Schools in China have been using intelligent uniforms to monitor students’ attendance for a few years now. Students or their parents don’t have a choice as schools require students to wear these uniforms. Software within the uniforms notifies school authorities when a student enters a class or leaves it. Then, the authorities send this information to parents and teachers.

Scientists produced intelligent uniforms as the Communist Party requested to create smart campuses. The Communist Party believes that monitoring students will help to improve their grades.

Students’ privacy concerns

Yet, is such technology too invasive and violates students’ privacy? During class hours, the school tracks students’ geolocation at all times. If a pupil is not in a class, they can find out where they are from the intelligent uniforms data. Are students also tracked after school hours? Lin Zongwu, the principal of one of China’s schools, is justifying the situation. He says: “We choose not to check the accurate location of students after school, but when the student is missing and skipping classes, the uniforms help locate them.”

The wording itself is rather vague. The authorities “choose” not to check students’ locations after school, but is there any guarantee that’s the case? In other words, is there anyone watching the watcher?

Before creating new tracking systems, schools have to consider security. Do they have enough resources to create a safe and secure network? That sounds unlikely as even huge companies like Facebook are facing security issues and breaches.

Started using facial recognition to monitor pupils attentiveness

The Hangzhou №11 High School installed facial-recognition cameras in their classrooms. Cameras monitor each student’s expressions and behavior to make sure they are paying attention. Cameras record behaviors such as writing, speaking, and hand-raising. The system can even detect if the student is trying to sleep during class. Then, software flags recorded behaviors as positive or negative and provide data points. Teachers say that after checking annual reports of the data, they know where the student could improve.

Not only is this system privacy-invasive, but it also raises a question — is the school doing enough to protect sensitive data? What if the schools’ system gets hacked and criminals retrieve all the information?

Hackers target schools

Well, such a scenario is not too far fetched. Recently, Long Island schools were hacked and forced to pay $88,000 in ransom to get back the stolen students’ and staff information. The virus deleted student and staff records and transferred them to the hackers’ system. How did this happen? One of the administrators received an email and clicked on an infected attachment.

Sadly, does the schools’ staff receive adequate training in cybersecurity. Not clicking on unknown email attachments is one of the basic steps of staying safe online. Hence, we can expect such breaches to happen more often.

Also, some schools in the US began tracking the location of their students. Did the schools consider the possible damage in the case of a breach?

Safeguard yourself online

Currently, you can not trust authorities to protect your data. You have to take matters into your own hands. Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one of the best choices you can make in this digital age. VPN encrypts all of your internet traffic, and you leave no digital footprints behind.

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