IL School District to Monitor Student Blogs

tinkertim writes "According to a Yahoo article, a school district in Libertyville, IL will be holding students accountable for illegal actions discussed in their MySpace blogs even if such actions in no way involved the school or another student. A spokesperson for the school district was quoted as saying: 'The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,' he said. 'It is called the World Wide Web.' Supposedly, no direct monitoring or snooping will be done unless the school receives a report from a concerned parent, community member or other student."

Re:Don't forget...

[rtconner]

Heck yeah, If I went to one of those schools I would so make fake MySpace accounts of the all of kids I hate and post all sorts of illegal stuff on it. Finally it pays off to be a nerd :)

I'd probably even do it on the school network if I could so they could not track the IP address (if MySpace would even let them have it). Internet anonymity for teh win!!111

Re:Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but if you read the article (instead of Slashdot's misleading summary) you'll see they want to check not just illegal behavior, but "inappropriate" behavior too. The word "inappropriate" generally means, "anything we dislike."

What business does a public, tax-funded school have monitoring its students' entirely legal behavior outside of school?

Re:Oxymoron? More like "teacher's a moron"

[TekPolitik]

If you broadcast into the public, you have no right to privacy regarding that matter.

You are making the same mistake the teacher did - only looking at one aspect of privacy (secrecy). It is also an invasion of privacy to interfere with others without having any particular information about them. Even Webster's shallow and incomplete definition [m-w.com] encompasses this (see 1(b), and to some extent 1(a)). You seem to be limiting your concept of privacy to the paragraph 3 of the definition, so placed because it is not the most important part of the term.

If you spend any time seriously studying privacy this is all second nature. The great writers on the subject would never consider the issue of privacy as being so narrowly constrained, and would regard themselves as not having dealt with the issue at all if they only looked at secrecy - see, for example, the writings of Brandeis, Warren, and Douglas. It is only common ignorance that allows people to get away with thinking of only "secrecy" when they hear (and use) the term "privacy".

Most people may have an excuse, but educators should know better. It is their ignorance that leads to mass ignorance, and while others can be excused for not knowing these things, an educator is rightly called a moron for propagating such stupidity.

Re:Don't forget...

[Winlin]

The writeup is wrong. According to TFA, it's illegal or 'inappropriate' behavoir that will be punished. And that leaves a nice huge grey area. Although even if it was strictly illegal activity...would that mean that the school would only be able to punish students after they had been convicted? Because there is that pesky innocent until proven guilty thing to worry about. This is just a very bad idea from the start, and will probably end in the school system losing some lawsuits.

Want to talk to some one about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."
Prentiss Lea
Associate Superintendent
[phone]
[e-mail]

Some other individules of note:

David L. Clough
Superintendent
[phone]

Brad Swanson
Principal
[phone]
[e-mail]

Don't be dicks but let them know your views on this subject.