14 DAY TRIAL // This is possibly the worst time ever for authorities in California to announce they are snooping on school students’ social media postings.
Of course, the reasons mentioned by the police sound valid – to catch law-breaking, bullying or other harmful activities.
However, given the recent revelations about the actions of the NSA, such an initiative isn’t seen with good eyes, but rather like another instance of privacy violation.
The Glendale Unified School District is paying Geo Listening Company some $40,000 (€30,000) to follow its students on social media networks. The measure targets about 13,000 students from middle-school and high-school.
Of course, the company put in charge of the operation doesn’t consider the things they do to be violating anyone’s privacy.
“All of the individual posts we monitor on social media networks are already made public by the students themselves. Therefore, no privacy is violated,” the company said. Furthermore, they claim not to be monitoring any emails, text and picture messages, voicemails or bypass any privacy settings in their efforts.
The entire measure comes after a 15-year-old boy in the district committed suicide after being bullied.
And while this is only now surfacing, the contract with Geo Listening was signed some time ago, meaning that they’ve been doing this for a while, just that no one knew about it.
Opinions are, of course, divided. Some find the measures to be a good idea since they help authorities take the necessary steps to prevent situations like the tragedy of the teenager who took his life in front of his colleagues.
At the same time, others find it to be “very Big Brother-ish.”
Considering the media revealed the NSA had actually been spying on millions of people, concerns over what the Glendale district is doing are that much more relevant to today’s discussions.