None of us consented to this
The NSW "Permission to Publish" form offers a binary choice, discloses none of the actual risks, never expires, and was written before AI training, facial recognition scraping, or deepfakes existed.
The form
NSW Department of Education "Permission to Publish" form. One choice. Consent to all public publishing or none of it. School website, newsletter, Facebook Page, newspapers, external media. All or nothing.
There is no option to say "yes to the school newsletter, no to Facebook." There is no option to say "yes to the website, no to social media." There is no option to consent to private channels but not public ones. It is a single binary decision that governs every form of publication the school undertakes.
An audit of all 2,160 NSW government schools found that 82% operate public Facebook Pages under this consent framework. That is 1,780 schools and 637,818 students. The Permission to Publish form predates every risk documented on this site.
What the form covers vs what actually happens
| What the consent form covers | What actually happens to public photos |
|---|---|
| School website and newsletter | AI model training by Meta (confirmed under oath, September 2024) |
| May be "discoverable online" | Scraped into 50B+ photo facial recognition database (Clearview AI) |
| May be "cached by search engines" | Included in AI training datasets (362 AU children found in one dataset) |
| Facebook, newspapers, external media | Used as source material for deepfake generation (Melbourne, 2024) |
| No mention of AI | Patterns learned from faces persist permanently in trained models |
The binary trap
Say yes and your child's photo goes on a public Facebook Page accessible to anyone on the internet. Accessible to Meta's AI training systems. Accessible to Clearview AI's facial recognition scrapers. Accessible to anyone building an AI training dataset. Accessible to anyone with a "nudify" tool.
Say no and your child is excluded from newsletters, the school website, community communications, event photos. Your child becomes the one left out. The one whose face is pixelated. The one who has to step aside during group photos.
Parents are forced to choose between public exposure and social isolation. That is not informed consent. That is coercion through false dichotomy.
No AI disclosure
The form warns that online content "can be discoverable online" and may be "cached by search engines." That is the extent of the risk disclosure.
Nothing about AI training. Nothing about facial recognition databases. Nothing about training datasets containing 5.85 billion images. Nothing about deepfakes. Nothing about the impossibility of removing data once it has been used to train a model.
The form was written before any of this technology existed. It is fundamentally stale. The risks it discloses bear no resemblance to the risks that actually exist.
No expiry
Consent remains effective "until I advise the school otherwise." No annual renewal. No periodic review. No prompt for parents to reconsider as the landscape changes.
A form signed in 2019 still governs a child's digital exposure in 2026. In 2019, Meta had not confirmed AI training on Australian posts. Clearview AI's database had not been documented. Human Rights Watch had not found 362 Australian children in a training dataset. The deepfake incidents at Australian schools had not occurred. The threat landscape has fundamentally changed. The consent has not.
Children have no voice
The children whose identities are published have no say. The form is signed by a parent or guardian. The child is not consulted. A five-year-old has no input on whether their photo appears on a public Facebook Page. A ten-year-old who understands the internet better than most adults still has no input.
A 2024 peer-reviewed study found that these practices violate Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantees children the right to express views on matters affecting them. Australia ratified that Convention in 1990.
The contradiction
In December 2025, Australia banned children under 16 from social media. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act required platforms to prevent under-16s from holding accounts. 4.7 million accounts were removed. As a country, we decided social media is not safe for children.
We still allow schools to publish children's photos on those same platforms. With consent forms that do not disclose the actual risks. On accounts that are required by policy to be public.
The law protects children from being on social media. Nothing yet protects them from being published on it.
What informed consent would look like
Separate consent for different channels
Newsletter, website, social media, external media. Each channel has a different risk profile. Parents should be able to consent to low-risk channels (password-protected website, emailed newsletter) without consenting to high-risk ones (public social media).
Explicit disclosure of AI risks
The form must state plainly that photos posted on public social media may be scraped for AI training, incorporated into facial recognition databases, included in training datasets, and used to generate synthetic images including deepfakes. If parents are not told, consent is not informed.
Default to private
The default should be private, with specific opt-in required for social media publication. Not the other way around. Not all-or-nothing. The current default exposes children to the highest level of risk unless parents actively refuse.
Children consulted
For older primary students and secondary students, children should be consulted on decisions about their own images. This is consistent with Article 12 of the UN Convention and with basic respect for the people whose faces are being published.
Annual renewal
Consent should be renewed annually, reflecting the rapidly changing risk landscape. A form signed in one year should not govern exposure in a year when the risks are materially different.
The NSW Department of Education can revise the Permission to Publish form administratively. No new law is required. No parliamentary process. An administrative decision to update the form to reflect current risks and offer granular consent. This is one of the three changes this investigation recommends.
- NSW Department of Education Permission to Publish form
- Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 – Federal Register of Legislation
- UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 12 – OHCHR
- Peer-reviewed study on school social media and children's rights – Journal of Communication
- NSW DoE Social Media Policy PD-2011-0418
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Last reviewed: April 2026