IGF 2020 WS #358 ‘Education and surveillance: Facial recognition and monitori

Information

Session

Thematic Track:

Topic(s):

Organizer 1: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 2: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 3: Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Speaker 1: Danilo Doneda, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 2: Diego Canabarro, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Priscila Gonsales, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Format:

Panel - Auditorium - 60 Min

Description:

The introduction of TICs in the educational process brings new opportunities, such as broader access to content and information, new ways to reach students and manage the educational process and so on. However, they also vastly extend the possibility to monitor and gather information from the student, whether by using several Internet-mediated services as online teaching tools, online textbooks, assistants and others. Even ‘traditional’ presencial education processes are concretely impacted by TICs: surveillance gears are making their way into the educational process, from facial recognition apparatus being used to register students’ attendance to classes or into School to even more intrusive frameworks that can collect data from the student, inside and outside school, in order to measure and evaluate his behaviour and habits. The panel will bring experiences and visions on the impact of surveillance and use of personal data in the educational process, discussing how this process may have specifics characteristics that can suggest different approaches to regulatory, technical or administrative solutions or measures to be taken.

Issues:

How to preserve the autonomy of the educational process if interests tied to surveillance (such as social control), the use of personal data (such as marketing) may interfere? Is surveillance and monitoring in the educational system any different or more dangerous than in other environments? Who are the news actors brought by TICs into the educational process and what are their interests are? How to conciliate the importance of personal data from students with measures that restrict their usage for surveillance outside the scope of the educational process?

Policy Question(s):

- Is there a need for specific regulations and procedures regarding to surveillance and personal data usage in the educational process? - What is the impact of the age of the student in the regulatory and technical measures that may be taken? - Are potentially intrusive technologies such as facial recognition and/or technologies to perceive emotions and behaviours of students bound to be temporarily or permanently banned from the educational process?

Expected Outcomes:

On the short term, we will produce a session’s report to be made public. Besides this, the discussion will be moved further with stakeholders in order to consider the formulation of a set of guidelines to the employment of TICs in education, focusing specifically on the use of students’ personal data

Relevance to Internet Governance: Educational processes are even more central to the Internet with the pandemics. Actors in this process must get used to discuss the implications of the development of monitoring and surveillance schemes in the context of online education and draw guidelines and principles to provide platforms and means for the free development of the educational process on the Internet.

Relevance to Theme: Considering the growing presence of online educational platforms and the tendency of some of them to become aggregators of personal data and even to use this data even outside the educational process itself, there comes the need of limits and guidelines to build trust in this process

Discussion Facilitation:

The panel’s dynamics will be as follows: Introduction (Moderator) Part I: How the introduction of TICs in the educational process may trigger surveillance and misuse of personal data and what are the main related issues (Speakers) Part II: Moderator asks specific questions to speakers on the measures and tools need to tackle the issues they bought in Part I (Speakers) Part III: Audience Q&A Wrap up (Moderator) Final recommendations and conclusion of the speakers (Speakers)

Online Participation:

Usage of IGF Official Tool.

SDGs:

GOAL 4: Quality Education
GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure