Spyware routinely installed by UK schools to snoop on kids’ Web habits
Over two-thirds of schools installed special software on school computers to spy on their pupils, responses to Freedom of Information requests have revealed.
According to a report by Big Brother Watch, "classroom management software" is running on over 800,000 computers, laptops, and mobile phones found in 1,000 secondary schools across England and Wales. A whopping £2.5 million has been spent on the programs.
Classroom management software allows the screens of an entire class to be monitored from a teacher's desktop, and for both the historical and real-time Web activity of a pupil to be accessed. Keystrokes can be watched, and alerts created to flag up "inappropriate" words. More generally, the systems can try to spot "bad" behaviour online, including signs of "extremism and radicalisation."
