example, or sexual predator lists.

>Computers are nothing less and nothing more than an amplification system for the mind.

The same could be said about automobiles being an amplification system for the legs, but you have to get a license to drive one because of the destruction that they can cause.

It is likewise with a computer; people here, of all places, should understand how destructive a computer can be. Look at how people are polluting their minds with misinformation and divisiveness on social media, or in more extreme cases, doing things like using bot nets to DDoS websites. Children don't have enough understanding of the world to be given privacy. If a toddler locks themselves in the bathroom, you shouldn't have to respect their privacy if you think they have gotten into the medicine cabinet, you open the door.

I think the whole concept of remote administered tests is ludicrous, a physical presence with a proctor is the minimum standard for a trustworthy results that's not 1:1 video chatting for the entire duration(and even that can be gamed to some extent). To me it makes absolute sense in a competitive academic environment like a school to have keyloggers and network IP monitoring if you want any semblance of fairness. Make kids use a certain, monitored machine for schoolwork. Otherwise those who can afford to and/or have the propensity will cheat. Unless of course you're fine with academic achievement being an even stronger proxy for class.

I'm not saying kids can't have privacy mind you, and especially not that we should give up privacy entirely. But I don't think that kids should have a right to privacy with regards to their education.