Excerpts from http://archive.is/iPUz1

How much more evidence do we need to compile before the federal government protects our children and fully deplatforms Google from American public schools?

The Silicon Valley behemoth has already admitted it illegally collected children’s personal information on YouTube without parental consent, mines students’ browsing habits and emails, and tracks kids’ locations, audio and search history through Google educational apps and logons that are required for millions of students to participate in public schools.

..This week, the tech giant admitted for the first time that its data export service, Google Takeout, had accidentally sent the private information and videos of untold thousands of users to other strangers’ accounts. The breach occurred in late November, but users only started receiving notices and apologies on Monday — nearly three months later.

“We are notifying people about a bug that may have affected users who used Google Takeout to export their Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25,” an email sheepishly explained. “These users may have received either an incomplete archive, or videos — not photos — that were not theirs. We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again. We are very sorry this happened.”

Can you imagine a similar breach of minors’ photos and videos stored on students’ Google Drives or Chromebooks or smartphones or home computers used to log on to mandatory learning management systems integrated with Google, such as Canvas or Schoology or Blackboard? It’s easy if you try.

..Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had secretly harvested “tens of millions of medical records” with identifying names, lab results, diagnoses, immunization records and prescriptions from thousands of hospitals across 21 states. “Project Nightingale” was a partnership with Ascension health system to build a search tool and data analytics using machine-learning algorithms. At least 150 Google employees had access to confidential patient data. Amazon, Microsoft and IBM have acquired private health data as well. It’s a massive Big Tech bonanza.

The implications for selling off children’s private health information are chilling. Like federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protections for patients, federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protections have been sabotaged by “public-private partnerships” between government education officials and tech companies with insatiable appetites for data.

.. Meet “Gaggle.” Fully integrated with Google Apps for Education and designated as a Google “Premier Partner,” this snooping system is marketed to school districts as a “safety” mechanism for students. Through 24/7 monitoring of kids’ online use, Gaggle “alerts school officials when students show signs of self-harm, depression, thoughts of suicide, substance abuse, cyberbullying, unhealthy relationships, and credible threats of violence against others.”

Privacy experts for a pro-digital learning nonprofit called Common Sense determined that it is “unclear” whether Gaggle “allows users to control how their data are displayed,” “whether this product allows parents to withdraw consent for the further collection of their child’s information” and “whether this product provides parental consent notice.”

Despite all of that uncertainty, 1,400 school districts use Gaggle to mine “social media, browsing history, email, homework documents, uploads, chats, pictures, and calendars” — and put untold tens of thousands of students at risk of privacy breaches that could do damage for a lifetime....

More here: Google admits it sent private videos in Google Photos to strangers