10 ms·

School demands search of text messaging, outside of school

79 points by glennvtx 4y ago

LinuxBender 4y ago
I don't have a smart phone but surely there must be an app that creates a fake text messaging UI and locks the real messages behind a unique password?
- anakaine 4y ago
  Or, you know, you don't hide stuff and pretend the problem doesn't exist, but instead fix the issue. The kids have a right to due process, and to privacy as they are, after all, human. What is required here is for the adult parents, and students to push back together and to let the school know that this is unequivocally a bad approach. The author points out that in different words that if the school is worried about bullying, etc, then the appropriate response is to protect first, not work out who to punish first. Trying to come up with fake guis and hiding stuff is not how this sort of issue should be approached. The issue needs to be squashed, and firmly, so that it doesn't occur in the first place. Prevention is better than cure, or in the case of a fake gui, less than half a cure.
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    I am a pragmatic minimalist. First I find a work around then I work on the root cause. Changing the policy or actions of a school district can take time. Installing a work around, assuming one exists, is a quick mitigation that parents can teach their kids. We might not agree but that is just how I operate.
  - newaccount2021 4y ago
    > The kids have a right to due process, and to privacy as they are, after all, human The word "privacy" does not appear in the Constitution - you have no explicit right to privacy in the US
    - nybble41 4y ago
      > you have no explicit right to privacy in the US According to the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the People have the right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". That is an explicit legal right to privacy, even if it doesn't use the literal word "privacy" in the text.
    - landemva 4y ago
      Yes, the federal constitution gives zero rights to people. It provides for federal government to do various things, and puts limits on that. It explicitly reserves everything else to the People and the States.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Forget the word "privacy" then. The Constitution does explicitly give you the right to be secure against unreasonable searches, and this is definitely an unreasonable search.
- WhatsName 4y ago
  Thinking that there is a technical solution to invasion of basic rights is a fallacy that many hackers believe, that I also fall for quite often. In the end you might win the "this policy is ineffective, because there is a way to get around" argument short-term, but you loose the stronger "this policy is a violation of my (kids) established rights" argument long-term. At the end the only way to win this cat & mouse game is to stand your ground before it starts.
ivraatiems 4y ago
American schools are so authoritarian, it's no wonder we are having such a problem preserving faith in our system of democracy in the United States. In public schools, the word of unelected random adults is law, the rules are completely arbitrary, students have no right to privacy, no freedom of movement, sometimes not even control over how they dress or who they speak to. If an American public school was a country, it'd be Putin's Russia, and that only because of the pretense of meaningless "student government". Maybe if we wanted people to believe that the political system of this country made sense and was worth protecting, we would structure our education system to reflect its alleged values.
- carom 4y ago
  I almost got kicked out of school over a computer related issue. I refused to admit to it and they threatened to call the police. It honestly would have been preferable as the police have due process. Kids reading this, don't give them a confession, police or school admins, take the 5th. Don't Talk to the Police - https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE They want to take your money or put you in a cage.
  - ivraatiems 4y ago
    What was the issue? Just curious, if you're comfortable elaborating.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - iron2disulfide 4y ago
    I almost got kicked out because I "looked like" someone who had vandalized something or other the day before. They pulled me out of class, called me names, made me sit in their little sad office (thus missing more class) and tried to get me to write a written confession. I refused and they said they would "prosecute me to the full extent of the law". The next day I was exonerated with no explanation given. The two fully-grown adults who ran the security office were former police; judging by the 20+ department badges proudly displayed on their back wall, it looks like they'd been kicked out of every department. One wonders why!
lightedman 4y ago
Send them back with a legal-looking note "I paid for this phone, legally it is mine and not the child's. As you are a government institution, any request to view it either comes with a warrant, or pre-reading payment of $1,000,000 for every character in the message which you intend to read. Your receipt and acknowledgement of this letter counts as a binding agreement to these terms." If they want to play a foolish game, play it right back and watch them falter. My father had lots of fun doing this when I was in school, as most admin-level people don't know what truly is legal and what is not.
- dbrueck 4y ago
  I really like this because it cuts to the heart of the matter of somebody at that school deeply misunderstanding the limits of their authority, and having it thrown back at them could help them learn, or at least be an amusing way to deal with the situation.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    The exact limits of a public school's authority to search mobile devices, to handle events that have partially occurred outside school, has not been established. Here's a nice summary: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1159120.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1159120.pdf
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      If they search my mobile device, they will deal with police and the court system. Whether the phone is in my posession or my kids is irrelevant.
      - mlyle 4y ago
        As the document shows, many instances of schools searching students' mobile devices without a warrant have been shown to be constitutional in appellate courts.
newaccount2021 4y ago
Someone1234 4y ago
Let me provide a common hypothetical: - A student is being bullied. This bullying is happening using social media and or text messages. These messages are being sent at various times pseudo-anonymously but there's strong reason to know who it is. Who, exactly, is the authority who we expect to look into this? Is it the police? Using what law/powers? Are social workers empowered? We're clearly not ok with the school doing it. So is bullying that happens outside of school hours just a free-for-all? I'm genuinely asking. It is fine if everyone agrees that schools shouldn't and that it is authoritarian to do so, but then who exactly is the authority? If police are, then when the police slap handcuffs on a K-12 kid, everyone loses their mind about that too and asks "why is this a police matter?!" "Why are we criminalizing young people?!" I'm not saying I have all the answers: Because I absolutely do not. But I am saying people need to think about the bigger picture about how this works and who is responsible for what.
- tomrod 4y ago
  > Who, exactly, is the authority who we expect to look into this? Parents, typically? Police once it becomes harassment or assault (or threat of).
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Parents are not reliable. It's an unpleasant experience asking another parent to tell their kid to stop bullying your kid...and then being told "fuck you".
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > It's an unpleasant experience asking another parent to tell their kid to stop bullying your kid...and then being told "fuck you" Then police.
      - clcaev 4y ago
        > Then the police. In some regions, this is a bit unrealistic. I grew up in a neighborhood where the bully's dad was the police captain. The bully would target brown kids and property of their parents (e.g. M80 down the chimney, among other atrocities). Everyone in town new the son acted with impunity. Kids our age knew it was worse: the dad actively encouraged his son, and gave him the M80s. No one would talk about it in public, less they be targeted as well.
tailrecursion 4y ago
If it could be done technically, setting a child's phone to receive only messages that include a valid ID would discourage abuse by making abuse traceable. The school would insist that all children's phones are set up this way so that there's no stigma attached to a particular child not receiving SMS or whatever. But it's simpler to let the police handle the problem and determine whether it's harassment, or if it's a case of crybullying. A school's not going to be able to stop bullying. But with message tracking devices in everyone's hand and cameras everywhere, the SCHOOL's problems are solvable without having to go into childrens' phones.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > The school would insist that all children's phones are set up this way Unless the school is paying for your kid's phone and plan, they should have exactly zero say in how it's set up.
  - tailrecursion 4y ago
    The child's phone can be set up one way or another. In this hypothetical scheme (described above), a child complaining about anonymous abusive messages is ignored by the school. School's not responsible, because the child's phone is set up improperly. If phone were in order, phone would not receive anonymous messages. A child receiving a traceable abusive message is quickly resolved, and presumably this kind of abuse is rare, for obvious reasons. Everyone is happy. The school's happy because, under this scheme, they have virtually no work to do in connection with online harassment. The police are happy because fewer harassment cases are being opened (this is true only if most kids set their phone as instructed by the school). Kids are slightly less miserable because online bullying has been made more difficult to pull off. Finally, sticklers like the parent are happy because they can continue to set up their phone "wrong" and receive anonymous abuse. Which the school won't look into and will presumably pass off to the police.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      > a child complaining about anonymous abusive messages is ignored by the school. School's not responsible, because the child's phone is set up improperly. Imagine if the police requested, but technically didn't mandate, that parents install location tracking apps on their children's phones, and that they then ignored missing persons reports for anyone who didn't do so.
UIUC_06 4y ago
Over and above hypotheticals about "they know each other from school" or "it affects the learning environment": School administrations should have less power than they have now, rather than more. If you let them be responsible for kids' actions outside of school, nothing good will come of it. They're not competent to take on that job.
- mlyle 4y ago
  If you make them ignore everything happening outside school between students that have to work together at school, nothing good will come of it, either.
  - dismantlethesun 4y ago
    If parents agree then the school can have access, however the default should not be that they can demand access or punish parents for not providing it.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      IMO, if you are bringing a phone to school, and there is a substantiated allegation of a violation of a reasonable school policy involving the phone-- examining the phone should be fair game. And, this is what appellate courts have held.
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    There’s a difference between a victim receiving a threatening text and showing it to administration, and the school demanding to see random teenager’s phones to look for potential crimes. If they have a suspicion, get an actual investigative police detective involved.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Do you think the police are generally actually willing to investigate harassment between teens?

79 points by glennvtx 4y ago

I don't have a smart phone but surely there must be an app that creates a fake text messaging UI and locks the real messages behind a unique password?

anakaine 4y ago
Or, you know, you don't hide stuff and pretend the problem doesn't exist, but instead fix the issue. The kids have a right to due process, and to privacy as they are, after all, human. What is required here is for the adult parents, and students to push back together and to let the school know that this is unequivocally a bad approach. The author points out that in different words that if the school is worried about bullying, etc, then the appropriate response is to protect first, not work out who to punish first. Trying to come up with fake guis and hiding stuff is not how this sort of issue should be approached. The issue needs to be squashed, and firmly, so that it doesn't occur in the first place. Prevention is better than cure, or in the case of a fake gui, less than half a cure.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I am a pragmatic minimalist. First I find a work around then I work on the root cause. Changing the policy or actions of a school district can take time. Installing a work around, assuming one exists, is a quick mitigation that parents can teach their kids. We might not agree but that is just how I operate.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
  > The kids have a right to due process, and to privacy as they are, after all, human The word "privacy" does not appear in the Constitution - you have no explicit right to privacy in the US
  - nybble41 4y ago
    > you have no explicit right to privacy in the US According to the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the People have the right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". That is an explicit legal right to privacy, even if it doesn't use the literal word "privacy" in the text.
  - landemva 4y ago
    Yes, the federal constitution gives zero rights to people. It provides for federal government to do various things, and puts limits on that. It explicitly reserves everything else to the People and the States.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Forget the word "privacy" then. The Constitution does explicitly give you the right to be secure against unreasonable searches, and this is definitely an unreasonable search.
WhatsName 4y ago
Thinking that there is a technical solution to invasion of basic rights is a fallacy that many hackers believe, that I also fall for quite often. In the end you might win the "this policy is ineffective, because there is a way to get around" argument short-term, but you loose the stronger "this policy is a violation of my (kids) established rights" argument long-term. At the end the only way to win this cat & mouse game is to stand your ground before it starts.

ivraatiems 4y ago

American schools are so authoritarian, it's no wonder we are having such a problem preserving faith in our system of democracy in the United States. In public schools, the word of unelected random adults is law, the rules are completely arbitrary, students have no right to privacy, no freedom of movement, sometimes not even control over how they dress or who they speak to. If an American public school was a country, it'd be Putin's Russia, and that only because of the pretense of meaningless "student government". Maybe if we wanted people to believe that the political system of this country made sense and was worth protecting, we would structure our education system to reflect its alleged values.

carom 4y ago
I almost got kicked out of school over a computer related issue. I refused to admit to it and they threatened to call the police. It honestly would have been preferable as the police have due process. Kids reading this, don't give them a confession, police or school admins, take the 5th. Don't Talk to the Police - https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE They want to take your money or put you in a cage.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  What was the issue? Just curious, if you're comfortable elaborating.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- iron2disulfide 4y ago
  I almost got kicked out because I "looked like" someone who had vandalized something or other the day before. They pulled me out of class, called me names, made me sit in their little sad office (thus missing more class) and tried to get me to write a written confession. I refused and they said they would "prosecute me to the full extent of the law". The next day I was exonerated with no explanation given. The two fully-grown adults who ran the security office were former police; judging by the 20+ department badges proudly displayed on their back wall, it looks like they'd been kicked out of every department. One wonders why!

lightedman 4y ago

Send them back with a legal-looking note "I paid for this phone, legally it is mine and not the child's. As you are a government institution, any request to view it either comes with a warrant, or pre-reading payment of $1,000,000 for every character in the message which you intend to read. Your receipt and acknowledgement of this letter counts as a binding agreement to these terms." If they want to play a foolish game, play it right back and watch them falter. My father had lots of fun doing this when I was in school, as most admin-level people don't know what truly is legal and what is not.

dbrueck 4y ago
I really like this because it cuts to the heart of the matter of somebody at that school deeply misunderstanding the limits of their authority, and having it thrown back at them could help them learn, or at least be an amusing way to deal with the situation.
- mlyle 4y ago
  The exact limits of a public school's authority to search mobile devices, to handle events that have partially occurred outside school, has not been established. Here's a nice summary: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1159120.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1159120.pdf
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    If they search my mobile device, they will deal with police and the court system. Whether the phone is in my posession or my kids is irrelevant.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      As the document shows, many instances of schools searching students' mobile devices without a warrant have been shown to be constitutional in appellate courts.

newaccount2021 4y ago

Someone1234 4y ago

Let me provide a common hypothetical: - A student is being bullied. This bullying is happening using social media and or text messages. These messages are being sent at various times pseudo-anonymously but there's strong reason to know who it is. Who, exactly, is the authority who we expect to look into this? Is it the police? Using what law/powers? Are social workers empowered? We're clearly not ok with the school doing it. So is bullying that happens outside of school hours just a free-for-all? I'm genuinely asking. It is fine if everyone agrees that schools shouldn't and that it is authoritarian to do so, but then who exactly is the authority? If police are, then when the police slap handcuffs on a K-12 kid, everyone loses their mind about that too and asks "why is this a police matter?!" "Why are we criminalizing young people?!" I'm not saying I have all the answers: Because I absolutely do not. But I am saying people need to think about the bigger picture about how this works and who is responsible for what.

tomrod 4y ago
> Who, exactly, is the authority who we expect to look into this? Parents, typically? Police once it becomes harassment or assault (or threat of).
- djbusby 4y ago
  Parents are not reliable. It's an unpleasant experience asking another parent to tell their kid to stop bullying your kid...and then being told "fuck you".
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > It's an unpleasant experience asking another parent to tell their kid to stop bullying your kid...and then being told "fuck you" Then police.
    - clcaev 4y ago
      > Then the police. In some regions, this is a bit unrealistic. I grew up in a neighborhood where the bully's dad was the police captain. The bully would target brown kids and property of their parents (e.g. M80 down the chimney, among other atrocities). Everyone in town new the son acted with impunity. Kids our age knew it was worse: the dad actively encouraged his son, and gave him the M80s. No one would talk about it in public, less they be targeted as well.

tailrecursion 4y ago

If it could be done technically, setting a child's phone to receive only messages that include a valid ID would discourage abuse by making abuse traceable. The school would insist that all children's phones are set up this way so that there's no stigma attached to a particular child not receiving SMS or whatever. But it's simpler to let the police handle the problem and determine whether it's harassment, or if it's a case of crybullying. A school's not going to be able to stop bullying. But with message tracking devices in everyone's hand and cameras everywhere, the SCHOOL's problems are solvable without having to go into childrens' phones.

josephcsible 4y ago
> The school would insist that all children's phones are set up this way Unless the school is paying for your kid's phone and plan, they should have exactly zero say in how it's set up.
- tailrecursion 4y ago
  The child's phone can be set up one way or another. In this hypothetical scheme (described above), a child complaining about anonymous abusive messages is ignored by the school. School's not responsible, because the child's phone is set up improperly. If phone were in order, phone would not receive anonymous messages. A child receiving a traceable abusive message is quickly resolved, and presumably this kind of abuse is rare, for obvious reasons. Everyone is happy. The school's happy because, under this scheme, they have virtually no work to do in connection with online harassment. The police are happy because fewer harassment cases are being opened (this is true only if most kids set their phone as instructed by the school). Kids are slightly less miserable because online bullying has been made more difficult to pull off. Finally, sticklers like the parent are happy because they can continue to set up their phone "wrong" and receive anonymous abuse. Which the school won't look into and will presumably pass off to the police.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > a child complaining about anonymous abusive messages is ignored by the school. School's not responsible, because the child's phone is set up improperly. Imagine if the police requested, but technically didn't mandate, that parents install location tracking apps on their children's phones, and that they then ignored missing persons reports for anyone who didn't do so.

UIUC_06 4y ago

Over and above hypotheticals about "they know each other from school" or "it affects the learning environment": School administrations should have less power than they have now, rather than more. If you let them be responsible for kids' actions outside of school, nothing good will come of it. They're not competent to take on that job.

mlyle 4y ago
If you make them ignore everything happening outside school between students that have to work together at school, nothing good will come of it, either.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  If parents agree then the school can have access, however the default should not be that they can demand access or punish parents for not providing it.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    IMO, if you are bringing a phone to school, and there is a substantiated allegation of a violation of a reasonable school policy involving the phone-- examining the phone should be fair game. And, this is what appellate courts have held.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  There’s a difference between a victim receiving a threatening text and showing it to administration, and the school demanding to see random teenager’s phones to look for potential crimes. If they have a suspicion, get an actual investigative police detective involved.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Do you think the police are generally actually willing to investigate harassment between teens?