School Surveillance in Context: High School Students’ Perspectives on CCTV, Privacy, and Security

Michael Birnhack & Lotem Perry-Hazan, School Surveillance in Context: High School Students’ Perspectives on CCTV, Privacy, and Security, 52(7) Youth & Society 1312-1330 (2020)

21 Pages Posted: 26 May 2020 Last revised: 17 Sep 2020

See all articles by Michael Birnhack

Michael Birnhack

Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law

Lotem Perry-Hazan

University of Haifa - Faculty of Education

Date Written: April 28, 2020

Abstract

This study examines high school students’ perceptions of school closed-circuit television systems (CCTVs). It draws on interviews conducted with 83 adolescents recruited from 10th to 12th-grade classes at 39 Israeli schools. The findings indicate that students’ perceptions of CCTVs are embedded in their overall opinions about their school, particularly concerning relationships and trust between students and educators. The various metaphors that students used to describe their relational position regarding school CCTVs highlight that surveillance has become part of the organizational-educational experience. The findings also show that students’ scrutiny of school CCTVs reflects a conflict between privacy and security concerns. Students resolve this conflict by resorting to various balances, which echo general constitutional principles, but were also anchored in the students’ personal schooling experiences. While building on Helen Nissenbaum’s framework of Contextual Integrity for assessing privacy violations, we challenge its assumption of a uniform set of informational norms within a given context.

Final version available (Open Access) at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0044118X20916617

Keywords: School Surveillance, Security Cameras, Privacy, Students’ Rights, Trust

Suggested Citation

Birnhack, Michael D. and Perry-Hazan, Lotem, School Surveillance in Context: High School Students’ Perspectives on CCTV, Privacy, and Security (April 28, 2020). Michael Birnhack & Lotem Perry-Hazan, School Surveillance in Context: High School Students’ Perspectives on CCTV, Privacy, and Security, 52(7) Youth & Society 1312-1330 (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3587450 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3587450

Michael D. Birnhack (Contact Author)

Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law ( email )

Ramat Aviv
Tel Aviv, 69978
Israel
+972-3-640-6623 (Phone)

Lotem Perry-Hazan

University of Haifa - Faculty of Education ( email )

Haifa 31905
Israel

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
130
Abstract Views
1,748
Rank
395,220
PlumX Metrics