
Schools are helping police spy on kids’ social media activity - raddad
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/22/schools-are-helping-police-spy-on-kids-social-media-activity/
======
nv-vn
At times I like to feel like 1984 didn't come true ever, and that our limited
surveillence, in the grand scheme of things, is almost tolerable in
comparison. But every time I see somethijg like this I change my mind.
Everything here is about infiltrating the privacy of children and not about
their safety. As soon as we get parents to accept this surveillence for their
children, we know we're not far off from not just mass surveillance of
metadata, but large scale surveillance of all Internet communication we
conduct on a more-or-less personal level. If the current parents are okay with
it, how much more will future parents allow now that the precedent is being
set? How much intrusion will these children be willing to take once they're
grown up?

~~~
PJules
It will change once our future Politicians, CEOs, Generals, Judges, Celebs etc
start seeing their lives and decisions get effected by all that data about
them out there. Until then its hard to imagine anything changing.

Ofcourse Google and Facebook can stop being robotic slaves to advertising
revenue and go the Wikipedia route. But that would be like expecting the big
banks and rating agencies to do what was right at the peak of the subprime
crisis.

Its amazing to watch how some of the smartest people on the planet can get
stuck on tracks they can't get of.

Highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff on this -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass)

~~~
Matt3o12_
> Ofcourse Google and Facebook can stop being robotic slaves to advertising
> revenue and go the Wikipedia route. But that would be like expecting the big
> banks and rating agencies to do what was right at the peak of the subprime
> crisis

The big companies are not the scariest parties. While I don't like what they
are doing, Google, etc, kind of protect my data. What worries me most is what
the government does with my data. They can do almost anything they want, track
my every movement, see what I like and save it forever. While Google does the
same, they need to protect that very careful because if this data is misused
(and it gets publicized), they could lose billions (which they could not
afford to do). If a government agency screws up, there is an "investigation",
and, after a few weeks/months the media stops reporting.

I'm not saying what either party does is good, but Google and Facebook are not
as worrying to me as a government who will only use the data in my best
interest and has a perfect track record of safeguarding my data.

~~~
ethanbond
Uhhhhhh where do you think the government is _getting_ that data?

~~~
Matt3o12_
A better question is why are they allowed to get that data?

I don't think google is serving them that data on a silver plate.

~~~
ethanbond
Of course they are, once they get a subpoena.

Their systems _could_ be engineered such that it's impossible to comply with
such requests. But they're not. The reason they're not is... you guessed it:

> Google and Facebook [being] robotic slaves to advertising revenues

------
rubyfan
So basically the school system doesn't want oversight?

FTA:

> _Details of the 12 police investigations that stemmed from searches in the
> past year have not been divulged by the school system. The school system
> told the Orlando Sentinel that it doesn 't want public details of the
> program to interfere with its effectiveness._

~~~
themartorana
It wants privacy, and doesn't want to be surveilled.

I'm not sure, but the irony is so thick we might need a new word.

~~~
kayfox
Orwellian.

------
dsfyu404ed
I'd be ok with this... if it only monitored posts made during school hours on
days students were present. But it doesn't, so I'm not ok with this.

Looking on the bright side, a bunch of kids are gonna get a crash course in
basic opsec aka "not posting stuff you wouldn't want your boss/the cops/the
entire world to see online" unfortunately this will probably screw up the
lives of a lot of students who come into contact with law enforcement when
they really just need help.

~~~
marchenko
I agree. Contact with law enforcement always has the potential to become very
costly - in lives, freedom, liberty, or simply reputation. I am not sanguine
about the effects of broadening this contact, and inviting the state apparatus
into more peoples' lives at an even earlier stage.

~~~
marchenko
Not to mention that it conditions youngsters to accept state
surveillance/intrusion into their personal lives

------
Hondor
The whole point of making public posts is because they want lots of people to
see them. So who cares if the school sees them too? That's part of the public.
It's not spying if the spyee is intentionally broadcasting the information and
wants everyone to see it.

Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the
hall. She overhears the insults they're shouting and then calls the bullies in
to tell them off. Isn't that what we want? Do we want school staff to turn a
blind eye to bullying and stand by when they know who's doing it and what
they're doing?

~~~
StanislavPetrov
>Imagine if a teacher walked past some kids bullying their classmate in the
hall.

Except this is absolutely nothing like that. Schools should only have
authority over kids __at school __. Schools in the USA already to a pathetic
enough job educating kids before expending effort to spy on them at all times.
Schools should be for teaching - not spying - period.

------
sdoering
I'm so glad I grew up some twenty to thirty years prior to this.

I was bullied and there was nothing any grown up could have done without me
telling them about the bullying.

Non the less, as said above, I am glad to not gave to grow up in this
panopticon.

------
imgabe
It seems every time there's a mass shooting or a tragic suicide, people find
out there were a bunch of social media posts beforehand that clearly broadcast
the perpetrator's intent. Every time we ask "Why didn't anyone see this
coming?"

Well, this is us "looking" to see these things coming, but now analyzing
publicly available information is a violation of privacy?

~~~
izacus
That's because the school shootings should be addressed by finding a root
cause (after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue) instad of
more orwellian surveillance which leads to false accusations and abuse.

~~~
wyager
>after all, they seem to be a very much USA localized issue

Absolutely false. Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland all had
more shooting rampages (and deaths thereof) per capita than the United States
(at least from 2009-2013, which the data covers).
[http://archive.is/f4gbv](http://archive.is/f4gbv)

~~~
sanbor
I disagree with your way of reading the numbers. United states has 38 "Total
Fatal Rampage Shooting Incidents (2009-2013)". All other countries has 0, 1 or
2 incidents. How can dividing the victims per capita can help you understand
if this kind of things happen more often in a country than in other?

~~~
barsonme
Not just per-capita victims. If you read the chart's third column:

> Fatal Rampage Shooting Incidents (2009-2013) Per 1,000,000

The U.S. is 0.12, putting it behind Norway (0.19), Finland (0.37), Slovakia
(0.19), Israel (0.25), and Switzerland (0.25).

Simply looking at the raw number of shootings is misleading at best because:

1\. Countries with a larger population are typically at higher risk of more
shootings. (The two countries with >= 1/3 as large of a population as the U.S.
are Japan and Mexico.)

2\. It does not take into account culture or socioeconomic issues (other than
only sampling the "Industrialized West")

3\. Countries with more firearms will typically have a higher risk or more
shootings

------
mirimir
Well, it's apparently public posts that are being searched. So kids just need
to learn some OPSEC, no?

But indeed, it must suck, growing up in the panopticon :(

~~~
mtgx
Or get their own lobbyists if they don't like it.

~~~
ccvannorman
message to kids: Grow up rich or feel the boot of the state on your sorry head
for life.

------
csense
I'm not normally in favor of surveillance, or reporting students to police for
minor infractions. But for me the key sentence is here:

> collects data from public posts on students' social media accounts

Calling this "spying" is disingenuous. There's no spying going on if person A
posts something to be available to the general public, and then person B, a
member of the general public (in this case the school's social media
subcontractor), looks at the post.

~~~
izacus
Unless it's done in form of massive data collection targeted at a (minor!)
group.

~~~
vitd
Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook and other social media sites have
controls to make your posts private. If you choose to make them public, you
are giving your consent to have them trawled and searched by anyone and
everything on the Internet. Kids aren't dumb. They can learn how to make posts
private and how to limit who sees what they post. If they choose not to and
their parents do not get involved, then I don't see the issue with the schools
doing this.

~~~
izacus
While kids aren't dumb, it doesn't mean they fully understand side effects of
permanent posts for future careers. Heck, a lot of adults don't understand
that and now you expect teenagers to be fully aware how damaging to your
longterm career can posts be?

This pretty much reads like victim blaming.

~~~
cududa
I'm 24 now and I can remember from eighth grade through graduation there was
this assembly/ seminar where they brought someone in and berated you to not
post stupid stuff on the Internet (MySpace, AOL instant messenger era). Seemed
to be pretty effective..

Also, who's the victim in your hypothetical? The kid getting bullied, or the
kid who gets caught bullying through this tool - because it sounds like the
former.

------
CPLX
I wonder what would happen if schools spent their full energy and focus trying
to, you know, like teach kids stuff?

------
kinai
2016 Police Report: 4 kids were successfully stopped from stealing candy.
Parents suing us because kids suffered psychological damage and now have a
criminal record, but we all know that this is just caused by bad parenting.

~~~
x5n1
Need more funding to fight illegal sugar highs. Illegal candy is a gateway
drug.

~~~
calibraxis
Watch if they refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the national symbol,
punish them for transgressing private property moral codes... if we have so
many armed bureaucrats, they might as well be constantly judging everyone.

------
zyxley
And people wonder why kids are using apps like Snapchat that are intentionally
designed to be incomprehensible to outsiders...

------
cronjobber
Providing the young with a deep distrust of all things Facebook? Sounds like
educators are actually doing their jobs.

------
deepnet
What better way to prepare children for life under secret, quasi-legal mass
surveillance by officials.

If the innocent are caught up in the dragnet, the neologism _collatoral
intrusion_ exists.

Freedom from warantless search never applied to children's diaries, schools
are _in loco parentis_.

If an overactive imagination doesn't make one culpable it cannot be ignored by
liable officials and may be an indictor of intent, disposition or a pre-crime.

As a society we have decided no price is too high for child safety.

The only flaw I can see in this scheme are officials with less than perfect
judgement or their own prejudices.

/s

------
nsgi
If this is monitoring public Facebook posts, how much data can they really
get, given that posts are only visible to friends by default?

------
lilcarlyung
How do they identify which social media accounts belong to which students?

------
lerie
been happening for years...

~~~
mtgx
It's even worse in the UK:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-
uk/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-
uk/11323558/Anti-terror-plan-to-spy-on-toddlers-is-heavy-handed.html)

~~~
nekomancer
I'm trying to understand what was going through peoples' heads for something
like this to happen in the first place, but I'm drawing a blank.

Is this what mass hysteria looks like?

~~~
pdkl95
> Is this what mass hysteria looks like?

That's one way of putting it. In reference to that article on trying to find
supposedly "radicalized" kids that might become "terrorists", it's probably
more accurate to say this is what _fascism /totalitarianism_[1] looks like, or
perhaps simply _racism_.

While it won't explain what's going through the heads of the people causing
this crap, I recommend listening to some of the people that are being targeted
in the 32c3 talk "The Price Of Dissent"[3]. It doesn't have many answers, but
it does paint a very good picture of the current state of fear, xenophobia,
and oppression.

[1] The UK isn't the only country heading rapidly towards fascism. On the
other side of the pond we have "banned from CNN" Roger Stone managing Trump's
campaign tactics, who just promised to "'disclose the hotels and the room
numbers of those delegates' who were involved in 'stealing' the nomination
from Trump"[2]. This could get _really_ ugly, _really_ fast.

[2] [http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-
stone/39099...](http://www.wptz.com/politics/the-return-of-roger-
stone/39099634)

[3]
[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7443-the_price_of_dissent)

------
facepalm
I don't see how anybody can complain if public posts are being analyzed.

~~~
nekomancer
Why couldn't/shouldn't people complain about it? It's like how you can be
against paparazzi. The fact that something is legal doesn't make it morally
right or immune to criticism.

~~~
facepalm
Paparazzi ambush people going on with their daily lives - they have no choice
but to venture outside (into public places) sometime. That's hardly the same
as deliberately publishing something on a public network.

That said, sure, you can complain about it. I guess I just don't see the
point.

------
turninggears
I can't comment on this specific school district, but in my own school
district, there have been a fair number of instances where it was discovered,
after an incident, that students had been planning a fight or physical
confrontation for days in advance on social media. If the district had
programs like this in place, it could have actually improved student safety. I
know many here are claiming that this is just a pretense for monitoring
students, but that's not what it looks like from my perspective.

~~~
appleflaxen
It seems like it's the parents' position to monitor the actions of their
children on social media, not the school.

What if they had been planning a fight from the public park. Should the school
or police monitor their communication there? What if they had been planning a
fight from their front yard. Should the school or police monitor them there?
What about by phone? What about in their bedroom?

"Planning a fight" is just communication. I don't think the school or the
police should be monitoring children's communication (outside of the school
premises, in the case of the school).

~~~
turninggears
To clarify, the students were doing so during school hours, presumably on
school property, possibly even using the school Internet connection or school
computers.

