Weber School District has recently added a new extension to all student Chromebooks: Blocksi. The extension is automatically installed upon updating an old Chromebook to the new version. It’s being used to monitor the usage of Chromebooks, as well as functioning as an additional firewall, on top of the district’s firewall.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically article 12, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.” According to another United Nations document, the Convention of the Rights of The Child, article 16, “No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence.” The question being raised is does Blocksi violate these rights, and does it also violate United States law?
The California Penal Code Section 637.7 states “No person or entity on this state shall use an electronic tracking device to determine the location or movement of a person.” However, Blocksi has the ability to determine the location of a device upon which Blocksi is installed, and because most students have their Chromebooks on them while travelling to and from school, tracking the device also tracks the student. Therefore, Blocksi could be interpreted as a violation of this penal code, due to it’s location tracking ability.
Another damning piece of evidence against Blocksi, is the multiple petitions for the removal of Blocksi from schools. These include, but are not limited to, a petition from Irvine Unified School District from Dec. 2019 and a petition from Nov. 2023. These show that the student body, from multiple districts and multiple times, does not want Blocksi.
A similar pay-to-surveil service, Securly, was heavily criticised for providing tools which aid schools in censoring the content available to students, and breaching the privacy of students. Securly is a similar service to Blocksi, and both operate in similar manners. Thus meaning, the very same practices used by the former to censor student content and to violate student privacy, are being used by Blocksi.
A report from the Center for Democracy & Technology stated that when asked, 81% of teachers reported that their school used monitoring software similar to both Securly and Blocksi. However, only a quarter reported that the monitoring is only limited to school hours. Only one in three reported that the monitoring is limited to school days. Meanwhile, 60% of students agreed with the statement “I do not share my true thoughts or ideas because I know what I do online is being monitored.”
In conclusion, the Blocksi chrome extension has been forced upon the student body. It is violating student privacy, it has the ability to observe student activity after both the class and after school, and it arbitrarily censors the content available to students. Blocksi is yet another piece of mandatory spyware which is being used by schools, with complete disregard to the right to privacy of students.