Riktigt trevligt! Kamp lönar sig! Studentjournalisterna kunde ange skäl att övervakningen av deras enheter kunde avslöja deras källor

When Lawrence Public Schools deployed spyware last fall, district officials said it would help them respond to a growing mental health crisis by monitoring students’ correspondence, photos, classwork and files.

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Last week, after five months of sometimes-tense negotiations, the district agreed to remove student journalists from the surveillance program. But the journalists want assurances that the rest of the students, and future students, won’t be subjected to unwarranted intrusions.

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The school board last year entered a three-year, $162,285.75 agreement with Gaggle, a company that uses artificial intelligence to monitor school-owned devices and storage spaces for references to self-harm, depression, drug use and violence. The district purchased the spyware with a grant to comply with Kansas State Board of Education standards for safe and secure schools.

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Max Kautsch, a First Amendment attorney, said programs like Gaggle’s “create a security state within public schools that has an unreasonably chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech, such as statements critical of the administration.”

“By using Gaggle, the school is effectively proactively gagging its students, even those seeking to express core political speech, in a form of impermissible prior restraint,” Kautsch said.