JUDY WOODRUFF: Million of students return
to school this week, many learning primarily
online, offering a trove of new data to companies.
But what about the apps and the Web sites
parents use to keep kids safe?
Law professor and Internet privacy expert
Leah Plunkett shares her humble opinion on
why parents should shy from high-tech surveillance.
LEAH PLUNKETT, Author, "Sharenthood": The
other day, my 9-year-old-son tried to convince
me that he is ready to walk to school by himself.
His pitch: Put one of those smart watches
on me, so you will know where I am. My response?
No one should be spying on you, including
dad and me.
When our kids think the best way for them
to get more freedom is for us, their parents,
to use surveillance technology on them, we
are failing them. I'm the mom of two young
kids. I'm also a technology researcher and
a law professor.
With my parent brain, I understand the appeal
of tracking our kids. With my professor brain,
I understand the risks if we go ahead and
do it. We can put a surveillance doorbell
system on our front door to see when our kids
come and go. We can put a smart watch on them
with geofencing that alerts us when they go
outside bounds we have set for them.
We want to keep our kids safe, but, actually,
we're jeopardizing their physical safety.
If the technology we're using on them, from
smart watches to tracking apps on their phones
and beyond, isn't fully secure, their whereabouts
could be tracked by people who might want
to harm them.
Remember, kids who are survivors of abuse
often know their abusers. We don't need to
make it possible for potential predators in
our networks or hackers to access the surveillance
technology we put on our kids and stalk them.
We could also be jeopardizing their future
opportunities. When a technology monitors
our kids' location, movements, or other behaviors,
we typically have no ironclad guarantee that
the information stays put. The tech provider
could sell information about where our kids
go or how fast they drive to a data broker,
which then might sell it to schools and employers.
We know that college admissions are increasingly
informed by big data analytics. Without ironclad
guarantees that a tech provider won't share
our children's information, we should assume
that they will, either now or in the future,
in ways that we can't predict or control.
When our children veer off course, we want
it to stay in the family. Parents, choose
not to stalk your kids. You're unlikely to
be the only ones watching.
