Minnesota Teen Wins Settlement After School Takes Facebook Password 367
schwit1 (797399) writes "A Minnesota school district has agreed to pay $70,000 to settle a lawsuit that claimed school officials violated a student's constitutional rights by viewing her Facebook and email accounts without permission. The lawsuit, filed in 2012 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, alleged that Riley Stratton, now 15, was given detention after posting disparaging comments about a teacher's aide on her Facebook page, even though she was at home and not using school computers. After a parent complained about the Facebook chat, the school called her in and demanded her password. With a sheriff deputy looking on, she complied, and they browsed her Facebook page in front of her, according to the report. 'It was believed the parent had given permission to look at her cellphone,' Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt said Tuesday. But Schmidt said the district did not have a signed consent from the parent. That is now a policy requirement, he said.'"
Asks schwit1, "How is this not a violation of the CFAA?"
It sounds like the school was violating Facebook's Terms of Service, too.
In other news ... (Score:5, Funny)
... apparently people are still using Facebook.
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where fascism and distopian sci fi intersect is when Terms of Service become the common law enforced by the full might of the state. IN the future not only will be using Facebook but it will be mandatory to receive basic services like power, water, drivers lic, food stamps.
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It's already mandatory to receive power and water thanks to the International Code Council
http://www.orlandosentinel.com... [orlandosentinel.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
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Neither show that facebook is required for anything, in fact it seems you just pulled links out of your ass to show a source so the dumb would believe you.
Re:In other news ... (Score:4, Interesting)
> The USA Federal Government has stated that not having a Facebook account is one way to identify a terrorist.
Bullshit.
Not bullshit. The OP is referring to a leaked DHS or FBI powerpoint presentation where they listed things that might be indicators that someone's a "terrorist", and not having a Facebook account was one of the bullet-points. Here's an article for you. [techdirt.com]
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For instance, federal employees are allowed to use blogs and social networks to express support for candidates for office when they are not at work, but they can't engage in online activity supporting a candidate while on duty or at a federal workplace.
Also in the article is a link to the policy as released in 2010.
Questions?
They WERE... (Score:5, Informative)
... apparently people are still using Facebook.
Well, they were two years ago. From TFA:
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... apparently people are still using Facebook.
Well, they were two years ago. From TFA:
Looks like she violated the Facebook ToS already by not being old enough to have a Facebook account.
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13 is old enough.
http://en-gb.facebook.com/help... [facebook.com]
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obligatory (Score:3)
http://www.xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
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They sure as hell intimidated her for the pwd.
Re: obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)
It disgusts me how school officials act like they are prison wardens and the children they care for treated as though they have no rights.
Between things like private information gathering on Facebook like this, to the webcam viewing scandal a few years ago, to the teacher forcing a student to strip, there seems to be a serious problem with the attitude being brought into schools by officials.
Re: obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
It disgusts me how school officials act like they are prison wardens and the children they care for treated as though they have no rights.
It potentially teaches one very important life lesson: those with power and authority are never to be trusted. But that requires a little thought and reflection that sadly only a few are likely to perform by this time this particular meat-grinder is through with them.
Between things like private information gathering on Facebook like this, to the webcam viewing scandal a few years ago, to the teacher forcing a student to strip, there seems to be a serious problem with the attitude being brought into schools by officials.
If you think about it, you realize that this problem is too widespread and too systematic, too uniform to be the result of a few isolated bad actors. It's intentional and it's planned. The goal is, if you teach (by repeated, reinforced example) children from a young age that they have no rights and authority is absolute, they will grow into adults who expect other authorities in government to be the same way.
Oh if you want a fascinating exercise, go look up precisely why schools use bells. It's a tactic that is called psychological warfare in any other context. At the time that it was set up, Dewey and others were quite open about its purpose. Who needs a smoky back-room conspiracy when you can have selling points?
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Not trying to steer the car this car off the road (Score:2)
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Apparently she was complaining about a teacher's aid... at home, not in school. I haven't seen anything more specific.
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She said that a Hall Monitor was mean, according to TFA.
Re:Not trying to steer the car this car off the ro (Score:5, Insightful)
But what were these these "disparaging" comments exactly?
Probably something like "These administrators are total fascists."
Look at the districts reply: We searched her cell phone without permission. We won't do that again. Now we have a standard form requiring permission that all students must sign. WTF?! The problem was not a lack of parental signature. The problem was a flagrant abuse of rights, which apparently they are happy to continue.
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because the girl had been sexting with some other kid, whose parents complained to the school.
Even if true, unless it was being done at school, why is the school involved?
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Then again, I'm not aware of the whole facts of the case. I'm also sat behind a computer in a different country. I have no children with a Facebook account on which to post negative comments, as I have no children.
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Apparently the school thinks it has some moral obligation to deal with "cyberbullying", and since the parents (of the hypothetical other kid) complained, they (the school) had to investigate to determine if "cyberbullying" had occurred.
Re: Not trying to steer the car this car off the r (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case he should have a warrent right?
Re: Not trying to steer the car this car off the r (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not trying to steer the car this car off the (Score:2)
That is pretty uncontroversial.
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Not until you are legally an adult (18).
You're merely restating something I'm already well aware of, and criticized. We are not "the land of the free and the home of the brave" at all; we're merely a country full of people who pretend to care about freedom, but in reality, just want to use laws to force their own morals down everyone else's throats.
That is pretty uncontroversial.
Because most people are morons, and not just when it comes to nonsensical "protect the children!" rhetoric. You can see this by how many people tolerate the TSA and NSA spying; sure, they're criticized
Re:Not trying to steer the car this car off the ro (Score:5, Insightful)
One: people who make rules like these are fond of the idea that they are infallible. Admitting a policy was wrong would force them to admit they CAN be wrong, at which point they assume the students will riot and burn schools to the ground.
Two: the people who made the policies aren't going to be changed, the groupthink that led them to that point hasn't changed, they still believe in the value of the policy and think that everyone else is just ignorant and misguided as to why the policy is so necessary.
Three: Probably some idiotic notion about limiting liability. "If we admit it was wrong, someone ELSE MIGHT SUE US!" No one applies this logic to actually changing the policy or is willing to admit it's the policy that caused the lawsuit of course. It seems to be a weird quirk of groupthink that it's good to be shitty people in a half-assed attempt to limit liability.
Re:Not trying to steer the car this car off the ro (Score:5, Insightful)
Two: the people who made the policies aren't going to be changed, the groupthink that led them to that point hasn't changed, they still believe in the value of the policy and think that everyone else is just ignorant and misguided as to why the policy is so necessary.
You remember how we've heard for years and years that our schools need more money? Well, they got it and they continue to get it. Do you know where that money went? Not to hire teachers and buy textbooks and computers ... no. For the most part, it went to hire more administrative staff.
Much of schooling is a jobs project as illustrated by Jon Taylor Gatto. You now have lots of administrators who feel a need to justify the existence of their jobs. So, of course idiotic policies (especially "zero tolerance") will be deemed necessary. Like most problems society has, It was a predictable outcome.
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Re:Not trying to steer the car this car off the ro (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part, it went to hire more administrative staff.
Citation needed on that.
Citation [edchoice.org].
Citation [dailycaller.com].
Citation [frontpagemag.com].
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Look at the districts reply: We searched her cell phone without permission. We won't do that again. Now we have a standard form requiring permission that all students must sign.
So if all students must sign this, then why even have a form? What if they don't agree with the policy? Do they kick them out of school? Isn't the state required to provide education to the student, even if the child does not agree to an illegal and unconstitutional search of their property? If this was a private school, that is one thing, but a government funded public education facility must comply with the laws of the government. If they refuse, the government should withdraw the funding and throw the a
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You realize that "puberty" is nature's way of basically ensuring that young people learn to question authority, right?
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*yawn* Must be teenage cliche week.
Questioning authority is a teenage cliche? I thought it was something everyone in every single country should be doing, as ensuring that your country retains its freedom, or helping your fellow man acquire freedom, requires vigilance.
Re:Not trying to steer the car this car off the ro (Score:5, Funny)
But what were these these "disparaging" comments exactly?
"You look like someone that would read Slashdot."
Terms of Service (Score:2)
The school has no relationship with Facebook and isn't bound by any terms of service - it's the student who was coerced to violate them.
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Edit: Maybe if the school, or some of the administrators directly involved, have a Facebook account, and the ToS also forbid users asking other users for their account information...
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It's pretty unlikely that the school was completely unaware there were terms and conditions, and they really should have considered the possibility they were in breach of these terms.
Re:Terms of Service (Score:4, Insightful)
The school started a relationship with Facebook the moment they knowingly logged in with somebody else's credentials.
Credentials gained under duress, in case anybody says 'but she handed them over!'
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The school has no relationship with Facebook and isn't bound by any terms of service - it's the student who was coerced to violate them.
Knowingly asking someone to violate a civil contract is against the law. If Nvidia went to an AMD engineer and asked them to take a bunch of insider information and was going to pay them for it, Nvidia is asking the AMD engineer to violate a civil contract for whatever secret NDA stuff was signed when that engineer got hired.
This is in no way over (Score:3)
This girl is now going to be subjected to a lot of insidious B.S. until she leaves. Teachers will likely be very harsh for any sort of subjective grading. School staff is going to be watching her like a hawk. If she steps one toenail out of line, she's going to be in a world of hurt. If it's one thing I know, when you have no power and she really doesn't, the people who do have even a little power will make your life miserable. And this crap is going to follow her for a very long time too because it's now got a life of its own online.
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Newsflash little kid - teachers get paid regardless of whether snotty little shits like you turn up to class or not. They also get paid to shout at your if you're late. If you seriously think they *actually* give a sh1t then you're even more deluded than the average teenager and thats a pretty high bar.
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And I bet you think their "customers" are the kids , right?
Wrong!
The "customers" are the parents just as they would be if they hired a private tutor. Kinds just do what you're bloody well told and shut TF up. If they don't like school thats just too damn bad. No one cares.
Felony Charges? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats a felony under federal law now. Aaron Swartz was facing 15 years for something similar.
Oh, and the reason why we don't have a free democratic nation, and the reason why you don't see adults dissent, is because it is beaten out of us as children. We don't have a school system which produces free thinking citizens as adults.
We can pretend this is an isolated incident and not the trend of a large society.
This also demonstates the need to post either anonymously or pseudonymlsy. Its to prevent authority figures from fucking you
Re:Felony Charges? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and the reason why we don't have a free democratic nation, and the reason why you don't see adults dissent, is because it is beaten out of us as children. We don't have a school system which produces free thinking citizens as adults.
Every time I hear Americans talking about the "freest country in the world", I compare my school days with what I hear about school days of American children, and I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. At least in my class, "learning how to stand up against authority" was an (unofficial) subject.
You DO NOT "win" a settlement. (Score:3)
Settlement is NOT a win. It is a cop out.
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School admin reach into off-campus life (Score:5, Interesting)
The Minneapolis StarTribune had this article and what troubled me was this passage:
"As part of the settlement, Minnewaska school policies now address electronic devices for the first time.
The new rules say electronic records and passwords created off-campus can only be searched if thereâ(TM)s a reasonable suspicion they will uncover violations of school rules. Enhanced teacher training was also part of the settlement."
What bothers me about this is that there seems to be this idea that there are "school rules" that can conceivable cover ANY off-campus behavior, actions or activities. The idea of "reasonable suspicion" as being the grounds for searching anything seems to just make this seem all the more egregious.
As far as I'm concerned, the power of a school administrator extends to the boundaries of the school campus and only off-campus to the extent that the students are participating in some school-organized event (ie, playing school sports off-site or being on a field trip). You can't just say that because someone is a student in a school that you can create rules that extend past the schoolhouse door and empower you to utilize coercive force (police power) to enforce them.
I'm sure much of this thinking has been driven by the motivation to cut underage drinking by making it a violation of school policies and thus eliminating eligibility for sports or activities.
Re:School admin reach into off-campus life (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree completely. What schools sometimes fail to understand, or perhaps willfully misunderstand, is that they can't write policy that gives them permission to do anything. Their policies can only limit authority given to them by something else, such as law or parental consent, or direct how they exercise authority given to them by something else.
Personally, I think the American educational system might be a bit better off if they spend more time teaching and less time trying to be parents. It'd also have the nice effect of not convincing bad parents that the schools are there to do their job when they can't be bothered.
Re:School admin reach into off-campus life (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this administrative overreach is a bigger problem in small towns and suburbs than it is in cities. I think in these smaller communities you basically have collusion between the local police and the school administrators which makes the school administrators defacto prosecutors and the local police their enforcers, which is a dangerous combination of unaccountability.
I think there's also a lot of parental buy-in in these communities or at least a lot of parental peer pressure to keep this kind of system in place.
In a larger urban environment there's less of this; I think there's less cooperation between the schools and the police because both systems are just much larger and you get less of the informal collusion between the police and the school administrators. There's also the issue of urban populations being generally less trustful of the police which I think keeps the police more disengaged from the schools.
My sense is that most parents, especially your run-of-the-mill suburban types, probably believe that all of this school-as-law is a "good thing" of course until they run into a situation where it's their kid getting stripped of his rights and treated like a criminal.
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However WITHOUT parental permission, that's the important part.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
A 13 year old can't give permission.
Just like she can't give permission for the school to take her on a field trip or to go off campus for lunch, she can't give the school permission to invade her privacy. Only her parents can.
In some ways, this is really stupid. In other ways, it makes lots of sense. We shouldn't really trust most 13-15 year olds to make intelligent, informed decisions most of the time.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Interesting)
she can't give the school permission to invade her privacy
Especially when there are school officials and a cop hanging over her shoulder and threatening her. Not only was it not approved by parents, but it was coerced under threat.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some states, a 13 year old can give permission for themselves to have an abortion, without parental consent of any kind.
Coincidentally, Minnesota is one of them. However, the parents do have to be notified.
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Citation needed. :^)
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We shouldn't really trust most 13-15 year olds to make intelligent, informed decisions most of the time.
And by having an expectation of privacy and/or ownership of what she wrote online, she made a very unintelligent and uninformed decision. What you post to facebook is not yours, it is the property of facebook. Not that it really matters one way or the other who owns it, as the important bit here is that once you release information online it is no longer your information, it is available for whoever has access to where you release it.
In reality even email is not private. Once you release something t
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Prosecutors intimidate full-grown adults into accepting plea deals to get a lesser punishment for crimes they did not commit. I would imagine intimidating a teenager would be even easier. In my eyes, this has absolutely nothing to do with age, and has everything to do with intimidation.
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A 13 year old can't give permission.
Heck, a 13 year old can't even have a Facebook account.
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Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually demanding someone's password for any reason is the big picture here. It doesn't matter if she did it at home or at school.
The school should focus on what it's supposed to do, teach students. It shouldn't be policing the facebook pages of it's students.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Insightful)
This entire scenario is no less frightening than if you were told by a sherrif that you must provide your Facebook password so that they could investigate the fact that you used the site to bitch about the DMV. Or posted that you disliked the voting record of your Congressmen. Or that you thought that the Presidential foreign policy was a joke.
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Actually demanding someone's password for any reason is the big picture here. It doesn't matter if she did it at home or at school. The school should focus on what it's supposed to do, teach students. It shouldn't be policing the facebook pages of it's students.
But if they focus on teaching and instilling knowledge, how will they brainwash and social-engineer the next generation into fearing everything and loving Big Brother?
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Informative)
"The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission."
Authority figures pressuring a child constitutes duress, and consent given under duress isn't actually consent.
"The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private."
No, the problems, in descending order of importance, are:
1. That this authority figure thought it was okay to do this.
2. That you don't recognize that that's the bigger problem.
And somewhere way, WAY down the list, the fact that a child did something naively.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
With a Sheriff right there looking over her shoulder? Sounds like permission in the same way Crimea gave Russia permission.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not really permission if you are intimidated into doing it.
"The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private. "
It's only viewably by her friends. Her friends may repeat it, but it's no different then telling something to a group of friends.
" Once you release something on the internet"
overly simplistic to the point of being meaningless. It really depends on many other details. My computer is ';on the internet' does that mean it doesn't have any privacy?
"particularly when you give that something to a for-profit company."
So your medical company can broadcast you medical information all over the world?
Learn to think complex thoughts, please.
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One of the items they wanted us to sign stated that we waive the right to sue if our child was killed during a field trip. Only three parents refused to sign, and those students stayed at school while the rest of the class went on the field trip.
How typical. They like the extremely broad power that comes with operating in loco parentes but they don't want the responsibility.
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Except that it isn't. Facebook privacy is violated all the time. Messages that people post there assuming to be private end up elsewhere on a very regular basis. Even more so when things move from facebook to other places they can go verbatim, with exact records of what what written. This is not the same as saying something verbally where there is always the chance of the message being garbled along the way.
That still does not make it right for the police and the school to force her to grant them FULL access to her messages and page. What they read on public on FB is another matter.
If you post something for people to read online, you have released any reasonable expectation of it being private. Just because slashdot says that I own this comment I am posting, I understand that anyone can come along, copy it, post is elsewhere, etc. They might or might not credit it to me. Facebook is not different in any important way. Just because they claim that some messages are private does not mean they are.
Again, you missed the point. In this case, under the guise of investigating her private messages, the school and police were really after her public (and protected rights) complaints about a school official. Both of which are supposed to be protected in different ways.
They can sell it to whomever they want, just as facebook can sell your profile data to whomever they want.
No, medical information is protected by law. The fact that vio
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Facebook was essentially designed to violate your privacy.
It's owned an operated by people whose mission statement is to violate your privacy, and who routinely decide that any setting you had concerning your privacy no longer applies.
Facebook was built and is largely owned by a guy who takes the money he made violating your privacy and protecting his own.
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particularly when you give that something to a for-profit company
So your medical company can broadcast you medical information all over the world?
They can sell it to whomever they want, just as facebook can sell your profile data to whomever they want.
Actually, if we are talking about your medical practitioner such as a PCP, they cannot legally sell your medical information to anyone. HIPPA prevents that.
I was referring more so to your insurance company (which thanks to the Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010 [aka "affordable care act", aka "obamacare"] you are now required to be a customer of) who has access to all of your records and the ability to do as they please with them.
Re:Without her permission? (Score:5, Informative)
The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
No, she refused. Then they called the cops. The police officer and administrator together threatened her, and eventually (in tears) she gave in. Note the age of the child.
As she was not even a teenager at the time, that looks to me like very strong compulsion from authority figures. A normal pre-teen is not going to say "you cannot do this, it violates my rights, let me talk to my parents and a lawyer." Under this kind of pressure they'll believe the officer will throw her in jail forever, and break down.
For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
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For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
Actually $70 probably could cover the cost or just nearly so for a private school where she will get a better education than what the public schools had to offer anyway. Had she kept fighting it might not have gone her way. I would have countered probably with "I'll go away for 70K + legal fees to date" but I would have wanted to settle too; a bird in the hand is worth two in bush.
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For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
Actually $70 probably could cover the cost or just nearly so for a private school where she will get a better education than what the public schools had to offer anyway. Had she kept fighting it might not have gone her way. I would have countered probably with "I'll go away for 70K + legal fees to date" but I would have wanted to settle too; a bird in the hand is worth two in bush.
Usually when you "win" a case through that kind of settlement they don't pay your legal fees, just the one lump sum. In fact, I'm a little surprised the number was released, usually the whole thing is private. It is possible that somebody leaking the dollar value may have automatically ruined the settlement, but I hope not. This has been two years in the making, so I'm pretty sure those legal bills are going to be rather substantial.
You might be right, maybe it was $70K plus all costs, we don't have the te
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As she was not even a teenager at the time, that looks to me like very strong compulsion from authority figures. A normal pre-teen is not going to say "you cannot do this, it violates my rights, let me talk to my parents and a lawyer." Under this kind of pressure they'll believe the officer will throw her in jail forever, and break down.
Isn't that pretty well ingrained in the courts though? It seems like (IANAL) the courts have decided that anything the cops do to you to get you to do what they want is fine, so long as they're not actually beating you or cutting off body parts. "They told you you would be raped in the shower if you didn't confess? Well you should have known they were bluffing! They can't do that anymore! Confession stands."
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As she was not even a teenager at the time, that looks to me like very strong compulsion from authority figures.
Actually, she was a teenager. As 13 ends in -teen, she was literally a teen-ager, in this case, she was a thirteen-ager. And yes, that's the meaning of the word. A teenager is someone whose age ends with -teen.
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It would be interesting because if this were to go onto an actual court battle I'm not sure the kid would win. There is a legal concept in common law called: In loco parentis. In a nutshell it gives institutions such a schools quite a bit of leeway as long as it doesn't "Infringe Civil Liberties" and in the United States we've ended up with the Tinker Doctrine. But that covers more of the limitation of Freedom of Speech in a school than other items.
But In loco parentis has longed been used to allow justi
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How many home schooled kids have you met? I have met four, from two families, and in all of their cases, they are functioning at an intellectual level well above most adults. Were I not able to see that they were children, I would have expected them to be at least 30 based on the way they communicated.
One of the kids, at age five, was throwing around college-level vocabulary and asking me if I knew what the words meant.
Of course, I see you posted AC, so you'll probably never see these comments. After all
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The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
Permission from a 15 year old doesn't mean much legally.
The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private.
Getting paid $70,000 by the school to avoid a lawsuit seems to indicate that she was right.
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Is there some new [to the law] concept of private here?
When we 'put something on the Internet', why don't you have an expectation of privacy? I'm not talking about usenet/blogs, etc, but in email. That's on the internet. Of course, you say, but that's different. Can putting a comment on Facebook not be thought of as just a wider email- it's addressed to a fixed number of individuals. No-one outside of my circle can access it with my permission, just like if I sent it. If I wrote a letter to a friend say
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Of course you wouldn't be liable for slander.
Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.
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Said I wasn't a lawyer! Perhaps I was thinking about the sorts of things you find on our private nets are more equivalent to conversation, that Facebook is a modern version; it's not published (libel), it's more equivalent to slander.
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The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
The summary also says that she is now 15, implying that she was younger than that when this happened. At that age she has is a minor and has no legal standing to give them permission, even if she wanted (or was coerced) to. The school district needed to get the parent's permission before taking action and they learned a valuable lesson. The court system worked correctly for once.
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The summary also says that she is now 15, implying that she was younger than that when this happened. At that age she has is a minor and has no legal standing to give them permission
By creating an account on facebook did she not enter into an agreement as a minor? If she has control over the account she has the right to dictate how it is used. It is no different from the school asking to view a notebook that she carries with her to school.
The school district needed to get the parent's permission before taking action and they learned a valuable lesson.
That's debatable. I won't disagree with a notion of it being heavy handed if all she did was say something mean about a school employee, but the expectation of privacy on the internet is generally ridiculous. If you want something to be kept pri
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By creating an account on facebook did she not enter into an agreement as a minor? If she has control over the account she has the right to dictate how it is used. It is no different from the school asking to view a notebook that she carries with her to school.
She entered an agreement as a minor. That's fine. Except that such an agreement can be cancelled at any time by herself or by her guardians, until she is 18 years old. It is a voidable contract. Now depending on the situation, as the adult or company you can take the risk of entering a voidable contract. Facebook can; worst case if she voids their contract they wipe out her account. The school would have a problem: Getting into her Facebook account is illegal without that contract, and it becomes illegal in
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the expectation of privacy on the internet is generally ridiculous.
So what? That doesn't mean you get to ask for everybody's password to go investigate what they have posted. if there is no privacy, then they can take their own damn selves onto the interwebs and figure out for themselves what she posted.
A thief is able to break into your house, that doesn't mean that you should be required to give them the keys.
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haha yeah right.
it was bullied out of her, for a minor the deputy makes it look like she has to give it, that it is not a choice.
70 000 is not enough really - and it should not be paid by the school, it should be paid by the fucking deputy and the fucking school admins out of their own fucking cash.
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The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private.
Wrong. The real issue here is why the state thinks they have a right to silence a personal opinion.
Once you release something on the internet you no longer have control of it - particularly when you give that something to a for-profit company.
Also wrong. Setting aside copyright law that contradicts your statement, it's still irrelevent. Unless you'd like to suggest that if you have a newspaper article published (that doesnt call for violence or breaking the law and isnt a lie), it's ok for the state to demand that the article be retracted. Are you suggesting that the First Ammendment is a farse? Here's the text of it, in case you're unfamiliar:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]
If she wanted it to be private she should not have posted it online, anywhere.
Agai
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Yes, just like how someone confessing to a crime while being tortured is perfectly reasonable and valid.
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As a parent, I will never give my kids school permission to access her cell phone, email accounts, Facebook or any other online account. If they have concern about the content of a post she makes, or a message she may have sent, they can raise the concern with me and I'll deal with it accordingly. If they track her online usage while at school, fine - all organizations do it, they have to from a liability standpoint, but demanding her password? I'll raise hell.
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so they can negotiate fat settlement checks instead of winning cases?
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So they can distribute "Bill of Rights" posters with the Second Amendment deleted?
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They should have known better - time for hard time for that stupid retard.
Sadly there is no precedent in America of holding cops accountable.
If he shot and killed an unarmed man, he *might* receive two weeks of paid vacation. Err, I mean administrative leave.
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Re:and they care why? (Score:4)
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Hence the previous Slashdot stories about schools installing their own root certificates so they can perform MITM attacks...
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Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If it's involved in interstate commerce, it is a "protected computer" under the CFAA. Facebook, and by extension any computer connecting to Facebook, is a protected computer under the act since it is in the business of interstate commerce.
Now about the fraud. Actual fraud isn't needed, CFAA makes it a crime for anyone who "(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obta