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
Zero tolerance is usually zero brains. Your arguments are the same ones that every leftist bureaucrat wants to use to trample the idea of individual accountability and individual privacy in countless ways.
Hey, let’s throw the computer accounts of every kid in the nation wide open to every nosy school administrator with an interest because in a country of about 300 million we have about 30 school homicides per year (usually significantly less). Let’s apply the same standard to traffic safety and go ahead and force you to put a breathalyzer in your car to start it, just in case...
Oh, but the bullying (gasp)!!! Yeah, let’s empower every school busybody to go snooping on your kids home-based computer activities, because no price is too steep to prevent a kid from enduring an instance of ridicule or an insult. Sorry, but the cure is way worse than the disease.
No one is forced to write anything on the internet. True. Neither is anyone forced to write anything in a diary. Let’s go ahead and seize them all, just to make sure the kids aren’t up to anything, particularly the kids that have behavior problems, or maybe are just a little weird.
Oh, but the internet is not a diary, you say, and one has no reason to expect privacy. Actually, in this specific instance, Facebook has a password and safeguards in place to prevent people to whom you haven’t given permission to view your page from doing so. Sounds like a reasonable expectation of privacy to me. THAT’S WHY THEY HAD TO COERCE HER TO GIVE THEM THE PASSWORD.
It’s the same rotten argument every totalitarian uses: “We are entrusted with the public safety and can do anything we want and if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy????!!! What are you even talking about??!!!
Jeesh.
This is why the country is headed toward where it’s headed. Half the “conservatives” don’t even get it...