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California School District Hires Firm To Monitor Students' Social Media

Posted by samzenpus on from the let's-have-a-look-at-what-you-have-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A suburban Los Angeles school district is taking a novel approach to tackling the problem of cyber-bullying. It's paying a company to snoop on students' social media pages. 'The district in Glendale, California, is paying $40,500 to a firm to monitor and report on 14,000 middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year. Though critics liken the monitoring to government stalking, school officials and their contractor say the purpose is student safety. As classes began this fall, the district awarded the contract after it earlier paid the firm, Geo Listening, $5,000 last spring to conduct a pilot project monitoring 9,000 students at three high schools and a middle school. Among the results was a successful intervention with a student "who was speaking of ending his life" on his social media, said Chris Frydrych, CEO of the firm.'"

26 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Again, the ends justify the means? by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3

    Haven't we grown out of "the ends justify the means" yet?

    --
    Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
    1. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by kylemonger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not about safety as much as it is about ass covering. The schools have been driven to this. Parents won't keep their children off the Internet. But when a child is bullied into committing suicide the school gets sued because they are a convenient target and because the law requires that children be educated, which for most people means sending children to public school.

    2. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm skeptical it's not just paranoia and ignorance on the part of the schools. Kids aren't going to stop being horrible to one another, kids aren't going to realize that high school drama isn't anything to kill yourself over, parents aren't going to stop grieving when their kids die, and lawyers aren't going to stop taking advantage of their grief and schools' funds just because schools hired a guy to watch them. Use common sense and do what's right (IE not violating student's rights and wasting money).

      You'll get sued the same amount either way.

    3. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by ewhenn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's all about ass-covering.... until it backfires. Seriously, they are a school, not the Internet police. On top of that, I think court wise this could actually make them *more* vulnerable. Say the firm they hire *does* tell them about something, and action isn't taken. Now the school had a written report sent to the administrators and didn't do enough, at least that's how it would be framed by a suing attorney. I think that scenario is a lot more damning than simply taking the position that: "We are a school, we are responsible to educate kids, not keep track of their Facebook updates".

    4. Re: Again, the ends justify the means? by meerling · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not to mention going way outside their area.
      If it's not being done on/with school computers, they shouldn't have anything to do with it.
      They are supposed to be educators, not full time nannies/social police.

    5. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When did parents stop being the ones considered responsible for their child's well-being?

    6. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Belial6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it isn't about ass covering. This move creates far more liability than it removes. This is about the school system pushing farther and farther into the role of parent in an attempt to increase the size of their bureaucracy and thus the amount of funding they get. This school has just declared that it is their responsiblility to stop kids from commuting suicide.

      No doubt they will soon be complaining that they are held responsible for the responsibilities they have demanded.

    7. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Seumas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Doesn't matter. We've now had enough generations of public education breeding conformity into people that they have little or no expectation of privacy and almost no knowledge of their protected liberties.

      Think of it this way: You and I probably remember a time when you didn't even need ID to get on a domestic flight and you could walk someone right up to their gate and see them off.

      Anyone born in the last two or so decades won't remember this. They'll be familiar with an experience where you are treated like a criminal by a bunch of low-wage thugs with plastic badges who grope you and inspect you . . . and who also expand their scope to far outside the airport, to nearly any public place. Kids born today will only know a world where everything they do any time and anywhere is monitored, documented, archived, shared, and used against them by their government. If this is what they grow up around, what will they *allow* to change during their time, that kids born in five or ten years will, then, consider normal for *them*?

      All of this originates with the expectations and demands set at home and school. Authority must be followed. Questions are not allowed. Critical thinking is discouraged. Individualism and standing up for yourself makes you a target.

    8. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe this has changed in the United States of Fascism, but every where else in the world, if someone is hired to stalk you 24/7, that is generally considered spying. Even if they only observe you when you're in public.

    9. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Phreakiture · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Irrelevant. Everything that is on facebook was put there by somebody who chose to put it there. If they put it on public display, then they chose to put it on public display. It's published, therefore it is public. This public information is available to anybody and everybody. As long as the school does not require the students to friend them or turn over passwords, what's the issue?

      That said, this could teach students two very important things: reputation management and subterfuge. These are good things to know in an emergent surveillance state.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    10. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      It would be hilarious if people start creating social media accounts to post made up shit using the names of the students.

    11. Re:Again, the ends justify the means? by Jesus_666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sorry for you but that doesn't apply to all schools.

      The school I went to for fifth and sixth class was a cesspool of violence. It's also an underfunded school in a village with massive integration problems. That school is where teachers' careers go to die. The faculty isn't useful for anything and they don't enter the schoolyard during recess because they both don't give a crap and fear the children.

      After that I came to a school where the faculty actually cares. We had bullying in our class. It greatly reduced in intensity when the headmaster showed up, gave the bully a dressing-down in front of the class and had him spend recess walking over the schoolyard while holding hands with the bully-ee - and promised that he'd monitor the situation and react appropriately in the future. (It helps that the now-retired headmaster was respected by the students on account of being generally awesome.)

      Schools can be horrible with bullying but not all of them are. Both of the ones I attended are public; one just happens to be in a social hotspot and the other one isn't and has a really engaged faculty.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  2. Simply Awful by b4upoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Observation outside the school for criminal activities is a police function. The last thing we need is another police like agency that calls itself part of a school system.

    1. Re:Simply Awful by tftp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Seriously, why don't you just fix the fucked up environment that school's create

      You can fix that with one and only one change: students must be able to pick and choose who they want - and, most importantly, don't want - to interact with. Someone hurt you, or is scary - banish him from your presence, for a while or forever. This will be self-regulating, unless the student wants to be all alone (and, actually, that is fine as well.) Those bans must work everywhere - in class, and in halls, and in the street. (Too much to ask for, but that's the spec.)

      The whole problem is that (a) students have no say in who they are working with, *AND* (b) they have no means to control behavior of others. Adults have both of those options. I don't know why so many ancient writers say that childhood is the best time of anyone's life ... in my opinion, it's the worst time (aside from deathbed, perhaps.) Children have no rights; everyone is a superior; noncompliance is punished; complaints are not accepted; crimes can be committed against you with no recourse... Hell, as soon as I was done with school I ran away and never looked back. The adult world is simply heaven, compared to the wolfpack-like society of children where only physical strength and ferocity matter.

  3. Please... by not_surt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Won't somebody think of the tax-payers.

  4. Can't complain about privacey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As creepy as this is, if you broadcast your life in the clear using social media then you relay are in no position to complain about people listening too you!

  5. pfftt by djupedal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will last until the next suicide happens as a result of overlooked cyber-bullying there, with a lawsuit asking why the consultants missed it. The District will put the burden on the consultants, penalties will force them into bankruptcy and no one will try it ever again.

    Or - the consultants will over react, causing too many false alarms and lawsuits for false accusations, with the same effect.

  6. Account info? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The district in Glendale, California, is paying $40,500 to a firm to monitor and report on 14,000 middle and high school students' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year.

    From TFA:

    Frydrych's firm scours the social media postings of Glendale students aged 13 and older -- the age at which parental permission isn't required for the school's contracted monitoring -- and sends a daily report to principals on which students' comments could be causes for concern, Frydrych said.

    And how does the school district get the student account information? I know if they had asked me for that info (if social media, nay the Internet, existed when I was in HS) I would have replied, "fuck off." Hell, I'd give that same answer to that same question to my employer now.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Account info? by hedwards · · Score: 3, Informative

      Probably the same way that the US Navy got my contact information to harass me when I was in high school. The school just gets authority to collect it and to hell with your wishes. Compared with the years of harassment and insults from the jack asses at the Navy, this is of somewhat lesser concern.

      But, it's still a concern, the last thing we need is to condition kids to think that it's normal for schools to spy on your behavior outside of school hours.

    2. Re:Account info? by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And how does the school district get the student account information?

      With $40K and a geo-tag, I could screen-scrape enough facebook and twitter to identify 90 percent of the students who are at any given school (who use social media) given:

      1) Any seed account , even the principal or superintendant, or someone else at that school
      2) A list of student names - and it gets easier with ages
      3) Students often post unfiltered information publically, including the names of their sports teams
      4) Students are often not even aware that there is an option to mark things private, or that postings are visible to anyone but their friends
      5) Friend or follow lists will be highly correlated with school population, meaning I can spider from every new account
      6) A specially crafted mascot account for each school can be used, to friend or follow students susceptible to joining things they don't understand
      7) A list of trigger words that flag comments for review by a person
      8) A social sciences college student who needs money enough to read the postings of 13 to 18 year olds that have been flagged to see if it should go on a report
      9) Another college student interested in sociology or psychology willing to vet and approve the automated matches, and look for more that software missed

      Oh man, it goes on. It's quite simple, really, and I for one wish I had thought of offering such a service. The kids don't have to volunteer one bit of information directly to the monitoring company - they will volunteer it all indirectly, unknowingly, and will be very surprised when the school calls mom and dad.

      I'd still have most of that $40K, and with a story like this I just upped my client list by an order of magnitude, parental outrage be damned.

    3. Re:Account info? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      And how does the school district get the student account information?

      1. Create a fake account using the picture of a really cute 16 year old girl claiming to be new at the school.
      2. Request to friend a few boys. 99% of them will accept.
      3. Follow the friends of friends network to connect to everyone else.
      In a few days, you should have every student with a Facebook account. My daughter is in high school. She has over 600 Facebook friends, and she will just automatically accept any friend request from any other student at her school. I think this is pretty typical for HS students.

  7. Let's also monitor the teachers and admins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sickening, but welcome to the age of the Surveillance State.

    How about if tax dollars were used to follow this district's administrators, teachers and board members?

    That is not a rhetorical joke.

    How much porn are these "public servants" watching? What are their thoughts? How are they spending their time? Maybe we should do something about it. Let's call a meeting.

    Fascist Scumbags.

  8. Let the trolling commence! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How long before the kids start trolling the hell out of this just for the lulz? The possibilities are endless.
     

  9. Good! by NoKaOi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see a major positive side effect of this: If students know that school officials are monitoring their social media accounts, then maybe (at lease the brighter ones) will learn to be a little more conscious of the stupid stuff that they post.

  10. This won't end well by hyades1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How long will it take for the students to find out this is going on? My bet is that they already know.

    So how long will it be before a student who isn't thrilled with having adults e-stalk them decides to leave a "private" comment about how Principal Lovegood is just a bit too handsy?

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  11. blame 'budget cuts' by globaljustin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The schools have been driven to this

    By entrepreneurs eager to cash-in on wealthy school districts and the helicopter parents.

    This is privacy invasion plain and simple.

    I used to be a high school social studies teacher. *EVERY* problem in the classroom is solvable with a properly trained and experienced teacher.

    You can blame all you want but in a capitalist society if you pay teachers like union bus drivers you are going to get what you pay for...teachers will still come but they won't stay...paying teachers poorly just burns out idealistic, well-prepared teachers.

    capitalism = you get what you pay teachers

    that's the end of this whole discussion...

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett