How a California college uses data collection tools to track students' daily movements, like homework trackers, e-proctoring software, and license plate readers
A Markup examination of a typical college shows how students are subject to a vast and growing array of watchful tech … Threads: @craignewmark . Mastodon: @irisRichardson@mastodon.art , @trent@eigenmagic.net , @anand@mastodon.sdf.org , @thatandromeda@ohai.social , @theADHDAcademic … , and @craignewmark@mastodon.social . Bluesky: @audhdylan.bsky.social X: @themarkup , @iethics , @amyebensenhaver , @tnewmstweet , @benpatrickwill , @davec5599 , @linkletter , @taragarciam , and @datasociety LinkedIn: Tara Garcia Mathewson and Sasha Anderson . Forums: Hacker News Threads: Craig Newmark / @craignewmark : Keyboard readers...facial recognition...AI-informed cameras. Colleges are tracking students' every move and converting that into a steady stream of data. Can anything be done to opt-out? Read from @themarkup: https://themarkup.org/... Mastodon: Iris Richardson Fine / @irisRichardson@mastodon.art : @Techmeme That is stepping over the lines.Students are University customers not data mining resources. Trent / @trent@eigenmagic.net : What value to education does this massive datafication actually add? — Companies pitch solutions to problems that higher ed may or may not actually have, but have clauses that nobody really understands which allow them to profit by selling the data to data brokers but for what actual benefits? … Anand R / @anand@mastodon.sdf.org : This is a hell of a story. https://themarkup.org/... I thought I knew how far we were gone on what @pluralistic calls the shitty technology adoption curve. But seeing it all in one place. *shiver* Andromeda Yelton / @thatandromeda@ohai.social : In which a student explores the lengths he must go to to minimize his college's surveillance of him. (Not “avoid”. Avoid is not an option. Minimize.) https://themarkup.org/... @theADHDAcademic@mastodon.online : “In Florida, where it is against the law to transport undocumented immigrants, students mention that their peers with undocumented family members are at risk if they have relatives in the car with them on campus. The automated license plate reader cameras can capture not only the license plate itself but the entire car and who is in it.” … Craig Newmark / @craignewmark@mastodon.social : Keyboard readers...facial recognition...AI-informed cameras. — Colleges are tracking students' every move and converting that into a steady stream of data. — Can anything be done to opt-out? Read from @themarkup: https://themarkup.org/... Bluesky: Dylan / @audhdylan.bsky.social : one thing I'm thankful for is getting through my schooling when I did, before they started all this shit [embedded post] X: @themarkup : It watches you read. It watches you park your car. It watches you type. It watches your facial movements. What is it? Your college. READ: https://themarkup.org/... @iethics : #Cengage “collects information about a #student's internet network and the device they use to access online textbooks... [&] webpages viewed, links clicked, keystrokes typed, and movement of their mouse on the screen, among other things”: https://themarkup.org/... #ethics #privacy @amyebensenhaver : To understand how Mt. SAC collects data on its students, The Markup used public records requests to obtain contracts bet. the college & companies that provide its learning management system, online proctoring services, & automated parking enforcement tech. https://themarkup.org/... Tim Newman / @tnewmstweet : “college students have become more organized and insistent about what they see as a right” Labor folks should support students fighting surveillance tech on campus not only b/c it's just right, but these experiences will prepare them to organize vs. workplace surveillance too. Ben Williamson / @benpatrickwill : The reason to be sceptical of the puffery about AI “transforming” education is that institutions are already full of edtech that tracks students, as this nice @themarkup piece illuminates, and this is the same edtech now selling “AI” to schools and unis https://themarkup.org/... Dave C / @davec5599 : This great investigative article should be required reading for every college student in order to somehow protect their privacy. He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None @TaraGarciaM https://themarkup.org/... Ian Linkletter / @linkletter : “At Mt. SAC, McCarthy Neal dropped an online course last spring rather than use Proctorio. The professor told students they had to run the monitoring program every time they completed an assignment... something that felt overly invasive.” Link: https://themarkup.org/... Tara GarciaMathewson / @taragarciam : They watch you learn. They watch you park. They watch where you go (online and off). They watch your face. Who are they? Colleges. Read my latest for The Markup: https://themarkup.org/... @datasociety : Increasingly, being a college student means being subject to a vast array of watchful tech. For @themarkup, @TaraGarciaM reports on what this looks like in practice and how students are thinking about data privacy. https://themarkup.org/... LinkedIn: Tara Garcia Mathewson : They watch you learn. — They watch you park. — They watch where you go. — They watch your face. — Who? Colleges. … Sasha Anderson : Five years ago when I first started teaching at UW, I asked my students to envision an Academic Surveillance System (an appropriate acronym) … Forums: Hacker News : He Wanted Privacy. His College Gave Him None
Context & Ripple Effects
The investigation places a California college within a longer expansion of educational monitoring: schools had already used phone tracking for attendance, while remote learning accelerated activity-monitoring software such as GoGuardian's student activity monitoring.
What is distinctive here is the combined reach of academic, exam, and physical-campus systems. Earlier scrutiny of proctoring systems that capture keystrokes and cursor movements focused on assessment; this account connects those practices to parking enforcement, facial recognition, and vendor data terms.
First-order effects
- Students at Mt. SAC face data collection across coursework, exams, and campus access, making surveillance difficult to avoid even when they try to limit exposure.
- The college's vendor relationships give providers of learning, proctoring, and parking systems access to behavioral and location-linked data; contract clauses may permit some edtech data to be sold to brokers.
Second-order effects
- Combining signals from separate tools increases the practical sensitivity of student records, raising the stakes for procurement, data-governance, and retention decisions by colleges.
- Proctoring and learning-platform vendors face greater pressure to justify behavioral collection and contractual data rights, especially after complaints and legal challenges failed to prevent Proctorio's rapid client growth.
Third-order effects
- If institutions continue buying distinct monitoring products as routine infrastructure, higher education may normalize a campus-wide surveillance stack rather than treating each tool as a narrow, opt-in service.
- The key structural question becomes whether schools can impose meaningful limits on vendor reuse and cross-context collection, rather than relying on students to navigate systems they cannot realistically avoid.
The trend: Education technology is shifting from discrete classroom tools toward interconnected systems that turn learning, assessment, and campus presence into continuously collected data.