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Location
Washington, D.C.
The Student Privacy Project is an initiative of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a premier public interest research center focused on civil rights issues in the digital era. In light of the expanding use of digital tools in the classroom, EPIC’s Student Privacy Project has utilized a combination of research, litigation, and multi-stakeholder advocacy to defend and expand the privacy rights of students for over a decade. For instance, their efforts contributed to New York state’s recent moratorium on school-place use of facial recognition technologies. As many students have switched to online instruction in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Student Privacy Project has shifted its focus to demanding more transparency and less expansive data collection policies from online proctoring services. This effort to hold online proctoring companies accountable includes a December 2020 complaint filed with the Attorney General of the District of Columbia against the five largest test proctoring companies.
The last major piece of federal student privacy legislation was passed in 1974, almost five decades ago. Since that time, the landscape of student privacy has changed drastically: student records are mostly digitized, digital tools from third-party vendors are frequently deployed in classrooms, and educators routinely utilize test proctoring software that collect and process student biometric data. These trends have only intensified with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread transition to online learning. A handful of proctoring companies have gained access to a trove of student personal and biometric data with few internal or external restrictions.
Over the past year and a half, the mass deployment of these proctoring tools has posed privacy and equity threats to students. Data collected and disclosed to third parties by some of these widely used proctoring services include information relating to gender identity, citizenship status, and disability status. Much of this data is unnecessary to the proper operation of these proctoring services. Furthermore, the algorithms utilized by many of these services to scan students’ faces to determine whether a student is cheating on an exam systematically fail to work on students of color and non-male students.
In the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation or updated student privacy legislation, EPIC has sought to protect and expand student privacy rights by utilizing existing statutes.
In December of 2020, EPIC filed a complaint with the Attorney General of the District of Columbia alleging that the collection and processing of student data by the five most popular online proctoring services violate D.C. consumer protection law. Through meticulous research, the Student Privacy Project revealed the extent to which these companies collect and process student personal and biometric data. The complaint attempts to hold the five companies accountable for their practices by demonstrating how the data collection and processing practices may violate existing law. The complaint concludes by enumerating specific changes that these companies may implement to operate in concert with existing law and general expectations about privacy and equity.
The work of the EPIC Student Privacy Project will continue to focus on the nexus between student and consumer privacy. The proctoring services investigated by EPIC will continue to be used in classrooms long after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Therefore, EPIC’s consistent and principled advocacy will continue to play a significant role in ensuring that student privacy is not a casualty of the digital age.
