Not OurSpace

There were a couple of articles that I wanted to comment on from last week that deal with online privacy and social network sites. I know my students are huge fans of these sites and spend a great deal of time on them. However, I do wonder if they know what can happen to them if they put something up there that the school admins don't like? For example in School district to monitor student blogs from the Boston Healrd and in MySpace or OurSpace? in Salon this week (yes, you need to click through the advertisement... sorry).

Look. the kids know they don't have complete freedom of speech in the schools. At the one I work at, we require them to sign a student code of conduct at the start of the year that removes many of their Constitutional rights in this aera (especially to protest or to petition). This isn't new, but it offers the CYA that the administration needs in case something strange takes place. At the same time though, I don't think the schools should be trolling around on MySpace or Facebook or any of these other sites, unless there is clear evidence of a major threat to the school (ie: something more serious than, "Man, my history teacher stinks! I wish he'd drop dead." not that I'm encouraging any of my former students to say that about me...).

Naturally, Congress decided to jump on the bandwagon here, since they don't have any other pressing business at hand. In fact, this article shows what legislation is coming through so solve this *problem*.

After all, how long do we think it will be before the Pentagon starts to use this data all in the name of securing the nation, of course. There are ways to stop it, but t hat would require getting a Congress that cares more about a person's privacy than how much money someone can make with their personal information.