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IL School District to Monitor Student Blogs
tinkertim writes "According to a Yahoo article, a school district in Libertyville, IL will be holding students accountable for illegal actions discussed in their MySpace blogs even if such actions in no way involved the school or another student. A spokesperson for the school district was quoted as saying: 'The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,' he said. 'It is called the World Wide Web.' Supposedly, no direct monitoring or snooping will be done unless the school receives a report from a concerned parent, community member or other student."
The ambiguity of the criteria doesn't help either: 'Illegal' is one thing, but 'inappropriate' is another one they use (though not mentioned in the summary) and more or less gives them a license to discipline (oh, but only after some undisclosable anonymous source expresses 'concern', of course). I'm willing to bet that illegal means mostly slander against school employees, and inappropriate is 'anything else we don't like and can use as dirt against a kid we want to get rid of'.
Given that most of the time, it's parental apathy being compensated for by the authorities, it's very telling that in this case parents are demanding to be given back their control.Libertyville? Yeah- right.
If we're going to become a 1984 style police state it makes sence to start with the young people.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
...of law enforcement. Shall we have our police officers teaching and managing our schools now? I can't even fathom why a school would want to take on this responsibility. I bet that if this keeps up, a few years down the road parents are going to be yelling at the schools for not catching Jonny's 'illegal' blog. What a mess. Now only if the parents would make the same committment!
let's say I have a blog, and claim I stole a diamond ring from my neighbor in my blog.
what exactly is the school going to do, that they are going to hold me accountable for what I write in my blog..
arrest me? press charges as an educatorial influence?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Should be no end of fun for the kids, and I rather suspect that the first several lawyers' fees will end up paid by the district too.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
People shouldn't have to conceal their personal information online when the searcher has no right to use it . It'd be bad enough if a school punished students for ranting about school online, but the fact that they are punishing students for anything non-school related is downright draconian and offensive. They have no right to do that.
This is yet another step towards government-as-parent. Since when is it the school's job (as a government funded organization) to police students' activities when they are not on school property, and are not engaged in activities related to the school? Further, just because someone writes something in a blog does not mean it is true. Keywords: "Waste of resources".
This is a perversion of what schools should actually be focusing on. Why not focus on teaching students how to perform basic life skills, like manage credit, get a bank account, balance a checkbook, and spot shady deals when trying to buy a car? At least that would fall under "education", not "parenting" (although parents should be teaching their children all that as well).
What if someone didn't like a particular student, created a blog claiming to be them, and posted illegal or inappropriate material? The same thing goes for employers checking out potential employees. There's no way to verify people are who they say they are on these sites.
"The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action."
Clearly this school is just preparing its students for the America of tomorrow.
Last time I checked, we have agencies for handling illegal activities. I believe they are called "police".....
Since when does a school have the time or resources to monitor this type of thing? Sure, sure, if they get notified and see it on the web page, report it to be the police. But last time I checked every person in this country is allowed "Due Process" before being sentenced for any type of crime, and last time I checked it is NOT the schools that are allowed to levy a sentence prior to a court of law.
Overstepping their bounds? WAY overstepping their bounds my friends.
No, I think they will just start posting under each others' names.
It is now apparent what the step before "Profit!!" is: snitch.
the layman's guide to computer science
Here's a wild guess:
Kick you off the teams (and other extra activities that look good on college admission forms). Kick you out of AP classes. Suspend or expell you. Put black marks in your record (and otherwise interfere with earning decent grades) that will blight your carreer and reduce your earning and marriage prospects for the rest of your life.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would have loved this in high school...If someone pissed me off, I could just make a myspace/livejournal/blog that seemed to be from their point of view and talk about dropping acids.
And if I ran one myself, it'd be private.
No, "someone" doesn't. And generally when "someone" with no claim to a kid decides to start monitoring them, it's called STALKING.
There's no oxymoron, but it's clear the spokesperson is a moron.
And who gets to decide what's offensive? They do. And if it doesn' tinvolve school, how the hell is it any of their business if a kid says something offensive anyway? You're an absolute fool to think it would only be used against kids who did something illegal.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Your logic is flawed. So, if I was still in high school, but I made a Duke Nukem 3d map of my school, the school should be concerned? Well guess what, I in fact made a Duke Nukem 3d map of a layout similar to my school, you know why? Because the building layout made a good map. So not only, under your logic, would I get in trouble, probably get suspended or expelled, I would be labeled as a depressed potential murderer and have a police record. I like that. Even though I had 0 intention of actually acting it out, my life would be ruined, because of your logic. Not only am I not depressive, I have 0 intention on ever murdering anyone, or have I ever. Please, think before typing.
Basically, We can find you.
Welcome to America. Land of the free.
the thing that i found weird was the school considered semi-nudity (guys wearing nothing but tube socks) worse than drugs and alcohol.
Yes, of course they did. Because when you're a kid (under 18) and post naked pictures of yourself online, that "self expression" is called child porn, and predators feed off of that stuff.
That's not to say that it is the school's job (IMO, it's not) to be monitoring the activities of students after hours, but if that is their intention, then kids posting naked pictures of themselves should certainly fall under unacceptable behavior.
That said, were I a parent and my kids were expelled for something they did after hours, after making sure my kids were punished so that they don't begin to think I am on their side for what they did, I would sue the school over a denial of free, public education. I don't pay tax money to have the schools pick and choose who can go to school and who can't based on after school activities. And certainly not because the teachers don't like what they see on MySpace. If you have a personal problem with it, bring it to me. Don't deny my kid an education and hurt their future college prospects just because the idiots decided to talk or brag about stuff (that was probably much more mild in real life, or didn't even happen) on MySpace.
I went to this very high school and in my senior year they instituted a policy whereby any athlete involved in any way with the police(even actions that involved free speech) could be removed from their team and banned from all sports activities. This is just a logical progression for such a school and the fact the information isn't confirmed or reliable won't stop them from acting on it.
I'm glad I'm out of that community and it reinforces my weariness of any suburb, anywhere. I feel sorry for the students that have to live in that environment because I'm sure it justs gets worse with each passing year.
Yeah but none of those things are conclusive, or couldn't be forged.
.... that's all the evidence they need. Page, photos, email: what more could you want? They toss Joe in front of a kangaroo court (if they even have to do that), where all Joe can do is blubber that it's not his page. But of course the photos are of him, and it's his name on the email ... so he just looks like a liar. Nobody will believe him.
Let's say there was some kid I really didn't like, named Joe Smith. So first, I go onto GMail, and make an account for Joe.Smith@gmail.com. Then, I go register to MySpace with that email address. While I'm standing around at school, with my cellphone or other small camera, I grab a few photos of Joe. I post those up to "his" MySpace page.
I develop this page for a few weeks, because I have nothing better to do, and this lends it more credibility. Nobody notices, because of course I haven't actually told anyone who knows the real Joe Smith about it. I start posting some racy stuff. Nothing that would get the Feds / Police / DEA involved, but some stuff that the school admin people wouldn't like. Maybe how I think they're real assholes, and how I wish they would do biologically impossible and reproductively unproductive things with themselves. Or maybe I mention some low-level criminal activity: shoplifting, marijuana, drinking, etc. Allude to underage sex -- there's nothing to get puritanical hearts racing like the thoughts of 17-year-olds getting it on. (Or, for even more effective hell-raising, dig up some good dirt on Joe that's actually true -- everybody has some skeletons in the closet, even at 17 -- and post that to the web page. That makes it harder for him to deny later and increases the potential damage inflicted on his friends.)
Then, after I've established this for a little while, I drop a dime on "Joe's" online presence, or maybe I just mention it to somebody else's parent (one of those everything-is-my-business, moralistic asshole types). They check out the webpage, and do the predictable kneejerk thing and immediately go to the school principal/headmaster asking for Joe Smith's head on a plate. The administrator looks up the MySpace page in question, finds incriminating text, finds GMail account in Joe's name that's connected
End result: Joe gets suspended, suspension goes on his permanent record, messes up his chance to go to Princeton, he ends up going to community college and hanging himself while coming off of some bad LSD in his parents basement five years later. Or maybe just going to some other college. Whatever. The point is I was able to fuck with his life without really having to do anything -- I just created some stuff online, revealing nothing about myself besides an IP address (which the school probably wouldn't be able to trace back to me, especially if I was smart enough to use a proxy), and fucked up someone else's life hardcore.
That's the problem with policies like this: they don't take into account the fact that people will try to manipulate them to harm others, either for their own gain or just for the sheer hell of hurting other people. They're designed shortsightedly, and that's why they're almost always a very, very bad idea.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The critical issue here is that a private school is not a government agency and as such on on one hand has the right of association and on the other doesn't have the restraints placed on the government by the constitution.
If the student posts that he intends to kill his (teacher|principal|schoolmate), whether on the Net or anywhere else, he has made a death threat. Not only may he be discipined by the school, but he is also subject to arrest and prosecution.
On the other hand, what if he posts a profanity-laden rant about how unfair the grading system is? Not polite, perhaps, but certainly not illegal-and if done off of school hours, EVEN if he posts it on a public website (or shouts it in a public square), he should not be subject to school discipline. Yet, the school could easily state that what he said was "inappropriate", even though it was perfectly legal.
On the school district's part, it is breathtakingly arrogant-especially for a superintendent to claim that she is not violating the students' rights by "searching" their blogs. Of course she's not, it's up there for anyone in the world to read. However, the students' rights ARE being violated if she is suppressing otherwise legal speech in those blogs. Hell of a way to duck the issue.
I fully agree that should you be stupid enough to post information about doing something -illegal- in a public place, you deserve what you get. The big concern here is the ever-slippery "inappropriate". Teenagers naturally experiment and push the boundaries. This is a natural and healthy part of adolescence, and so long as the kid is not -crossing- those boundaries (i.e. breaking the law), it is not the school's place to intervene after the kid goes home.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I agree. This is just involving parents, community and teachers in high school kid "he said she said" peer politics.
.. where else is it going to come from?
.. thats not free speech, thats stupid juveninle story telling (or a really stupid junior criminal).
.. schools wouldn't feel the need to intervine. I suspect since most public school systems are already under budget and the staff is over taxed, they'd be delighted to no longer feel the need to go "above and beyond" any longer.
I've seen a few stories like this over the last week. It looks like schools are trying to step up to fill a lack of adequate parenting when it comes to student's use of the internet. I see the void they are concerned about, but I don't think its the school's place to step up.
However, since kids only have 2 sources of authority to answer too (parental and school), umm
US Citizens 18 and over should have the run of the internet with no restrictions on what thoughts or content you can publish or contribute. I agree with that because censorship in any form on what is supposed to be a world accessable free medium is bad.
However a 16 year old posting that he beat the crap out of someone and stole his car, well
Point is , if parents were doing their job a bit better
So don't look at this as big brother, look at this as (possibly) a lack of parenting and the school being a bit over eager to correct it.
I predict this is going to grow to be a national issue with hundreds more stories just like this popping up over the next 12 months.
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