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Orange County Public Schools To Monitor Students On Social Media
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Orange County, Florida, is undertaking a sweeping effort to snoop on the social media communications of the county's public school students and staff, for the nebulous task of "[ensuring] safe school operations," and say they will use the software (at a license cost of about $13,000 per year) "to conduct routine monitoring for purposes of prevention or early intervention of potential issues where students or staff could be at risk to themselves or to others." The software they're using is from Snaptrends, which offers "location-based social media discovery." According to one of the comments attached to the linked story, there are monthly fees, in addition to the annual licensing cost.
Anyone with a clue makes their profile private such that only friends may see their posts. Most children are told explicitly to do this by parents because of creepy stalkers. These clowns are actually receiving/spending tax payer's money to stalk. Illegal on so many levels.
if you dont want people to know what you are doing.... dont post it online for the world to see! is it really that hard???
My question is where is the money coming from to pay for this? i want my teachers teaching, not spying
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
lots of them. yeah, i know.
I am so glad they finally are doing what everybody is asking for. We hear a lot of complaining that all schools do is learn people to take tests. And now finally we prepare students for the real world. .
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Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Orange County parent groups to monitor Orange County Public Schools Monitoring Students On Social Media.
Do As I Say, Not, As I Do....
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There are eight different Orange Counties in the US, in different states, along with one in China, about an hour north of Beijing. I'm glad to know that this is the one in Florida, not the one near where I live.
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1. They can accurately identify students and staff. Since no one has ever created a fake social media account that shouldn't be hard. Just require everyone to provide a list of all their accounts. No one would object to that, correct?
2. Software can accurately parse potential threat from random uses of keywords and not require excessive reviews of material that is innocuous.
3. No one would create fake accounts to cause #2 to occur.
4. No one will object nor have the cash to hire a lawyer if the school demands account information under threat of punishment.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
FTFY....
No... The schools need to be treated like the government entities they are and get the shit sued out of them for violating the Constitution's 4th and 5th Amendment rights. Think of the children only goes so far. But given the shithead fossils we got for a Supreme Court, it wouldn't surprise me if they uphold this shit.
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If the school monitoring student or staff internet activity at home, at the library, or one personal devices accessing non-school networks, I would be concerned. However, this is no different than a company saying that on their network and when employees are on the clock, they should be using the network for activities directly related to the companies interests.
Almost all students and staff have alternate access to the internet during the majority of their awake hours, so this is not a big deal.
The school is doing its job. Is there a better way to educate students about the value and practice of privacy?
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This would be a great opportunity for students to expose Orange County School Board's stupidity by figuring how to hack the entire system by what they post on their social media pages. They would be doing nothing illegal and it would make the entire system being used by the school board a joke. I bet by trial and error they could figure it out. For those who are a bit slow I do not mean hacking the software of the school boards system directly. But posting weird message that maybe individually does nothing but as a group would always set off the monitoring software.
Stop using social media.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
to all use of Facebork, Twatter, SnapWitter, LinkedOut and other silly 'social media' applications.
You never know when in 5 or 10 years something silly you posted will come back and haunt you for the rest of your life.
The Internet (aka Google) never forgets.
Yes, I'm a luddite when it comes to social media. I see no reason to tell the world things about myself that I may live to regret when I get older and wiser.
I got a Tat about 10 years ago. Really regretted it ever since so I had it removed last month. Erasing yourself from the Internet might not be so easy.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers. It's appropriate for high schools and colleges to be addressing this problem.
"Think of the children only goes so far" - but not as far as respecting their out-of-school life.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm waiting for the first case where someone posts something online, gets attention from the school over something much less serious than suicide, drops social media, gets depressed, then kills themselves, then someone brings up the fact that if the school hasn't been such a nanny the fist time around the person would probably have tipped his hand online and his friends and family who saw the online messages he would have left would've been able to intervene.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
so you want your young scholar to grow up and embrace the totalitarian regime?
Anyone can use the Tor browser and that and a tiny bit of common sense will stop anyone from tracking you down and focusing on your emails. And just who in a school board is really qualified to judge who is potentially dangerous? After all psychiatrists readily admit that they can not predict violence in their patients. What it really comes down to is too many kids as well as adults getting a really raw deal in modern America and people who get trapped in bad situations tend to strike back at others. In some cases a life in prison is much better than the life of poverty they endure when free. The perpetrator is one half of the criminal act. The society that surrounds the perpetrator is the other half of the crime. Perpetrators sometimes change their ways for the better. Society rarely changes for the better.
Absolutely. Still, this will teach students a valuable life lesson. Prospective employers are probably going to pull the same sort of nonsense, so they had better start learning to watch what they say in public right now.
Also... I'm obviously building the wrong type of software. I'd love to be able to charge $13K plus monthly usage fees for scanning targeted people on Facebook, Twitter, and a few other services for scary keywords and phrases.
There is nothing new under the sun. It will teach kids how to bully without being direct about it; how to talk about suicide in a way a computer won't understand; how to mock teachers relentlessly while using code names. Human beings adapt to new rules--sometimes the adaptation is expensive and the result of painful lessons (much of the history of warfare, for example); other times it is fairly painless and done to avoid a teacher calling you in after school.
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Nowhere in state or federal law is guardianship granted to schools. The parents do not relinquish their parental responsibilities or rights while the kids are in school. State and federal law does require a safe, sanitary and healthy learning environment. That is the extent of their authority. We have stretched the definitions of those three directives to the breaking point with crap policies like this.
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Social media is a great platform that helps connect people and bring them closer together. Unfortunately, when used inappropriately these platforms become weapons that will destroy teens and families. I have a member in my extended family who gets pleasure by gossiping, slandering, and causing conflict in all of her relationships. She has been in the family for 18 years. This individual started using Facebook several years ago to subtly malign family members. Last year we made the difficult decision to break off all contact, online and in person, with this individual. The simple solution to prevent bullying is to "unplug".
Not playing devil's advocate or anything, this is an interesting idea. In the same way that "customer sentiment" is gauged with this kind of tool, it may be in schools best interest to have their students' twitter and FB accounts tracked. What's private remains private if the user wants to, but if the student is writing in public "I'm feeling a bit suicidal" everyday on FB and Twitter and the school is only notified when there's a body at the bottom of a stairwell, then they might realise "oh I wish we knew what was going on".
I hope they're monitoring former students, so that they notice here when I tell them to go fuck themselves.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
1) Facebook and Twitter are not school websites. What happens on them is not the school's business. Someone threatens another student, or you have some Steubenville-style jocks bragging about sexually assaulting someone? Turn it over to the police.
2) You have control over what you say. You don't have control over Billy Bob's Facebook postings, where he claims to have shared a bong with you at a party (that you didn't even attend)
3) Yes, people should be able to socialize without the state snooping on them without probable cause.
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