School District That Said NSA Told It To Monitor Students' Social Media Posts Is Back With Non-NSA Approved Monitoring
from the forum-lurking-as-service dept
The same Alabama school district that claimed God the NSA told it to monitor its students' social media activities is back in the news again. The tune has changed but the lyrics remain the same. This new social media monitoring program proceeds without the NSA's blessing or the use of a snappy acronym, but it's pretty much the same thing -- only expanded to cover all students (potentially), rather than the former's programs 600 or so "targets." (via the Free Thought Project)
Over the weekend, Huntsville City Schools Superintendent Casey Wardynski released a video detailing new system-wide procedures designed to improve discipline and safety in schools.There's nothing stopping schools from reviewing public posts made to students' social media accounts. Disciplining them for First Amendment-protected activity performed outside of the schools' confines is a bit more problematic.
Cell phone videos of fights at Huntsville High and Grissom High have been circulating online in recent weeks, stirring up debate about the effectiveness of discipline policies at the schools.
"We're going to implement a procedure that directly addresses an area that's become a real concern again," said Wardynski in the video, published here, "which is how violence in our schools – how threats to our schools – interact with social media, and how social media can play a role, if we pay attention to it, in heading off problems."
The new procedure will allow the superintendent and administrators to review the public social media posts of students who have a history of violence or whose behavior demonstrates a risk to student and employee safety.
The one-page document laying out the specifics of the monitoring program (which really isn't all that specific) states the school will take action against students if it feels posts made off-campus "threaten" the "safety" of the student body or its employees. Nowhere in the document is it indicated that this will be limited to true threats or other exceptions to First Amendment protections. Instead, the school makes it clear its monitoring efforts will be subject only to its own discretion, with punishments to follow for students who run afoul of its vague stipulations.
If the superintendent determines that a student’s social media posts reasonably constitute a serious threat of physical violence to students or employees, the superintendent may initiate such disciplinary action as he deems necessary to alleviate such threat.The thing is that any actual criminal activity occurring off-campus should be handled by law enforcement, not school administration. Serious threats made by students when not on school grounds may be noted as reasons to forbid the students' re-entry into the school, but this determination should be made after law enforcement has investigated.
If the superintendent determines that a student has made posts to social media indicating either that student or another student’s propensity towards violence or gang affiliation, the superintendent may also refer such student to any applicable school-based or district-level student supports.
The school-based or district-level student supports may, in appropriate circumstances, include recommendations for non-mandatory counseling and support for such student with the informed consent of the student’s parent or legal guardian.
The other stuff is vague nonsense. This puts the school in the position of monitoring posts for ethereal matter like a "propensity towards violence." Then it wants school officials to act on it, even if the posts occurred off-campus, might have been taken out of context and/or do not actually represent the sentiments of the person expressing them (retweets, re-posts, "likes," etc.).
Making this worse is the apparent impetus for the policy: apparently, video recordings of fights between students that were posted on social media and went somewhat viral. Superintendent Wardynski claims the fight was planned on social media platforms. His assertion is couched in DHS-speak.
"In each of those cases we've gone and done a forensic analysis of those cases and looked at social media surrounding those, and found there were a lot of precursor indicators in Facebook and other locations in social media that indicated a fight was headed to our school," he said.So, this isn't a well-thought out policy. This is a kneejerk policy. Much like its previous, NSA-approved social media monitoring effort, isolated incidents are presented as trends in order to justify the district's actions. In 2014, the program was justified because someone said something possibly threatening in a chat room while a Yemeni native was present and a "gang" composed of "six or seven students related to each other" was dismantled by the school's "SAFe" team. In this case, it's a fight or two that, like everything else these days, was captured for posterity by observers will cellphones and uploaded to social media platforms.
And, in the cases cited, the activity that was filmed occurred on school grounds, where it fell firmly under the district's control. The superintendent is taking something fully-justifiable and expanding it beyond its logical and legal confines.
The district may find itself in trouble if it insists on punishing students for off-campus behavior. Despite being on the receiving end of backlash for the district's last social media monitoring efforts, Superintendent Wardynski appears to have learned nothing.
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Filed Under: alabama, casey wardynski, huntsville, nsa, social media, students, surveillance
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Both want them resigned to invasive surveillance.
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Look at who's pushing it the hardest and perhaps you'll find a pedofile.
"Who Watches the Watchmen?"
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Our schools are in piss poor shape. Metal detectors, guards on teacher parking, police in the schools, violence.. etc.. and I think they are over reaching with this type of program, but I really don't blame them for trying to do something, they've got a mess on their hands.
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The problem with violence in schools is likely related to a lack of discipline in schools. Suspension is a reward for students who dislike school yet seems to be a common 'punishment'.
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This mentality is why the schools are in the shape they are in. Schools are for education, parents should be taking care of the discipline. Suspension is a way for the school to separate the disruptive students from the students that want to learn. If suspension is a reward, it's because the parents are allowing it to be so.
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And, I'm guessing, this will be used as an excuse for monitoring the parents as well. Some of these dictator wanna-bes want to be able to give the parents grades as if they were the ones attending school. Others want to have the homes bugged with mic & cam. They honestly see nothing wrong with this.
I question the claim about parents not caring. To find one case and project it upon everyone else it total bullshit. Looks like a megalomaniac at the helm of the school district.
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When you are in the middle of it day in and day out, meeting with students and parents every day, I tend to give that person the benefit of the doubt when they generalize. But think what you want.
"Some of these dictator wanna-bes want to be able to give the parents grades as if they were the ones attending school."
I'm sure there are all kind of wild ass ideas running around out there. The bottom line is, and the point he was trying to make was; If parents where doing their job, the school wouldn't have to do it for them. They are there to educate, not dicipline. These schools are coming up with these wild ass ideas because they are losing control. I don't necessarily agree with their tactics, but I do agree something needs to be done.
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AFAIK, the answer is no.
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Sometimes
How I pray that one day the citizens of this country grow a backbone and find a peaceful, legal solution to put a stop this shite once and for all.
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Typical 'analysis' expected:
"Isn't that that one kid that doesn't show proper respect to authority?"
"Yeah."
"In that case oh yeah, that is so very threatening, let's bring the hammer down on 'em."
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Re: Typical 'analysis' expected:
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Well, of course. He is a superintendant, after all.
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Sweet nectar
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Problematic phrasing
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We live as comodities not as free men and women
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another example of how Education isn't working
The system is broken.
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I don't want school administrators to have access to my children's social media accounts.
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> children's social media accounts.
Social media, by definition, is a public forum. Everyone in the world, including people who work for your school, have access to your kids' accounts. If you let your kids post things in public, you can't then be shocked and clutch your pearls when you find out other people are reading what your kids write.
However, punishing your kids for what they post is an entirely different issue. That's a gross overreach of authority by the school.
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1. Create social media account using the identity of a classmate you'd like to see get into trouble
2. Use that account to post a vague threat about beating someone up
3. Profit as the school administrators do what they do best and zero-tolerance the target child
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This is not the Solution
We need solutions that encourage kids to not fight in the first place not ways to predict when the next fight might take place so we can try to stop it.
You cannot fix a behavior problem by simply looking for bad behavior.
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The constitutional issues are the critical
Yes, we are becoming a "Nanny State"
Yes, parents expect everyone to raise their kids and are angry when others don't.
Yes, sadly, Superintendent Wardynski recently lost his wife to Cancer.
Yes, everyone expects Superintendent Wardynski to just fix it, damn the repercussions.
We must first make sure that the continued actions of the uninformed, lazy, entitled, distraught, self serving or frightened do not erode our Constitution. This should be slapped down quickly as unconstitutional. Superintendent Wardynski and company would need to find a legal way to address their issues.
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Re: The constitutional issues are the critical
If you put a nanny in charge, you will be nannied.
No, not all parents are slouching on couch as you claim. Some of them are responsible parents and do not like to be disparaged.
If school board members are not able to perform their job duties, perhaps they should move aside and allow others to do it.
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Ethnicity of those 600 that are already targets
This is just more Deep South police state to keep African Americans in line.
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Rather than break down what caused & what allowed the fights to happen, we have to announce a massive overreaching system that will 'solve' everything.
No parent whats to deal with the fact their little angel is a problem. I'm sure many parents just abdicate that portion of raising the kids to the school. The school has to deal with finding out why the kid is so angry and is acting out in this way. The school has to solve the problem without the parent needing to do anything other than complain if their kid isn't getting what they think they should get.
It is much easier to blame social media for all of the problems, than to hold up a mirror to some parents. Lets have this massive overreaching system & call the problem solved.... its worked so well for our other spy programs.
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Ignored, out of context:
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It's a catch-22. If parents just decided to protest and refuse to send their children to school until the school district rescinded their policy concerning social media accounts, trust me, they would think hard and fast. Public schools on dependent on Federal funding and if students are not going to school, that is definitely going to cause a lot of eyebrow raising in congress.
The problem is that parents don't do enough to put their foot down and say 'enough is enough'.
Back in the late 80's, my younger sister was attending an elementary school. The school received a bomb threat. The principle did not evacuate the school, did not inform police, did not inform parents but she sent her own daughter home. When my dad found out about it, he organized the parents in the neighborhood and it created such a media backlash against the school, the principle and the board of education that it prompted congressional concern from our representative in congress and there were public hearings called.
Every parent was outraged over the discovery of what had happened and it resulted in our school board overhauling its policies on how it handles such serious threats.
The parents of this school district needs to organize and start putting their foot down. Only community activism from these parents and refusing to send their children to school is the only thing that will cause this school district to rethink their strategy.
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Personally, I run a free and open forum community dedicated to anime and manga. One of the features that I can employ is the ability to mark my forums as "private" meaning that someone would need to register to view my community or I can mark specific forums as "private", meaning only invited members can see that content.
With such social media sites as facebook or youtube, you can choose on your account to have your content marked as "private", meaning only people you approve to see your posted content can see and read that content. What these school districts are demanding has always been a student's username/login as well as their password.
I would NEVER allow my children to provide access to their accounts to a school administrator. Monitoring what children do on the internet is something that is the responsibility of the parent, not some school administrator who may get overzealous if a student is posting an opinion about what they think of a principle, a school administrator or a teacher.
The school districts aren't trying to improve student safety, they're doing this to restrict the constitutional right to free speech that protects every citizen living in this country. This is nothing but kneejerk reactions by a paranoid school district who thinks that we still live in a country driven by cold war hysteria.
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> a student's username/login as well as their password.
This Anonymous Coward is a moron. Maybe some school district somewhere has demanded passwords and login credentials from students-- which would be illegal, by the way-- but the school that is the subject of this article is not doing that at all. All they're saying is that they're going to be watching Twitter and Facebook for signs of impending school disruptions.
No one's demanding anyone's password here.
> This is nothing but kneejerk reactions by a paranoid
> school district
Behold the irony. Your knee is jerking pretty hard here, as well.
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