Why you should oust Kylen Anderson and vote for Jared Chiariello for school board
I read the article about the 4 people running for school board. Jared Chiariello hit it right on the nose - buying students a Google Chromebook was beyond dumb and I will tell you why.
First, my background - in 1982 I created the first ever Electronic Medical Records system (EMR), so I know all about computer-privacy issues, in 1993 I introduced the concept of digital photography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (John Walsh created group) in Washington DC, in 1995 I was the 1st to put a doctor on a wireless handheld computer running an EMR live in an exam room, so I have LOTS of wireless background, also 1995 I was the first to put medical records on the Internet, when everyone told me no one would ever go for that concept, so I understand being on the cutting-edge of technology. So now you know why my opinions on this should be taken seriously, I am an expert in computer-technology for many years.
As Jared said, the Chromebook is a piece of junk with extremely limited capabilities, and as Jared mentioned, not all homes have wireless connectivity, meaning the units are useless in those homes. But there is a bigger issue and that is the privacy and safety of our children!
Google rivals the NSA in prying into one's private affairs - read the google/gmail/google-groups privacy policies, I'll paraphrase "Google has joint intellectual property rights to your data". That means every email you send from your gmail account is databased, scrutinized and all data is sold to "marketing partners", meaning, any company that wants to buy it. Google-groups is worse, lets say you are 3 authors co-authoring a manuscript on some proprietary new scientific-method and you share your manuscript amongst your "private group" using Google-groups ... know what that means? It means that Google now has joint ownership rights to your proprietary material, you do not own it by yourself.
Everything done on a Chromebook is tracked by Google, Google is databasing EVERYTHING your child is doing, they will know more about your own child than you will. This includes everything from email, what they wrote in school papers, what courses they take and what grades they got. The list of what Google will know about your child is endless. If anyone in my company ever pulled a stunt like supplying a security-flaw to all employees they'd immediately be fired. Why don't we just have each child purposely infect their computer? This is the equivalent of that.
Where does this leave our kids (students)? Well I'll tell you, it leaves them with Google following every one of our students from 1st grade (or whatever grade they get the junk-machine) through high school graduation. This, and the schools utilizing other "free" Google services, is giving Google everything they want - data on our kids. When they graduate, they'll know which are the smart-kids going to college and getting higher paying jobs, so they know who to go after with credit-card offers, real-estate deals, car loans, you name it. You are giving them all they need to know "who to sell to".
People think these services are free - WOW - they are NOT FREE, they are incredibly profitable by not charging end-users for their "free" service. How do you think Google makes all that money? SELLING DATA! And how do you get data to sell - you STEAL IT. Oh wait, it's not theft, you clicked the box that said "I agree to all of your horrible anti-privacy policies".
Personally I don't want my kids tracked, scrutinized, privacy-invaded and more. I don't want Google to know they were straight-A students putting them as open-game to the Google marketing machine.
Elect Jared. He gets it.
Oust Kaylen, who is clueless when it comes to reading a privacy policy.
Daniel Frieling
President, Electronic Enterprises
Sparta