8 ms·

Schools are helping police spy on kids’ social media activity

102 points by raddad 10y ago

mirimir 10y ago
Well, it's apparently public posts that are being searched. So kids just need to learn some OPSEC, no? But indeed, it must suck, growing up in the panopticon :(
- mtgx 10y ago
  Or get their own lobbyists if they don't like it.
  - ccvannorman 10y ago
    message to kids: Grow up rich or feel the boot of the state on your sorry head for life.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  Good idea for nonprofit
sdoering 10y ago
I'm so glad I grew up some twenty to thirty years prior to this. I was bullied and there was nothing any grown up could have done without me telling them about the bullying. Non the less, as said above, I am glad to not gave to grow up in this panopticon.
zyxley 10y ago
And people wonder why kids are using apps like Snapchat that are intentionally designed to be incomprehensible to outsiders...
lilcarlyung 10y ago
How do they identify which social media accounts belong to which students?
rubyfan 10y ago
So basically the school system doesn't want oversight? FTA: > Details of the 12 police investigations that stemmed from searches in the past year have not been divulged by the school system. The school system told the Orlando Sentinel that it doesn't want public details of the program to interfere with its effectiveness.
- themartorana 10y ago
  It wants privacy, and doesn't want to be surveilled. I'm not sure, but the irony is so thick we might need a new word.
  - kayfox 10y ago
    Orwellian.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  That was my first thought. Who is watching the watchmen? And as someone else noted, how do they figure out which social media accounts belong to students?
- csense 10y ago
  Clearly they don't reveal what these incidents were about because they're probably reporting students to the police for underage consumption of alcohol or something.
turninggears 10y ago
I can't comment on this specific school district, but in my own school district, there have been a fair number of instances where it was discovered, after an incident, that students had been planning a fight or physical confrontation for days in advance on social media. If the district had programs like this in place, it could have actually improved student safety. I know many here are claiming that this is just a pretense for monitoring students, but that's not what it looks like from my perspective.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >planning a fight or physical confrontation Oh no, not a physical confrontation! Before you know it, these kids will be overseas in some dessert shooting people. Sometimes getting physical is the only solution to bullying.
- appleflaxen 10y ago
  It seems like it's the parents' position to monitor the actions of their children on social media, not the school. What if they had been planning a fight from the public park. Should the school or police monitor their communication there? What if they had been planning a fight from their front yard. Should the school or police monitor them there? What about by phone? What about in their bedroom? "Planning a fight" is just communication. I don't think the school or the police should be monitoring children's communication (outside of the school premises, in the case of the school).
  - turninggears 10y ago
    To clarify, the students were doing so during school hours, presumably on school property, possibly even using the school Internet connection or school computers.
Hondor 10y ago
The whole point of making public posts is because they want lots of people to see them. So who cares if the school sees them too? That's part of the public. It's not spying if the spyee is intentionally broadcasting the information and wants everyone to see it. Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the hall. She overhears the insults they're shouting and then calls the bullies in to tell them off. Isn't that what we want? Do we want school staff to turn a blind eye to bullying and stand by when they know who's doing it and what they're doing?
- Matt3o12_ 10y ago
  Except that students don't know what is public. They often don't even care if the whole world can see that because they don't know how it affects them now or later. While it has gotten better (I've noticed that more and more students use s private profile on Twitter, they still accept every follower). It is kind of like if teachers start disgusting as students to invade their privacy, which they have no right to do.
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago
  >Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the hall. Except this is absolutely nothing like that. Schools should only have authority over kids at school. Schools in the USA already to a pathetic enough job educating kids before expending effort to spy on them at all times. Schools should be for teaching - not spying - period.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
I'd be ok with this... if it only monitored posts made during school hours on days students were present. But it doesn't, so I'm not ok with this. Looking on the bright side, a bunch of kids are gonna get a crash course in basic opsec aka "not posting stuff you wouldn't want your boss/the cops/the entire world to see online" unfortunately this will probably screw up the lives of a lot of students who come into contact with law enforcement when they really just need help.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  I was prepared to be upset, but I'm having trouble seeing why I should. The article seems to indicate this software only looks at public posts. It'd be different if they used fake accounts or got "snitch" students to obtain access. But public posts? They're essentially broadcasting this information to the world. As you say, they will quickly learn privacy practices, and everything gets better.
- marchenko 10y ago
  I agree. Contact with law enforcement always has the potential to become very costly - in lives, freedom, liberty, or simply reputation. I am not sanguine about the effects of broadening this contact, and inviting the state apparatus into more peoples' lives at an even earlier stage.
  - marchenko 10y ago
    Not to mention that it conditions youngsters to accept state surveillance/intrusion into their personal lives
CPLX 10y ago
I wonder what would happen if schools spent their full energy and focus trying to, you know, like teach kids stuff?
lerie 10y ago
been happening for years...
- mtgx 10y ago
  It's even worse in the UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11323558/Anti-terror-plan-to-spy-on-toddlers-is-heavy-handed.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1...
  - nekomancer 10y ago
    I'm trying to understand what was going through peoples' heads for something like this to happen in the first place, but I'm drawing a blank. Is this what mass hysteria looks like?
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      > Is this what mass hysteria looks like? That's one way of putting it. In reference to that article on trying to find supposedly "radicalized" kids that might become "terrorists", it's probably more accurate to say this is what fascism/totalitarianism[1] looks like, or perhaps simply racism. While it won't explain what's going through the heads of the people causing this crap, I recommend listening to some of the people that are being targeted in the 32c3 talk "The Price Of Dissent"[3]. It doesn't have many answers, but it does paint a very good picture of the current state of fear, xenophobia, and oppression. [1] The UK isn't the only country heading rapidly towards fascism. On the other side of the pond we have "banned from CNN" Roger Stone managing Trump's campaign tactics, who just promised to "'disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates' who were involved in 'stealing' the nomination from Trump"[2]. This could get really ugly, really fast. [2] http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-stone/39099634 http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-stone/39099... [3] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent
lerie 10y ago
been happening for years...
kinai 10y ago
2016 Police Report: 4 kids were successfully stopped from stealing candy. Parents suing us because kids suffered psychological damage and now have a criminal record, but we all know that this is just caused by bad parenting.
- x5n1 10y ago
  Need more funding to fight illegal sugar highs. Illegal candy is a gateway drug.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    They just need some speed, I mean adderall.
  - calibraxis 10y ago
    Watch if they refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the national symbol, punish them for transgressing private property moral codes... if we have so many armed bureaucrats, they might as well be constantly judging everyone.
cronjobber 10y ago
Providing the young with a deep distrust of all things Facebook? Sounds like educators are actually doing their jobs.
nv-vn 10y ago
At times I like to feel like 1984 didn't come true ever, and that our limited surveillence, in the grand scheme of things, is almost tolerable in comparison. But every time I see somethijg like this I change my mind. Everything here is about infiltrating the privacy of children and not about their safety. As soon as we get parents to accept this surveillence for their children, we know we're not far off from not just mass surveillance of metadata, but large scale surveillance of all Internet communication we conduct on a more-or-less personal level. If the current parents are okay with it, how much more will future parents allow now that the precedent is being set? How much intrusion will these children be willing to take once they're grown up?
- PJules 10y ago
  It will change once our future Politicians, CEOs, Generals, Judges, Celebs etc start seeing their lives and decisions get effected by all that data about them out there. Until then its hard to imagine anything changing. Ofcourse Google and Facebook can stop being robotic slaves to advertising revenue and go the Wikipedia route. But that would be like expecting the big banks and rating agencies to do what was right at the peak of the subprime crisis. Its amazing to watch how some of the smartest people on the planet can get stuck on tracks they can't get of. Highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff on this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass
  - glasz 10y ago
    > It will change once our future Politicians, CEOs, Generals, Judges, Celebs etc start seeing their lives and decisions get effected by all that data about them out there. that's a bunch of wishful thinking if not baloney. everybody's in that game. blackmail will be so inflationary that it won't work. the only difference to today will be much, much easier intrusion if not outright ban of privacy. now you don't tell me that won't happen. just look at the billions of sheep screwing around on facebook, uploading personal pictures to all kinds of clouds and using pictures of themselves on linked in and twitter, throwing their fingerprints into every database there is just to get a drivers license or take a flight somewhere, going along with secret courts, not objecting to international flight passenger records exchange, still believing the stories they're told about syria, lybia, iraq, iran, russia. still watching fox news et al, still voting for suckers like clinton, sanders, trump. everybody still believes at least some part of the charade. we got to where we are without anybody noticing or at least while ridiculing anybody who actually noticed and spoke out. this will go on and sheep will lose. sheep are sheep.
facepalm 10y ago
I don't see how anybody can complain if public posts are being analyzed.
- nekomancer 10y ago
  Why couldn't/shouldn't people complain about it? It's like how you can be against paparazzi. The fact that something is legal doesn't make it morally right or immune to criticism.
  - facepalm 10y ago
    Paparazzi ambush people going on with their daily lives - they have no choice but to venture outside (into public places) sometime. That's hardly the same as deliberately publishing something on a public network. That said, sure, you can complain about it. I guess I just don't see the point.
imgabe 10y ago
It seems every time there's a mass shooting or a tragic suicide, people find out there were a bunch of social media posts beforehand that clearly broadcast the perpetrator's intent. Every time we ask "Why didn't anyone see this coming?" Well, this is us "looking" to see these things coming, but now analyzing publicly available information is a violation of privacy?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Its a question of false positives, and also the chilling effect. If we're all under a microscope that changes society fundamentally. Kids talk about lots of things, in jest or half serious. All the time. Getting paranoid about it would be a worse problem. As I heard Hodge say on Criminal Minds, "All teenaged boys profile as sociopaths"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- izacus 10y ago
  That's because the school shootings should be addressed by finding a root cause (after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue) instad of more orwellian surveillance which leads to false accusations and abuse.
  - wyager 10y ago
    >after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue Absolutely false. Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland all had more shooting rampages (and deaths thereof) per capita than the United States (at least from 2009-2013, which the data covers). http://archive.is/f4gbv http://archive.is/f4gbv
    - izacus 10y ago
      Does USA being a 4th most common place of shootings invalidate my point of trying to find a root cause instead of surveilance?
csense 10y ago
I'm not normally in favor of surveillance, or reporting students to police for minor infractions. But for me the key sentence is here: > collects data from public posts on students' social media accounts Calling this "spying" is disingenuous. There's no spying going on if person A posts something to be available to the general public, and then person B, a member of the general public (in this case the school's social media subcontractor), looks at the post.
- izacus 10y ago
  Unless it's done in form of massive data collection targeted at a (minor!) group.
  - vitd 10y ago
    Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook and other social media sites have controls to make your posts private. If you choose to make them public, you are giving your consent to have them trawled and searched by anyone and everything on the Internet. Kids aren't dumb. They can learn how to make posts private and how to limit who sees what they post. If they choose not to and their parents do not get involved, then I don't see the issue with the schools doing this.
    - izacus 10y ago
      While kids aren't dumb, it doesn't mean they fully understand side effects of permanent posts for future careers. Heck, a lot of adults don't understand that and now you expect teenagers to be fully aware how damaging to your longterm career can posts be? This pretty much reads like victim blaming.
      - cududa 10y ago
        I'm 24 now and I can remember from eighth grade through graduation there was this assembly/ seminar where they brought someone in and berated you to not post stupid stuff on the Internet (MySpace, AOL instant messenger era). Seemed to be pretty effective.. Also, who's the victim in your hypothetical? The kid getting bullied, or the kid who gets caught bullying through this tool - because it sounds like the former.
nsgi 10y ago
If this is monitoring public Facebook posts, how much data can they really get, given that posts are only visible to friends by default?
deepnet 10y ago
What better way to prepare children for life under secret, quasi-legal mass surveillance by officials. If the innocent are caught up in the dragnet, the neologism collatoral intrusion exists. Freedom from warantless search never applied to children's diaries, schools are in loco parentis. If an overactive imagination doesn't make one culpable it cannot be ignored by liable officials and may be an indictor of intent, disposition or a pre-crime. As a society we have decided no price is too high for child safety. The only flaw I can see in this scheme are officials with less than perfect judgement or their own prejudices. /s

102 points by raddad 10y ago

Well, it's apparently public posts that are being searched. So kids just need to learn some OPSEC, no? But indeed, it must suck, growing up in the panopticon :(

mtgx 10y ago
Or get their own lobbyists if they don't like it.
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  message to kids: Grow up rich or feel the boot of the state on your sorry head for life.
venomsnake 10y ago
Good idea for nonprofit

sdoering 10y ago

I'm so glad I grew up some twenty to thirty years prior to this. I was bullied and there was nothing any grown up could have done without me telling them about the bullying. Non the less, as said above, I am glad to not gave to grow up in this panopticon.

zyxley 10y ago

And people wonder why kids are using apps like Snapchat that are intentionally designed to be incomprehensible to outsiders...

lilcarlyung 10y ago

How do they identify which social media accounts belong to which students?

rubyfan 10y ago

So basically the school system doesn't want oversight? FTA: > Details of the 12 police investigations that stemmed from searches in the past year have not been divulged by the school system. The school system told the Orlando Sentinel that it doesn't want public details of the program to interfere with its effectiveness.

themartorana 10y ago
It wants privacy, and doesn't want to be surveilled. I'm not sure, but the irony is so thick we might need a new word.
- kayfox 10y ago
  Orwellian.
ourmandave 10y ago
That was my first thought. Who is watching the watchmen? And as someone else noted, how do they figure out which social media accounts belong to students?
csense 10y ago
Clearly they don't reveal what these incidents were about because they're probably reporting students to the police for underage consumption of alcohol or something.

turninggears 10y ago

I can't comment on this specific school district, but in my own school district, there have been a fair number of instances where it was discovered, after an incident, that students had been planning a fight or physical confrontation for days in advance on social media. If the district had programs like this in place, it could have actually improved student safety. I know many here are claiming that this is just a pretense for monitoring students, but that's not what it looks like from my perspective.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>planning a fight or physical confrontation Oh no, not a physical confrontation! Before you know it, these kids will be overseas in some dessert shooting people. Sometimes getting physical is the only solution to bullying.
appleflaxen 10y ago
It seems like it's the parents' position to monitor the actions of their children on social media, not the school. What if they had been planning a fight from the public park. Should the school or police monitor their communication there? What if they had been planning a fight from their front yard. Should the school or police monitor them there? What about by phone? What about in their bedroom? "Planning a fight" is just communication. I don't think the school or the police should be monitoring children's communication (outside of the school premises, in the case of the school).
- turninggears 10y ago
  To clarify, the students were doing so during school hours, presumably on school property, possibly even using the school Internet connection or school computers.

Hondor 10y ago

The whole point of making public posts is because they want lots of people to see them. So who cares if the school sees them too? That's part of the public. It's not spying if the spyee is intentionally broadcasting the information and wants everyone to see it. Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the hall. She overhears the insults they're shouting and then calls the bullies in to tell them off. Isn't that what we want? Do we want school staff to turn a blind eye to bullying and stand by when they know who's doing it and what they're doing?

Matt3o12_ 10y ago
Except that students don't know what is public. They often don't even care if the whole world can see that because they don't know how it affects them now or later. While it has gotten better (I've noticed that more and more students use s private profile on Twitter, they still accept every follower). It is kind of like if teachers start disgusting as students to invade their privacy, which they have no right to do.
StanislavPetrov 10y ago
>Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the hall. Except this is absolutely nothing like that. Schools should only have authority over kids at school. Schools in the USA already to a pathetic enough job educating kids before expending effort to spy on them at all times. Schools should be for teaching - not spying - period.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

I'd be ok with this... if it only monitored posts made during school hours on days students were present. But it doesn't, so I'm not ok with this. Looking on the bright side, a bunch of kids are gonna get a crash course in basic opsec aka "not posting stuff you wouldn't want your boss/the cops/the entire world to see online" unfortunately this will probably screw up the lives of a lot of students who come into contact with law enforcement when they really just need help.

MichaelGG 10y ago
I was prepared to be upset, but I'm having trouble seeing why I should. The article seems to indicate this software only looks at public posts. It'd be different if they used fake accounts or got "snitch" students to obtain access. But public posts? They're essentially broadcasting this information to the world. As you say, they will quickly learn privacy practices, and everything gets better.
marchenko 10y ago
I agree. Contact with law enforcement always has the potential to become very costly - in lives, freedom, liberty, or simply reputation. I am not sanguine about the effects of broadening this contact, and inviting the state apparatus into more peoples' lives at an even earlier stage.
- marchenko 10y ago
  Not to mention that it conditions youngsters to accept state surveillance/intrusion into their personal lives

CPLX 10y ago

I wonder what would happen if schools spent their full energy and focus trying to, you know, like teach kids stuff?

lerie 10y ago

been happening for years...

mtgx 10y ago
It's even worse in the UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11323558/Anti-terror-plan-to-spy-on-toddlers-is-heavy-handed.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/1...
- nekomancer 10y ago
  I'm trying to understand what was going through peoples' heads for something like this to happen in the first place, but I'm drawing a blank. Is this what mass hysteria looks like?
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    > Is this what mass hysteria looks like? That's one way of putting it. In reference to that article on trying to find supposedly "radicalized" kids that might become "terrorists", it's probably more accurate to say this is what fascism/totalitarianism[1] looks like, or perhaps simply racism. While it won't explain what's going through the heads of the people causing this crap, I recommend listening to some of the people that are being targeted in the 32c3 talk "The Price Of Dissent"[3]. It doesn't have many answers, but it does paint a very good picture of the current state of fear, xenophobia, and oppression. [1] The UK isn't the only country heading rapidly towards fascism. On the other side of the pond we have "banned from CNN" Roger Stone managing Trump's campaign tactics, who just promised to "'disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates' who were involved in 'stealing' the nomination from Trump"[2]. This could get really ugly, really fast. [2] http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-stone/39099634 http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-stone/39099... [3] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent

lerie 10y ago

been happening for years...

kinai 10y ago

2016 Police Report: 4 kids were successfully stopped from stealing candy. Parents suing us because kids suffered psychological damage and now have a criminal record, but we all know that this is just caused by bad parenting.

x5n1 10y ago
Need more funding to fight illegal sugar highs. Illegal candy is a gateway drug.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  They just need some speed, I mean adderall.
- calibraxis 10y ago
  Watch if they refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the national symbol, punish them for transgressing private property moral codes... if we have so many armed bureaucrats, they might as well be constantly judging everyone.

cronjobber 10y ago

Providing the young with a deep distrust of all things Facebook? Sounds like educators are actually doing their jobs.

nv-vn 10y ago

At times I like to feel like 1984 didn't come true ever, and that our limited surveillence, in the grand scheme of things, is almost tolerable in comparison. But every time I see somethijg like this I change my mind. Everything here is about infiltrating the privacy of children and not about their safety. As soon as we get parents to accept this surveillence for their children, we know we're not far off from not just mass surveillance of metadata, but large scale surveillance of all Internet communication we conduct on a more-or-less personal level. If the current parents are okay with it, how much more will future parents allow now that the precedent is being set? How much intrusion will these children be willing to take once they're grown up?

PJules 10y ago
It will change once our future Politicians, CEOs, Generals, Judges, Celebs etc start seeing their lives and decisions get effected by all that data about them out there. Until then its hard to imagine anything changing. Ofcourse Google and Facebook can stop being robotic slaves to advertising revenue and go the Wikipedia route. But that would be like expecting the big banks and rating agencies to do what was right at the peak of the subprime crisis. Its amazing to watch how some of the smartest people on the planet can get stuck on tracks they can't get of. Highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff on this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass
- glasz 10y ago
  > It will change once our future Politicians, CEOs, Generals, Judges, Celebs etc start seeing their lives and decisions get effected by all that data about them out there. that's a bunch of wishful thinking if not baloney. everybody's in that game. blackmail will be so inflationary that it won't work. the only difference to today will be much, much easier intrusion if not outright ban of privacy. now you don't tell me that won't happen. just look at the billions of sheep screwing around on facebook, uploading personal pictures to all kinds of clouds and using pictures of themselves on linked in and twitter, throwing their fingerprints into every database there is just to get a drivers license or take a flight somewhere, going along with secret courts, not objecting to international flight passenger records exchange, still believing the stories they're told about syria, lybia, iraq, iran, russia. still watching fox news et al, still voting for suckers like clinton, sanders, trump. everybody still believes at least some part of the charade. we got to where we are without anybody noticing or at least while ridiculing anybody who actually noticed and spoke out. this will go on and sheep will lose. sheep are sheep.

facepalm 10y ago

I don't see how anybody can complain if public posts are being analyzed.

nekomancer 10y ago
Why couldn't/shouldn't people complain about it? It's like how you can be against paparazzi. The fact that something is legal doesn't make it morally right or immune to criticism.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Paparazzi ambush people going on with their daily lives - they have no choice but to venture outside (into public places) sometime. That's hardly the same as deliberately publishing something on a public network. That said, sure, you can complain about it. I guess I just don't see the point.

imgabe 10y ago

It seems every time there's a mass shooting or a tragic suicide, people find out there were a bunch of social media posts beforehand that clearly broadcast the perpetrator's intent. Every time we ask "Why didn't anyone see this coming?" Well, this is us "looking" to see these things coming, but now analyzing publicly available information is a violation of privacy?

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Its a question of false positives, and also the chilling effect. If we're all under a microscope that changes society fundamentally. Kids talk about lots of things, in jest or half serious. All the time. Getting paranoid about it would be a worse problem. As I heard Hodge say on Criminal Minds, "All teenaged boys profile as sociopaths"
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
izacus 10y ago
That's because the school shootings should be addressed by finding a root cause (after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue) instad of more orwellian surveillance which leads to false accusations and abuse.
- wyager 10y ago
  >after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue Absolutely false. Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland all had more shooting rampages (and deaths thereof) per capita than the United States (at least from 2009-2013, which the data covers). http://archive.is/f4gbv http://archive.is/f4gbv
  - izacus 10y ago
    Does USA being a 4th most common place of shootings invalidate my point of trying to find a root cause instead of surveilance?

csense 10y ago

I'm not normally in favor of surveillance, or reporting students to police for minor infractions. But for me the key sentence is here: > collects data from public posts on students' social media accounts Calling this "spying" is disingenuous. There's no spying going on if person A posts something to be available to the general public, and then person B, a member of the general public (in this case the school's social media subcontractor), looks at the post.

izacus 10y ago
Unless it's done in form of massive data collection targeted at a (minor!) group.
- vitd 10y ago
  Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook and other social media sites have controls to make your posts private. If you choose to make them public, you are giving your consent to have them trawled and searched by anyone and everything on the Internet. Kids aren't dumb. They can learn how to make posts private and how to limit who sees what they post. If they choose not to and their parents do not get involved, then I don't see the issue with the schools doing this.
  - izacus 10y ago
    While kids aren't dumb, it doesn't mean they fully understand side effects of permanent posts for future careers. Heck, a lot of adults don't understand that and now you expect teenagers to be fully aware how damaging to your longterm career can posts be? This pretty much reads like victim blaming.
    - cududa 10y ago
      I'm 24 now and I can remember from eighth grade through graduation there was this assembly/ seminar where they brought someone in and berated you to not post stupid stuff on the Internet (MySpace, AOL instant messenger era). Seemed to be pretty effective.. Also, who's the victim in your hypothetical? The kid getting bullied, or the kid who gets caught bullying through this tool - because it sounds like the former.

nsgi 10y ago

If this is monitoring public Facebook posts, how much data can they really get, given that posts are only visible to friends by default?

deepnet 10y ago

What better way to prepare children for life under secret, quasi-legal mass surveillance by officials. If the innocent are caught up in the dragnet, the neologism collatoral intrusion exists. Freedom from warantless search never applied to children's diaries, schools are in loco parentis. If an overactive imagination doesn't make one culpable it cannot be ignored by liable officials and may be an indictor of intent, disposition or a pre-crime. As a society we have decided no price is too high for child safety. The only flaw I can see in this scheme are officials with less than perfect judgement or their own prejudices. /s