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.

Comments

Private Profiles

[D.McG.]

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

[ganjadude]

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