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Additional Questions About How inBloom, Schools, Districts, and States Store Data

Posted April 1st, 2013 by Bill

Over the last few days, I spent a little time looking over the inBloom Data Store Logical Model. Based on what I have seen there, I have some additional questions and observations about the data that is stored within the system. The questions included here are not comprehensive by any means. Rather, this is a short list compiled after spending around an hour reviewing the data model.

A. inBloom Could Be Used to Screen Immigration Status

inBloom can store information about how a person verifies their identity. The values used here could be used as a screen to check immigration status. Given some of the laws passed at the state level, I would hope that schools would not be passing on this information. What educational goals are supported by collecting this data?

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I also like how "Family Bible" is included as a proof of ID.

B. Getting Ready For People to Opt Out

inBloom appears be anticipating that people will opt out of tests. The Reason Not Tested list includes parental waivers, and parents opting out.

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Using this data, people or organizations with access to data stored in inBloom could create a rolodex of parents - complete with addresses, emails, and contact info - who are opting out of testing.

C. Getting Ready To Restrain

inBloom has the capacity to track when students are restrained.

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However, inBloom makes no similar accomodations for tracking students that are subject to corporal punishment. According to congressional testimony (quoted below), there are between 2 and 3 million occurrences of students being hit in school each year, and corporal punishment is legal in 30 states. Given how inBloom supports tracking other disciplinary actions, this seems like an odd and unnecessary omission.

The prevalence of corporal punishment of children in schools remains high in the United States. In spite of many education and other national groups calling for corporal punishment in schools to be banned, the United States remains one of the few industrialized countries allowing corporal punishment in 30 states.\2,21\ According to the Office of Civil Rights (2007), school officials, including teachers, administered corporal punishment to 223,190 school children across the nation during the 2006-2007 school year.\8,12\ Experts note that there are about 1.5 million reported cases of physical punishment in school each year, but calculate the actual number to be at least 2-3 million; as a result of such punishment, 10,000-20,000 students request subsequent medical treatment each year.\8,9,12\ During this same period, the top ten states for students being hit were, in order of highest to lowest frequency: Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, Missouri, and Florida.

D. What Student Characteristics Really Matter?

inBloom supports the ability for schools to track Student Characteristics

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Apparently, "Immigrant" and "Single mother" are "conditions" that get recorded. See point A, above, about how inBloom could be used to target families based on immigration status.

E. Collecting Social Security Numbers

According to the enumerations, Social Security Numbers are among the ID's stored by inBloom for both Staff and Students.

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Additionally, inBloom's FAQ states that social security numbers will be stored if everyone agrees that they should:

inBloom discourages storing social security numbers in its data service, but legally school districts and state may record student social security numbers. inBloom prohibits storage of social security numbers in the data store unless agreed to by both inBloom and the state/district on a case-by-case basis.

However, less than a month ago, Iwan Streichenberger, the CEO of inBloom appeared to say (via Twitter) that inBloom does not store Social Security numbers. As I asked a couple days ago, however, it looks like inBloom defers to states and/or districts, and that they will store what they are provided.

Closing Thoughts

In many ways, inBloom is helping to bring visibility to the issue of data collection, data storage, and data sharing. inBloom is a data store, collecting data from many sources into one location. inBloom is different than other past efforts for its scale and partnership efforts. It would be great to see inBloom and the various agencies collecting data be more proactive about how data is collected, when the collected data can be reviewed by students, teachers, and parents, and how inaccurate date in the system can be reviewed or deleted. Right now, inBloom appears pretty silent on most of these questions, which does nothing to dispel concerns about how - and by whom - the data will be used.

When data is collected at scale, on a large number of people, over time, the role of for-profit companies in the ecosystem needs to be blatantly, obviously clear. When a data set is large enough, even a small number of data points from within that data set can be used to target and identify individuals within that data set. Given the value of student data, and the lack of transparency around how that data is used once it has been handed over, both inBloom and any schools, districts, and states collecting data need to clarify the rules, and how people can be certain these rules are being followed. In the absence of guarantees, students and parents need to be given access to their data so they can review and correct it as needed.

As we have seen, sometimes data is completely worthless. Moreover, if a student is at a school where corporal punishment is practiced, how much can we trust a discipline report from the same person who hits kids in the name of education? There are lot of open questions here, and these open questions undermine the value of any data that would be collected at scale.

Most importantly, kids aren't going to school to provide researchers with data points. The purpose of school isn't to get people comfortable with life under constant observation. The endless efforts at data collection to capture what "works" with learning have the potential to disrupt the learning they are trying to capture. Learning requires trust; treating students like subjects - rather than people - is a surefire way to erode trust before it has a chance to get started. Without clear, obvious, and fully transparent rules around data collection and how that data is managed, we run the risk of observing our public education system into irrelevance.

The inBloom Data Model: What Is A Unique State Identifier?

Posted March 29th, 2013 by Bill

In the inBloom data model, there are four instances where people are tied to what is called a Unique State Identifier.

A Unique State Identifier is defined as:

A unique numeric code assigned to a person by a state education agency.

The people identified by the Unique State Identifier are:

Clearly, inBloom is storing an incredibly large amount of personal data about students, parents, teachers, and staff (and that alone makes me wonder - how would bankers feel if we pushed that much data about their daily activities into a datastore, and then allowed for-profit companies to access that information to make banking more efficient? But I digress). At various points, it has been reported that inBloom is storing Social Security Numbers. inBloom has denied that.

But, after reading through the spec (where there is no mention of Social Security Numbers) it seems like the main unique ID for parents, staff, students, and teachers is this Unique State Identifier. My question is: how many states, if any, use a person's social security number for this? It seems like inBloom is deferring to states on this, but if states are using social security numbers for their unique ids, that changes the conversation.

Does anyone have accurate information on this? Please, if this is completely wrong or off base, let me know.

Social Media and Cooperative Surveillance

Posted June 20th, 2011 by Bill

So the Bruins won the Super Bowl. Or something like that.

And in the aftermath, people rioted in Vancouver. And in those riots, pictures and videos were taken.

And some people took it upon themselves to identify the rioters.

Stanley Cup

And after the aftermath - with nearly 170 people treated in hospitals, volunteers cleaning up the city, people began to ask questions about surveillance and the role of social media.

In the comments of her post linked above, Alexandra Samuel extends her original thoughts to include the "slippery slope" argument:

I don't see how we can claim to be uncomfortable with mass surveillance -- to fear Big Brother -- but then make exceptions when it's convenient, or feels important. This is a slippery slope and we can't draw too many simple lines -- even a line based on exposing illegal behaviour (as opposed to legal but controversial). Remember that there are places where it's illegal to smoke dope, or criticize the government, or hold hands with someone who is the same gender as you. Do we accept social media surveillance in those contexts?

To start, it's worth pointing out that most slippery slope arguments aren't worth the air required to set them loose. A "slippery slope" argument assumes that we live in a world with moral absolutes, and that making a "wrong" choice plunges us into the abyss of uncertainty and ambiguity.

But with that said, to all those who argue that using social media to identify rioters to the state are engaging in community surveillance/crowdsourcing big brother/engaging in nefarious deeds to further the expansion of the omnipresent nanny state: you are late to the game. That ship has sailed. People are reporting on one another, and have been for years, well before the advent of the social web. Perversely enough, people using Facebook are complicit in building their own Panopticon. And, in using sites like Facebook - where people throw their contact information, their interests, the places they like to go, the people they like and dislike, things they buy, games they play (and how they play them), what they look like, what their friends look like, etc, etc - people leave a broad data trail. Even rough data shows a lot about individuals; more sophisticated datasets allow for more sophisticated predictions.

It would be interesting to look at what could be discerned from a person's datastream on Facebook, combined with the data accessible via the phones and laptops we use, and how close that woud come to supporting the data needed to make the Information Awareness Office a reality.

But to return to the argument of what constitutes an appropriate use for social media, and what level of privacy is reasonable to expect: we need to ground these conversations within the historical reality that people have been disagreeing, behaving badly, attempting to avoid responsibility - and then talking about it - for centuries (as an aside, Augustine would have had an AWESOME twitter feed). Social media just lets us get the word out faster.

And, if you are now concerned about privacy, and the relationship between surveillance, privacy, and the state, there is one thing you can do right now to make it better: stop using Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, etc, as outreach and communication tools. To use social media is to participate in a continuous act of cooperative surveillance: sometimes we're watching ourselves, sometimes we're watching others, sometimes we're being watched, but the difference between sharing and observing is largely a matter of the side of the window you're on.

For the many self-proclaimed "social media consultants": stop advocating an expanded use of Facebook, Twitter, etc, to the detriment of an organization's primary web site. If you have engaged in such unseemly behavior in the past, it's never too late to admit your mistakes. Just stop repeating them. And if you have been working in social media for more than 15 minutes and are actually surprised by privacy implications, you can always go back to selling cars.

Seriously, though, if you are giving advice to an organization that does social justice work, be very careful of the relationships you encourage them to foster on external social sites. Given Facebook's unclear direction in China, the ease in which apps can access and store user data, the way bugs leak private data, and Facebook's own hamfisted "privacy" efforts (from Beacon to facial recognition and everything in between), encouraging social justice-oriented groups to work on Facebook could be putting people at unnecessary risk.

As we talk about privacy and surveillance, we need to remember that a key difference between a surveillance tool and a tool for individual or collective empowerment is who controls the data, and how that data is used.

Image Credit: "Patrice Bergeron" taken by slidingsideways, published under an Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license.

Google and Data Collection

Posted October 24th, 2010 by Bill

Last May, Google announced that it had accidentally collected personally identifiable information as part of capturing data for the Street View functionality of Google Maps.

A look at the technical aspects of what was collected, and why, tends to support Google's explanation that this was accidental, and not anywhere near as big a deal as people wanted it to be.

New Camera

Please don't misunderstand - Google has plenty of issues with user privacy, and the ramifications for student privacy as more K-12 schools transition to Google Apps are mind-boggling. But, the kerfuffle over data collected for Street View is overblown.

Moreover, Google appears to be taking steps to mitigate this, and they are candid about their role in the failure, and clear about the steps they are taking to improve it. Other companies with widespread privacy issues (cough cough Facebook cough cough) could learn from how Google is handling this.

Image Credit: Photo "New 'Camera'" taken by Sherman Tan, published under an Attribution license.

Have Fun Explaining This To Parents As Your School Transitions To Google Apps

Posted September 14th, 2010 by Bill

While this is likely an isolated incident, it certainly raises questions about what happens to a student's personal information (also known as their thoughts, and portions of the intellectual explorations that make up their life) when it is sent to a large company. In this case, an engineer at Google was allegedly fired for accessing the accounts of minors:

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? More to the point, how would you know? 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?

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