Slashdot Mirror
California School District Hires Firm To Monitor Students' Social Media
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.'"
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.
Won't somebody think of the tax-payers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When did parents stop being the ones considered responsible for their child's well-being?