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Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The ‘Spy High' Digital Dystopia: Amazon Doc Probes Student Surveillance Harms
School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here. It all began when school officials mistook a blurry image of a Mike and Ike candy for pills. Pennsylvania teenager Blake Robbins found himself at the center of a digital surveillance controversy that gave rise to student privacy debates amid schools' growing reliance on ed tech. Spy High, a four-part documentary series streaming now on Amazon Prime, puts the focus on a lawsuit filed in 2010 after Robbins' affluent Pennsylvania school district accused him of dealing drugs — a conclusion officials reached after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in hand. The moment had been captured on the webcam of his school-issued laptop — one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed. I caught up with Spy High Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz to discuss why the 15-year-old case offers cautionary lessons about student surveillance gone awry and how it informs contemporary student privacy debates. Read the full interview here. How student surveillance plays out today: Meet the gatekeepers of students' private lives. | The 74 Courts block DEI directive: Three federal courts ordered temporary halts on Thursday to Trump's efforts to cancel student diversity initiatives — and demands for states to pledge allegiance to the administration's interpretation of civil rights laws. | The 74President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that called for school discipline models 'rooted in American values and traditional virtues,' taking aim at Obama- and Biden-era efforts to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. | Politico 'The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed': Disability-rights advocates have decried plans at the National Institutes of Health to compile Amerians' private medical records in a 'disease registry' to track children and other people with autism. | The 74 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism for recent comments that many kids 'were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they're 2 years old.' | ABC News A new lawsuit filed by students at military-run schools accuses the Defense Department of harming their learning opportunities by banning books related to 'gender ideology' or 'divisive equity ideology,' including texts that refer to slavery and sexual harassment prevention. | Military Times Get the most critical news and information about students' rights, safety and well-being delivered straight to your inbox. California lawmakers are demanding answers after Department of Homeland Security agents visited two Los Angeles elementary schools and asked to speak with five students who the federal agency said 'arrived unaccompanied at the border.' | LAist 'We all deserve reparations': White House aide Stephen Miller said in an interview last week the country 'used to have a functioning public school system' until it was destroyed by 'open borders.' | The New Republic The Justice Department seized thousands of photos and videos in an investigation of a former University of Michigan assistant football coach who was indicted on allegations he hacked into student athletes' private accounts to steal intimate images. | CBS Sports A 48-year-old mother was arrested and accused of bringing a gun to her daughter's Indiana elementary school and threatening the girl's teacher over a classroom assignment about flags. While discussing flags, the teacher reportedly referred to a rainbow flag in the classroom with the words 'be kind.' | NBC News Banning 'frontal nudity': A Texas school district has removed lessons on Virginia history from an online learning platform for elementary school students because the commonwealth's flag depicts the Roman goddess Virtus with an exposed breast. | Axios The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month to weigh Trump's executive order eliminating birthright citizenship, bringing into question a 127-year-old court precedent. | NPR A class-action lawsuit accuses tech giant Google of amassing 'thousands of data points that span a child's life' without the consent of students or their parents. | Bloomberg Law A Florida teacher is out of a job after she called a student by their preferred name, allegedly violating a 2023 Florida law that requires schools to receive parental permission to refer to students by anything other than their legal names. | Click Orlando The vice president of the Buffalo, New York, chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse was arrested and accused of sex crimes against children. | WIVB Supreme Court Shows Support for Parents Who Want Opt-Outs from LGBTQ Storybooks 'There Goes My Son's Help:' Wave of Washington Head Starts Shut Down as Chaos Engulfs Federal Program State Officials Sue Trump Administration for Halting COVID School Aid Protecting Children Online Takes Technology, Human Oversight and Accountability Don't even think about touching Matilda's cactus.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Yahoo
‘Spy High:' Amazon Documentary Probes Dangers of Online Student Surveillance
It all began with a pixelated image of a Mike and Ike: the colorful, fruity candy that with a digital blur and authorities' preconceived notions could perhaps be mistaken for a pill. That's what happened to 15-year-old Blake Robbins, who was accused by officials in Pennsylvania's affluent Lower Merion School District of dealing drugs in 2009 after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in his hand. The moment was captured by the webcam on his school-issued laptop, one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed. Robbins sued and the subsequent case, dubbed 'WebcamGate,' is at the center of Spy High, a four-part documentary series now streaming on Amazon Prime, that examines the high-profile student surveillance scandal and the explosion of student privacy threats that followed it. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The Lower Merion School District, which settled the class-action lawsuit, was an early adopter of one-to-one computer education technology programs that provide school-issued laptops to students. Such programs have since become mainstream nationwide, particularly since the pandemic. So, too, have digital surveillance tools like Gaggle and GoGuardian, which alert educators when students express thoughts of self-harm or discuss topics deemed taboo, like sex, violence or drugs. Directed by Jody McVeigh-Schultz and executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, the documentary offers a cautionary tale about what happens when student monitoring initiatives — often intended to promote young people's safety and well-being — go awry. It also explores how covert student surveillance intersects with far-reaching school equity issues involving race, disability, privilege and discipline. After years of reporting on digital student surveillance myself, I caught up last week with McVeigh-Schultz, whose other documentaries include Shiny Happy People about reality TV's seemingly wholesome Duggar family and the Emmy-nominated The Murders at Starved Rock, which delves into the brutal 1960 killing of three women in an Illinois state park. We talked about what he wants viewers to take away from the Robbins' scandal 15 years after it unfolded and the lessons it holds for contemporary student privacy debates and schools' growing reliance on ed tech. The interview was edited for length and clarity. What motivated you to take a deep dive into the Robbins case, and why is it important right now? I grew up just outside of Philly in a suburb called Cheltenham and I had heard about this story. I knew Lower Merion as the high school that Kobe [Bryant] went to. That's what it was famous for, but I knew about the Robbins story and I was like, 'That's crazy,' when I heard about it back in 2010 and then I kind of never heard anything more about it. It was a really big story and then just kind of went away. When we talked to folks from wealthy suburbs outside of Philadelphia, I think it's very clear to me that one of the key indicators of status is education. It's more important than anything else to people. The public schools in Lower Merion are really highly rated and people care a ton about the quality of the education and the image of the institution. What are the real world implications of that? In this case, the way it played out, some of the things that happened were counterintuitive. Many folks from that community didn't want to see a lawsuit come to bear against their school. It was like, 'Oh well, you know, this actually is perhaps going to affect our home values,' if you're selling your home and the biggest selling point is the quality of the education. That's something that you wouldn't expect to be one of the first reactions to finding out that the schools may be surveilling your kids. But it was, and the fact that the Robbins family had lived in the community for a long time but just weren't considered part of the in-group just because of who they were was very interesting and, I think, led to people being skeptical of them. The documentary leaves it up to you to decide whether that skepticism is deserved or not. Absolutely. The documentary certainly highlights how people are complex and have complicated stories. What did you learn about debates over personal privacy, especially when it comes to information about children? People's expectations of how much privacy you should be afforded, and how much you should expect without having to ask any questions, those expectations vary a lot. Somebody who was interviewed in a news piece that ran in 2010 said, 'You know, this is the school district's laptop, they could tap in at any time and rightfully so.' I'm a parent, I have a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old who's in first grade. To me, that seems a bit absurd, but the truth is, I think there are certain contexts where a school-issued laptop is going to be surveilled. We know it's going to be surveilled, but we don't expect that it will be able to take pictures in our kids' bedrooms. Related To me it's a matter of where are [the] spaces where we should reasonably expect privacy? Transparency is the most important aspect of all of this. Not only were there no conversations going on like, 'Hey look, these laptops are going to be surveilled in a number of ways. You should not be leaving them open in your bedroom, You should not be going on any website you wouldn't want your principal to also see.' The IT department specifically thought it would be a bad idea if parents and students were alerted to the existence of the software that could take images. They felt like, 'Well then we won't be able to recover the stolen laptop because people will just put tape over it.' Well, that is their decision not to have images taken of them in their bedroom, right? One of the journalists we interviewed said it was like trying to kill a fly with a bazooka. This level of surveillance was not required to track inventory. It just wasn't. Hindsight is 20/20 but it's obvious from what transpired that they spent a lot more money on legal fees and settling these lawsuits than they ever saved by making sure a handful of laptops were not stolen or lost. What did you learn about the motives of the school district officials, the lawyers and the families involved? When I'm making a documentary I'm never thinking in terms of quote-unquote good guys and bad guys. Everyone in this story thought they were doing what was best for the students involved. But in the end, I think there was this balance of protecting students ' privacy and protecting the image of the school district. When a mistake is made, there is a reluctance to admit and take responsibility and accept blame. Once you do that, you are admitting to what happened and then there's all these legal ramifications. Multiple people are like, you know, these kids need therapists, they need somebody to check on them and to be like, 'Hey, your privacy was violated, are you doing OK?' and that did not happen. I can't say why that didn't happen but to me it seems likely that part of not offering people help is that the minute you say this person needs a therapist because of what we did, you're admitting to a pretty major violation. The documentary doesn't focus just on the Robbins case. It offers a deep dive into education policy debates around racial inequities, school integration, gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. What did you find were the implications of surveillance for these populations? We talked to Elizabeth Laird at the Center for Democracy and Technology and one of the things she said she sees all the time is that when surveillance is ubiquitous and regularly used in education, vulnerable populations end up feeling the brunt of the negative repercussions. In this case, back in 2010, people discovered that a disproportionate amount of the students that were surveilled were African American. There was a sense that if this technology was being misused to discipline students or to check up on students then the chances are it was going to be misused for somebody that was a student of color. Related When we started talking to students of color who had their images taken, we started to understand, 'Oh, there is this whole context to what they're experiencing.' Somebody said you can't understand the laptop issue without understanding all these other battles that were happening at the time. There was a history of an achievement gap there and African-American parents felt like if you wanted to get an equal education for your kids, you had to fight for it. In this context, there was a real lack of trust of the school district by African-American parents. Keron Williams and his mother really wanted to tell his story. It was a story of somebody suspecting him of stealing a bracelet and him being brought into the principal's office. He says his laptop webcam was activated a couple days later after they searched his pockets and found nothing but a Boy Scouts handkerchief. There's racial profiling but also this idea of the misuse of technology meant to keep laptops from being stolen. If something like this is misused, vulnerable populations are going to feel the brunt of it more. Related That brings me to one of the other stories we talked about, which was more recent. In 2020, with the pandemic, school-issued devices and remote learning became the norm. We talked to two students who started high school online, went to classes on Zoom, and they were using their school-issued laptops for everything. The way they communicated instead of seeing their friends at lunch was through a Google Hangouts chat. What they didn't realize was their school was using monitoring software that essentially scooped up everything they wrote while logged into their school account, including private chats. They were brought to the principal's office and were confronted with what they wrote. The context of it is that the school decided it was bullying. What we reveal is that they were using the word 'gay' because they were. The term they used was 'we're a pretty gay friend group. Gay was a descriptor to us.' One of these kids had to come out in the principal's office with his father there. Luckily his parents were pretty great about it, but that's a really awful position to put a kid in and, you know, again, a vulnerable population bearing the brunt of overzealous surveillance. The goal of this surveillance is to protect kids, it's to make sure kids aren't hurting themselves, hurting other students. There's obviously a mental health crisis going on in terms of high school-aged kids, but there really has to be a discussion about whether these tactics are making the mental health crisis better or worse. You're talking about the tools that schools nationally have increasingly used to collect and analyze reams of information about students in the name of keeping them safe. This includes tools like Gaggle and GoGuardian. Given the growth in these tools, do any guardrails need to be put in place? First of all, it's so important that students know what is being used to surveil any device they're using. The fact that kids hadn't heard of Gaggle is really a problem. But if they know about it, that doesn't solve all the problems because what you're asking high schoolers especially to do is to find their own voice, understand how to freely express themselves, to be vulnerable. In some of my best creative writing courses my teachers were saying, 'Look, if it scares you to write this, you're probably going in the right direction.' The minute a kid realizes, 'Well, everything that I'm writing in a creative writing class — a poem, a personal essay — is going through this software, maybe going to my principal, maybe going to law enforcement,' they're going to express themselves differently. That's just a really dangerous road to go down. Related Students and parents have to be aware, but also I just think it should be less powerful. I don't think we should be able to say there are no ways in which you can use our technology, which is kind of unavoidable if you're a high school student, without being constantly surveilled. In Minnesota, the story we cover, they changed the law to outlaw surveillance software. That's a pretty huge step, and I think that'll happen more and more as people become more aware of this stuff. There are just places where we should not be allowing this.
Chicago Tribune
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Inside the factory where Peeps are made
Love them or hate them, those marshmallow Peeps that come in blindingly bright colors and an array of flavors are inescapable around the Easter holiday. Millions are made daily in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by Just Born Quality Confections, a family-owned candy manufacturer that also churns out Hot Tamales, Mike and Ike fruit chews and Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. Peeps is Just Born's most recognizable brand and one of a handful of candies that evoke strong reactions — good and bad. Some say an Easter basket isn't complete without Peeps while others deride them as being indestructible. Some use them in recipes or even artwork. 'Even if you're not usually one to gravitate to eating the Peeps, there's always so many other fun ways to include them in your celebrations,' said Caitlin Servian, brand manager for Peeps. 1 of 16 Peeps marshmallow treats move through the manufacturing process at the Just Born factory in Bethlehem, Pa., Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) How many Peeps are made each year? On average, about 5.5 million are made each day. That adds up to 2 billion a year — or roughly 6 Peeps for every man, woman and child across the U.S. How many different varieties and colors are there? First hatched in yellow, the sugary chicks and bunnies come in nine colors for this Easter season, including pink, blue and lavender. And there are even more flavors — 14 for Easter — from cookies and cream, to fruit punch and sour watermelon. The varieties and colors vary throughout the year with different holiday seasons. How long does it take to make a Peep? Before the early 1950s, making the candies by hand took 27 hours. Bob Born, who became known as the 'Father of Peeps,' came up with a way to speed up the process. He and a company engineer designed a machine to make them in less than six minutes. The same process is used today. How are they made? The main ingredients — sugar, corn syrup and gelatin — are cooked and combined to create marshmallows, which are then shaped and sent through a 'sugar shower.' A whopping 400 pounds of sugar is used per batch for Peeps' colored sugars. Freshly made Peeps — each chick weighs one-third of an ounce — then move along a conveyor so that they can cool before being packaged.
CBS News
15-04-2025
- General
- CBS News
To Peep or not Peep? The Easter holiday treat evokes strong reactions — good and bad.
Love them or hate them, those marshmallow Peeps that come in blindingly bright colors and an array of flavors are inescapable around the Easter holiday. Millions are made daily in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by Just Born Quality Confections, a family-owned candy manufacturer that also churns out Hot Tamales, Mike and Ike fruit chews and Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. Peeps is Just Born's most recognizable brand and one of a handful of candies that evoke strong reactions — good and bad. Some say an Easter basket isn't complete without Peeps while others deride them as being indestructible. Some use them in recipes or even artwork. "Even if you're not usually one to gravitate to eating the Peeps, there's always so many other fun ways to include them in your celebrations," said Caitlin Servian, brand manager for Peeps. On average, about 5.5 million are made each day. That adds up to 2 billion a year — or roughly 6 Peeps for every man, woman and child across the U.S. First hatched in yellow, the sugary chicks and bunnies come in nine colors for this Easter season, including pink, blue and lavender. And there are even more flavors — 14 for Easter — from cookies and cream, to fruit punch and sour watermelon. The varieties and colors vary throughout the year with different holiday seasons. Before the early 1950s, making the candies by hand took 27 hours. Bob Born, who became known as the "Father of Peeps," came up with a way to speed up the process. He and a company engineer designed a machine to make them in less than six minutes. The same process is used today. The main ingredients — sugar, corn syrup and gelatin — are cooked and combined to create marshmallows, which are then shaped and sent through a "sugar shower." A whopping 400 pounds (181 kilograms) of sugar is used per batch for Peeps' colored sugars. Freshly made Peeps — each chick weighs one-third of an ounce — then move along a conveyor so that they can cool before being packaged. ___ Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio.
Washington Post
15-04-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
The great Easter basket question — to Peep or not Peep
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Love them or hate them, those marshmallow Peeps that come in blindingly bright colors and an array of flavors are inescapable around the Easter holiday. Millions are made daily in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, by Just Born Quality Confections, a family-owned candy manufacturer that also churns out Hot Tamales, Mike and Ike fruit chews and Goldenberg's Peanut Chews.
