Judge takes up Google bid to toss suit over student data tracking

(CN) — Attorneys clashed in federal court Thursday over claims that Google surveils and collects information about kids through its education products, claims Google says are vague to the point of being “nothing.”

The plaintiffs, which include the parents of four children, aimed specifically at its Chromebook laptops, Chrome web browser and suite of education applications, referred to as Google Workspace for Education. The suite includes more than 20 free and paid apps to help schools administer education, such as Google Classroom, Google Drive, Gmail and others.

“You simply can’t overstate the amount of information that is being collected with any level of interaction with these products,” attorney Julie Liddell, a principal attorney at the Austin, Texas, EdTech Law Center, said during the hearing in California’s Northern District. “We have all the technical information that is generated every time anyone, even children, use their products. It’s the metadata that is the gold of the data economy, information about the device, operating system, network settings, interactions between third-party apps, browsers, apps, unique identifiers.”

The lawsuit, titled Schwarz v. Google LLC, was filed in April this year in federal court in San Francisco. The plaintiffs accused Google of exposing children to “serious and irreversible risks to their privacy, property, and autonomy” by harvesting their information through its education products in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act, among others.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Richard Seeborg, a Barack Obama appointee, peppered both attorneys with questions about the nature of Google’s relationship with school districts and whether or not the tech giant acted as more than just another vendor of education products.

An attorney representing Google, Sunita Bali of international law firm Perkins Coie, argued for dismissal, saying the lawsuit was too vague. She argued on procedural grounds that the plaintiffs’ claims could not be presented in a “short and plain statement.”

“If they’re going to file a lawsuit, they have to have a factual basis: What products and services did you use and what data was collected about you, plaintiff, and there’s nothing like that,” she said during the hearing. “They don’t even allege what schools they attended. They have to be able to do better than nothing, and that’s what is in the complaint. Nothing.”

Liddell argued that the ubiquitous nature of Google and the “gross asymmetry of information” prevent the plaintiffs from knowing exactly what information is collected. However, she affirmed to Seeborg that the plaintiffs’ children were enrolled in schools that used Google services.

The plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit that technology has changed the nature of data collection of students at school. Parents are no longer in control of their children’s information when third parties, such as Google, use student information for commercial reasons, they wrote.

“Companies may not deny parents control over their children’s lives by marketing to schools and concealing their practices behind opaque technology and empty promises of improving education,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Google must be held to account for operating as though the fundamental rights of children and their parents do not exist.”

According to the plaintiffs, parents are often coerced into any agreements with Google because they are required to send their children to school, where the students must participate in using its products.

Citing Federal Trade Commission guidance, Bali argued that Google only needs to gain consent from the schools for children to use its services.

“What they are proposing, this direct consent-from-parents approach, is not a framework that is supported by the requirements of COPPA,” she said. “They are seeking to use state law claims as a workaround to require a consent structure that is different than what COPPA allows.”

In a statement to Courthouse News, Liddell said she is hopeful that the court will side with the plaintiffs.

“The number one thing I certainly hope we all walked away with is that COPPA doesn’t do what Google wants it to do,” she said.

In its reply to the plaintiffs, Google provided various documents that list its privacy statements and terms of service.

For its part, Google does not deny that the nature of education has changed, but it advertises this change as a benefit for students and educators. Google says more than 50 million students use its Chromebooks and that 170 million users are on Google Workspace for Education.

“If teachers were doing what Google is doing, namely surveilling children all day while they are at school, even when they’re at home on devices, and logging every single thing they’re doing … I don’t think we would have a problem saying that’s a problem,” Liddell said. “That’s a constitutional problem, and yet that’s exactly what Google is doing here.”