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Aren't twitter posts, you know, public by default ? What is the big deal if these students intended to share this information with everyone. Or did Pearson some

Aren't twitter posts, you know, public by default ? What is the big deal if these students intended to share this information with everyone. Or did Pearson somehow played tricks to subvert their trust ?

peri 12y ago
In US law, at least, there is a large distinction between public school administrators searching a particular student and large-scale searching of students, even if the search only pertains to publicly available information. You can see the issues more clearly if you think about the history of freedom of speech cases vs. public schools, especially those pertaining to freedom to practice religion.
UweSchmidt 12y ago
There's "public, anyone can hear it and forget it a little later", and then there is "public, collected, stored, analyzed beyond anyone's wildest imagination". These are two different concepts; the latter is not understood at all; it would be nice if the former could exist in some form, so there you have this attempt to push back on "monitoring".
DanBC 12y ago
EU data protection laws are a useful model. An organisation should only collectthe information it needs to; it should not keep that information longer than it needs; it should be transparent about the information it gathers and the reason for doing so. In this case a company is searching public information (reasonable) but using education databases to get contact info for the student (not reasonable). This is unreasonable because they should be using things like warrants to get addresses -- something with judicial oversight. The student's personal contact information should be protected from this kind of trawling.
Donzo 12y ago
Collection of data on children younger than 13 is regulated by COPPA. Parents need to sign off explicitly on all data that is knowingly being collected by websites or applications on children younger than 13 years of age. It doesn't matter if the children made the information public. The company can't store it.
- lotu 12y ago
  Doesn't that apply toTwitter as well? If the child is under 13 Twitter can't store their tweets?
  - ipedrazas 12y ago
    Yes, but in theory you cannot sign up unless you're older than X. Thing is that neither twitter nor facebook do anything to prevent children using their networks, you know, data is very important, specially that data.
matt_morgan 12y ago
Pearson used data it had on a student to identify the kid's district and began an investigation on its own. I.e., it abused its own privileged position. Supposedly they won't do that anymore and instead will forward info to the districts to investigate.

peri 12y ago

In US law, at least, there is a large distinction between public school administrators searching a particular student and large-scale searching of students, even if the search only pertains to publicly available information. You can see the issues more clearly if you think about the history of freedom of speech cases vs. public schools, especially those pertaining to freedom to practice religion.

UweSchmidt 12y ago

There's "public, anyone can hear it and forget it a little later", and then there is "public, collected, stored, analyzed beyond anyone's wildest imagination". These are two different concepts; the latter is not understood at all; it would be nice if the former could exist in some form, so there you have this attempt to push back on "monitoring".

DanBC 12y ago

EU data protection laws are a useful model. An organisation should only collectthe information it needs to; it should not keep that information longer than it needs; it should be transparent about the information it gathers and the reason for doing so. In this case a company is searching public information (reasonable) but using education databases to get contact info for the student (not reasonable). This is unreasonable because they should be using things like warrants to get addresses -- something with judicial oversight. The student's personal contact information should be protected from this kind of trawling.

Donzo 12y ago

Collection of data on children younger than 13 is regulated by COPPA. Parents need to sign off explicitly on all data that is knowingly being collected by websites or applications on children younger than 13 years of age. It doesn't matter if the children made the information public. The company can't store it.

lotu 12y ago
Doesn't that apply toTwitter as well? If the child is under 13 Twitter can't store their tweets?
- ipedrazas 12y ago
  Yes, but in theory you cannot sign up unless you're older than X. Thing is that neither twitter nor facebook do anything to prevent children using their networks, you know, data is very important, specially that data.

matt_morgan 12y ago

Pearson used data it had on a student to identify the kid's district and began an investigation on its own. I.e., it abused its own privileged position. Supposedly they won't do that anymore and instead will forward info to the districts to investigate.