High school accused of wanting to "track" students with connected key chains

"Students receive at the beginning of the year a keychain connected (Bluetooth) that they must always have on them. It will now be a help to ensure the presence of each of them in clbad, sports facilities, the CDI [centre de documentation et d’information] and during the outings but also during the drills of safety (fire, special plan security).

These few lines, added during the summer to the rules of the school (private contract) Parisian Rocroy-Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, provoked strong reactions within and outside the institution. Discovered by chance by students, this addition to the rules has been widely distributed on social networks. On Monday, July 23rd, an online petition asking for his removal had collected more than 3,500 signatures, before his withdrawal by his author.

"There was no information to prevent students or their parents" explains at World a pupil of the establishment hosting 1,700 people spread over three sites

"It was also not mentioned in the pre-entry e-mail sent at the beginning of the summer . No one has agreed, which raises issues of legality and morality. There have been some problems of absenteeism last year in high school, but nothing that justifies the establishment of such a system. These are small clbades, we see immediately if someone is absent. "

On 23 July, the school finally published an article on its website to announce the installation of the device, in which it ensures " surrounded by all the guarantees, in order to combine innovation, security students and data »

Simplifying the Clbadroom Call

The" system "in question is that of New School, a start-up that offers applications to help teachers. At its launch, the New School app had, despite some criticism, benefited from a significant positive coverage in the press.

Its founder has an atypical profile: high school student, aged just 16 at the time, and a literary student, Philippine Dolbeau had collected prizes and received support from companies like Qwant and Apple. Deployed in about fifteen schools, its software is a sort of dematerialized mattress allowing for example to pay the canteen, but its primary function is to simplify the call in clbad.

At the beginning of the course, teacher uses an application that automatically checks if the key fobs corresponding to his list of students are present in the radius that can pick up his phone. If this is missing, the absence is recorded automatically and sent to the school life management software for schools using the Direct School program, which is very common in the private sector. Parents can also be notified automatically, by SMS or by email.

Security mechanisms

Contrary to what is suggested by the rules of the Rocroy-Saint-Vincent-de-Paul High School, the New School system however, can not track student movements, says Philippine Dolbeau . "We do not use geolocation [comme le GPS d’un téléphone]" she explains – the keychain is detected only by the teacher's phone, and only at the time of the call.

"You can not trace the movements of a student, it is not a" snitch ". And we have put in place a whole series of protections: a teacher can only make the call if his schedule provides that he gives good course to this clbad and at this time, he can not activate it on weekends for example.

In practice, the application can be used to control the presence during "the outputs or the exercises of security" as detailed the school Rocroy-Saint-Vincent-de-France Paul in his regulation. But only to make the call to the rise or the exit of the bus, and not to follow individually the displacements of pupils during the exit. At the time of publication of this article, the school did not follow the requests of World.

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If she says she understands that there is "some reticence" Philippine Dolbeau claims to have "pays particular attention to security issues: our users are minors, the National Commission of Informatics and freedoms [CNIL] and national education demand extensive guarantees, and this is normal. Personal information is encrypted, stored on servers in France, and we made a deposit with the CNIL.

A hijacking or piracy can never be completely excluded, but for the students of Rocroy-Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the main problem remains the way the system was set up, without seek the consent of the principal parties concerned

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