Missouri restricts social networking between teachers, students (podcast)

Bill’s author, Missouri State Senator Jane Cunningham

(Credit:
from Senator Cunningham’s website)

A new Missouri law, known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, is designed primarily to protect children against sexual abuse from teachers and other education professionals, including those who might have been previously charged with abuse at a former district. The practice, known as “passing the trash,” occurs when an educator is fired or resigns from one school district and winds up being hired at another district without the new district having knowledge of the alleged sexual abuse.

And while the law mostly focuses on physical misconduct, there is also a provision that would require districts to “develop a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communications…including social networking sites.” The law states that “No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related Internet site unless such site is available to school administrators and parents,” and further requires that “No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student.”

Bans private chats
What this means is that it would not be legal for a student and teacher to have a conversation with direct messaging or chat. In theory, the communications would be OK if they took place on a publicly accessible page. But there are times when it is legitimate or even necessary for communications to take place in a private or semi-private manner.

I can envision cases where a student might want to use Facebook to chat with a teacher about some very personal issues, possibly including sexual abuse by a parent. There could be cases where students might want to reach out to teachers to talk about bullying incidents or perhaps sexual harassment from other students or other teachers.

On her blog, Missouri middle school teacher Randy Turner wrote, “Each year, I receive at least a dozen Facebook messages from high school students who are about to go through their first real job interview, looking for tips and wanting ways to make their resumes more effective. These are not things they are going to be willing to put on the wall for all to see.” She added that “hundreds of teachers across the state who have effectively used Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate with students, and I am one of those, will have to trash years worth of work.”

Tony Rothert, the legal director from ACLU or Eastern Missouri was quoted by the Huffington Post as saying, “I think that reasonable teachers are going to be afraid to use Facebook or Twitter at all, or anything that allows for requiring mutual consent before you can see what’s posted.”

Bill’s author weighs-in
In an interview with CBS News and CNET (scroll down to listen to podcast), the bill’s author, Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham said that nationally, “sexual misconduct between educators in our pubic schools and students was at least six times more prevalent than the priesthood scandal.” She added that “Missouri was the 11th worst state in the nation for teachers losing their license for sexual misconduct.”

Cunningham said “we did find that the access via the new electronic media, that new access became a pathway to future sexual misconduct.” The one example of sexual exploitation she gave during the interview focused on texting. “During the work on the bill, there was a case in which a math teacher had an ongoing sexual relationship with a young lady about 14 or 15 years old. During the discovery of that case we found 700 text messages. They were all private, the were all hidden from school personnel and parents and I guarantee you they were not about algebra.” She said that they “also found Facebook pages that one of our investigative reporters in in Kansas City found with pictures of second-graders and their teachers with a picture right next to it being a very raunchy graphic keg party.”

The senator emphasized that the bill applies only to private communications and pointed out that the provision regarding former students only applies to youth under 18 years old.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that relieves some of its funding from Facebook and other social media companies.

Click below for the full interview with Senator Cunningham.

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Argh! Another Facebook Zuckerberg Wants to Kill Off Anonymity

After the mass Google bannings over pseudonyms, Facebook’s marketing director Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has now announced that “anonymity on the Internet has to go away.”

The HuffPost reported that during a round table discussion hosted by Marie Claire magazine, Zuckerberg gave her opinion on how to stop cyberbullying and online harassment.

I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.

The EFF wants you to stop and think about that for a minute.

Randi Zuckberg doesn’t just think that you should be using your real name on Facebook or Google+ or LinkedIn — she thinks pseudonyms have no place on the Internet at all. And why should we take the radical step of stripping all Internet users of the right to speak anonymously? Because of the Greater Internet F***wad Theory, or the “civility argument,” which states: If you allow people to speak anonymously online, they will froth at the mouth, go rabid, bully and stalk one another. Therefore, requiring people to use their real names online should decrease stalking and bullying and generally raise the level of discourse.

Like Schmidt, two Zuckerbergs now have voiced their beliefs that there is no room on the web for anonymity. In real life situations, most folks don’t walk around with a name tag plastered on their chest. For example, if you are in a public gathering and someone voices an opinion, you don’t know that person’s name unless you actually know that person. You can ask their name, but it’s not automatically known. In the mall, or even walking on a sidewalk, if some guy whistles at you or if a group “cat calls,” you don’t immediately have access to their real names either. While some people might like that sort of thing, some people might not. Just as on the Internet, you can almost count on the fact that someone will not like whatever you say in a comment or in a post and exercise their free speech right to say so. Is it really a good idea to strip away anonymity and replace it with real identities when there are plenty of people in the cyberworld who are totally unbalanced and capable of taking that argument from the digital world to up-close and personal in the real world? What about activists? Real identities and real names would make it mighty handy for government surveillance.

When Mark Zuckerberg claimed “Anonymity is authenticity,” 4Chan founder Moot said, “Mark Zuckerberg has kind of equated anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice, and I would say that’s fully wrong. I think anonymity is authenticity, it allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way and I think that’s something that’s extremely valuable.”

Previously Microsoft Partner Architect Marc Davis talked of the Web of the World where “every piece of data on the Internet maps back to who created it and who they know. Where they were when they did it, where they’ve been and where they plan to go. What they are interested in, attend to, and interact with, and is around them, and when they do these things.” Davis suggested that your personal data could be traded as currency in the digital world.

On Facebook or Google Plus, where people must use real names, have you been monetarily compensated for that collection of your personal data? No and unless something radical happens to make Davis’ vision a reality, you won’t collect some form of digital currency for your online data connected to your real name. We all have good days and bad days when things that might normally roll off our backs, do not. Instead it ticks us off and something stupid is said offline or online. The real name rule could make Schmidt’s prediction a reality. He said that, in the future, all kids would likely change their legal name to avoid a connection with that identity which posted embarrassing photos or comments on social networking sites like Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s argument to stop cyberbullying by doing away with digital anonymity could open the door to bullying and stalking in real life. There’s usually a reason people choose anonymity. In the cyber world, you can choose to “die” and become yet another alias. In the real world, it’s unlikely people would up and move, change their name, after some especially troll-like comment set off another person who might be a bit unbalanced and physically come after you. It could swing the other way, not an angry stalker but one who is way too enamored of you. That’s doesn’t mean you want that digital person tracing your real identity and to come knocking on your door. Would all gamers then start using real names as well? Think hunting down digital folks in real life to extract some kind of “justice” doesn’t happen? It does.

Where do you draw the line in killing off anonymity? For every bit of good it would do, there is an equal bit of harm it could do. Ripping away pseudonyms is a stupid idea.

Like this? Here’s more posts:

• Wham Bam Google Ban: No Pseudonyms on Google Plus Profiles
• Cyberwar Strategy: Will Dual-Hatted NSA Plug Holes in Leaky Pentagon?
• DHS: Imported Tech Tainted with Backdoor Attack Tools
• They ARE Listening: Law Enforcement Wiretapping Jumps 34%
• Anonymous, Hackers, Citizens: Know Your Rights!
• Project PM Leaks Dirt on Romas/COIN Classified Intelligence Mass Surveillance
• ACLU to Congress: Cancer of Gov’t Secrecy Is Killing America
• Anonymous, Hackers, Citizens: Know Your Rights!
• In this digital age, what the heck happened to the Constitution?
• Hunting for an email service with extreme wishlist for privacy and security?
• FBI Eyeing Microsoft Technologies to Assist Law Enforcement

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