Posted on 03/13/2012 5:03:05 AM PDT by tobyhill
A 12-year-old Minnesota girl was reduced to tears while school officials and a police officer rummaged through her private Facebook postings after forcing her to surrender her password, an ACLU lawsuit alleges.
The claims are the latest in a string of tales showing that even password-protected, private online activities might not be safe from curious government agencies and schools. (See last week’s story)
The girl, whose identity is withheld in the lawsuit, came home "crying, depressed, angry, scared and embarrassed" after she was intimidated into divulging her login information by a school counselor and a deputy sheriff, who arrived in uniform, armed with a Taser, the lawsuit alleges.
(Excerpt) Read more at redtape.msnbc.msn.com ...
So do you think that teachers and principals should follow a student around at the park after school? We didn’t have FB when I was middle school aged, but we did have parks and telephones. What goes on after school is none of the school’s business.
At my next meeting with my GRAND DAUGHTERS, I will forcefully, almost yell, tell them this: “Where is the f@cking warrant/court order, asshole!” If I have to teach them that word, I want it to be for something worthwhile.
yes...alot of sports.
My younger group does not have all that stuff - much to the 12 yr. old’s dismay.
I’ve got one that is full grown & self sufficient.
Another in college.
What was this girls crime to allow the nanny state to punish her. Have you read the article or are you a natural goose stepper?
That's not the point. Can the state demand peoples passwords for a computer, Facebook account, cell phone , etc...
How many rights should a free people give up to a governmental agency?
“Well if what I quoted is what you said but not what you meant, then maybe you can be forgiven.”
Thanks - appreciate that. I do need to be more careful.
“So do you think that teachers and principals should follow a student around at the park after school? We didn’t have FB when I was middle school aged, but we did have parks and telephones. What goes on after school is none of the school’s business.”
What I was trying to say (albeit ineffectively) was that the government will do what they please, regardless of what parents want.
been there
You all are automatically assuming the ACLU is telling the unvarnished version and this poor yoot is the victim here and the big bad school system is overreacting
uh huh
With all the horror stories about depressed or messed up kids using the internet to set up criminal acts, to bully, and even to broadcast suicide or other self harm, I do not blame the school for going postal, if there is cause. No one has heard the school's story here. They have legal advice too, you know.
If her sex talk involved her being exploited by an adult or older kids, or inciting other kids to join in, the school is a mandated reporter.
If you were a school monitor or the parent of other kids who were perhaps threatened or libeled by a depressed punk, , you would want the facts, too, even if the little 12 yr old darling had to give up some her “internet privacy” that she lied to obtain
Are you kidding me??? Um, no, the school has NO RIGHT to monitor anything not going on their network.
More Principles who feel they are lord over all...
I also have told my daughters that should the police or administration of the school start questioning them, to demand that they stop at once, call me, and call our attorney. They have our attorney’s business cards in their purses.
And I have put BOTH principles on notice that this is expected.
I also have told my daughters that should the police or administration of the school start questioning them, to demand that they stop at once, call me, and call our attorney. They have our attorney’s business cards in their purses.
And I have put BOTH principles on notice that this is expected.
I can’t believe that this is legal.
“Are you kidding me??? Um, no, the school has NO RIGHT to monitor anything not going on their network.
More Principles who feel they are lord over all...”
You’re certainly welcome to live in your little dream world. But my point is that the people that control your children’s destiny will not necessarily agree with your positions, and there ain’t crap you can do about it.
“Well if what I quoted is what you said but not what you meant, then maybe you can be forgiven.”
Thanks - appreciate that. I do need to be more careful.
BobL wrote:
““Why? WTF does the school have to do with Facebook? And WTF was a sheriff involved?”
Technically, nothing. But if a parent lets a MIDDLE-SCHOOLER on to Facebook, then someone better step in.”
WHY??? Too many “conservatives” are too ready for someone from the government or it’s agencies to “step in” when they don’t approve of something. That’s the problem. There is way more downside to giving a school this kind of a mandate to violate the privacy of a student (and the privacy of their parents as well) than any harm a kid with a Facebook account is likely to do.
But how about this? The school shouldn’t be doing this crap simply because they have no right to, regardless of whether or not they have good intentions or the right idea or great experience in these matters or any of the other hundred reasons people use to justify usurping authority that they should never have and meddling in things that don’t concern them...
Go ACLU. Not often, but sometimes I love them...
I can’t believe how many responses I’m reading on this thread from “conservatives” who think this is okay. Any system that allows or mandates that the compulsory public school system take these kind of liberties with the privacy of a student with regard to an activity that takes place outside of school is just another example of the steady erosion of our freedoms and the expansion of the government’s facility to interfere in every aspect of life.
The idea that the school officials have to do this because they’re responsible is exactly the same mentality that, to one degree or another, drives almost every outrage and invasion perpetrated by the nanny-state left.
The school has neither the right nor the responsibility to regulate or review her Facebook account. Whether she should have one or not is totally beside the point. I don’t care if the kid is a bully, a cheat, a liar, or a bank robber. If it’s off the campus (and this example certainly qualifies as such) then it is not within the school’s purview to pursue it.
Take any other position, and you get exactly what we already have: a crappy, intrusive, petty tyranny that any of us or our children could run afoul at any time for five hundred stupid, arbitrary reasons.
You are right...The only problem is it is not “free”...
And the product we are getting out of that cost ain’t worth a nickle when we get it back and have to pay to send them off to the “higher levels” of academia for that goatskin we’ll have to buy...
It’s been a lose/lose situation for way too long in this country...Like a lot of things the liberal progressives have gotten their hands on...
No one forces you to write anything on the internet
However, there is a difference between privacy and secrecy, when a kid begins to publish real or perceived threatening or self harm messages to other minors on a publicly used medium like the internet
Then it could be argued her password (fraudulently obtained by virtue of her lying about her age) protects her “privacy” no more than a gym lock protects the privacy of a kid to keep a weapon and to publish threats or messages about it to other kids
Stashers of porn, criminals, and terrorists have discovered that their right to “privacy” on the internet even in their own homes is trumped by their misusing that medium to incite or otherwise cause harm
The message to children is- you have the right to privacy, just not the right to say any damn thing you want to say about any school employee or classmate or your sex life to other minors in your school, without accepting the possibility of being busted. The internet is not a “private” medium, ven if you try to make it one.
In my day we passed notes to each other and gasp, the teachers confiscated them and read them and no one sued the teacher for violating our privacy when we got busted
So if you value your “privacy”, keep your thoughts and activities “private”
If your kid gets shot at school by some disturbed kid using facebook to ruminate with classmates about her plans, or your kid is falsely labeled a slut by a disturbed facebook poster who is a classmate, the school community is being abused and get back to me on the schools responsibility to enforce a zero tolerance code of conduct
I hate it when schools mindlessly outlaw Christmas. I hate it when they expel kids for sexual assualt while playing duck-duck-goose.
I hate it when people think their little Johnny/Susie can do no wrong.
This girl posted defamatory remarks about a school employee on a web page. The kid shouldn’t be allowed to do that without consequences. The parent/s were apparently not monitoring the kid’s computer activities. This was in the article which I read. Was it in the one you read?
The kid does stuff, the parents are absent, the school can’t do anything, blah blah blah. The result is a kid with no supervision.
The whole thing is screwed up. Lawyers won’t help. People automatically lining up and taking sides won’t help. God gave me a brain, I was taught to use it.
Goose step? You call what I have been posting on this subject goose-stepping? Sir/Madam, look in the mirror, reflect, and suffer not the rage of Caliban.
Good day.
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