Policing Students Online: The Increasing Threat of School-Sanctioned Digital Surveillance

School closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created yet another opportunity for the surveillance industry to profit off of a national crisis and exacerbate harm to already marginalized students. As many school districts transitioned to online learning, technology companies benefited from a surge in sales of surveillance systems designed specifically to spy on K–12 students’ online activities as they learned from home.3 While tech companies and school administrators claim that such products will protect student safety, students, parents, and civil rights groups have raised concerns that they actually cause serious harm, posing significant threats to students’ privacy and free speech rights and upholding a long legacy of racist policing in public schools. Similar to other forms of surveillance, marginalized students—particularly students of color and LGBTQ students—will continue to bear the brunt of these rights violations and adverse impacts. This article 1) examines this troubling yet increasingly prevalent technology, highlighting the significant harms perpetuated by these surveillance systems and the ways in which they function as a covert form of policing;4 2) identifies the ways in which deployment of K–12 surveillance systems conflict with California privacy rights and equity interests; and 3) recommends next steps to make sure that the rights of California’s K–12 students are respected, and that policing in the form of digital surveillance—not just school police—are eliminated from public schools.