NJ anti-big brother bill makes its way through state Legislature
Rebecca Forand/South Jersey Times updated January 11, 2013 at 8:16 PM
As technology continues to advance and schools are embracing it for their students, new legislation is making its way through the state Assembly that guarantees parents are made aware of any tracking or monitoring software included in that technology.
Assembly bill A-2932, and its companion Senate bill, S-2057, dubbed the “anti-big brother act,” come in response to a Pennsylvania case where at least one student was monitored at home through a webcam that had been remotely activated by school officials.
“Everyone hopes that what occurred in the Pennsylvania school district was a one-time occurrence that you will never see happen anywhere else,” said Mike Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. “This legislation says if you do have any kind of tracking software, you just have to tell the parents and the kids.”
The bill, which was introduced in May and amended last month, requires any school district that furnishes a student with a laptop computer, a cellphone of other electronic device, to provide notice if that device can record or collect information, or if it includes a camera or global positioning system that can be remotely accessed.
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