[Dragon]

Indeed, quite a long time ago. A lot has changed since '88. In particular, that law was ruled unconstitutional (in 2003). Back then, 5 years for sodomy was, from what I recall, a pretty normal sentence. The 80s were still pretty prudish, despite all the liberalization that's been going on. Of course, I'm not saying it's all right, but there's more to it than just an old, silly law.

[MP-Ryan]

Indeed.  And its worth pointing out another common error in the media and public consciousness:  the maximum sentence is not what a person typically receives.  That is determined by case law precedent.  In that [ancient] case, the max was 20 years, the actual sentence was 5 years, and time served was 18 months.  Still ridiculous, but that just goes to show how ridiculous 'moral' laws are.

[Dragon]

Yeah. The maximum sentence is usually reserved for especially heinous cases of a crime. I fail to see how oral sex could be heinous enough to warrant 20 years, but considering when the law was probably made, it probably wouldn't have taken much. Back then, there were more laws like that, and a lot of very racist ones, too. Never underestimate what 25 years can do. Moral laws like that always look ridiculous if looked on from a more enlightened time. It's amazing that this changed from "all right" to "silly" in just 25 years. Who knows, maybe in the next 25 years, our children will be saying the same things about fines for public nudity or jailing people for smoking weed.

[karajorma]

Concerning widespread video surveillance and facial recognition software, the privacy interest is triggered not during collection of information, but after recording - those records in the possession of whomever monitors and reviews it is subject to certain privacy considerations (for government agencies).  This is because there is inherently private information in facial-recognition databases.  That said, any private business is free to film the street outside their entrance and install facial-recognition software, though why they'd want to I have no idea.

I can think of several reasons. 20 years ago people might have asked why a company might want to read your mail. Google has become a multi-billion dollar company simply from knowing which websites you visit and what you talk about in your mail. You really think advertisers wouldn't want targeted data on which people shop in which shops? You really think that a company offering this sort of service at a reasonable price wouldn't become very rich, very quickly? I suspect it's only the cost that stops certain areas like shopping malls doing this now. But as good cameras and software become available I suspect it will become more likely.

As in the case with school board, the best way to oppose practices like this is not dubious legal claims, but political pressure on the decision makers.  Or get your legislative body to pass a law explicitly limiting it.

I don't disagree with that at all. It's your assertion that publicly available data can't be abused that I disagree with. You spent half your last post pointing out why there are government limits to prevent them abusing a similar situation. Why are you so certain that publicly available data can't be abused?

[MP-Ryan]

I can think of several reasons. 20 years ago people might have asked why a company might want to read your mail. Google has become a multi-billion dollar company simply from knowing which websites you visit and what you talk about in your mail. You really think advertisers wouldn't want targeted data on which people shop in which shops? You really think that a company offering this sort of service at a reasonable price wouldn't become very rich, very quickly? I suspect it's only the cost that stops certain areas like shopping malls doing this now. But as good cameras and software become available I suspect it will become more likely.

And it's inherently possible under the current legal framework.  Time to start lobbying governments.

I don't disagree with that at all. It's your assertion that publicly available data can't be abused that I disagree with. You spent half your last post pointing out why there are government limits to prevent them abusing a similar situation. Why are you so certain that publicly available data can't be abused?

It's the situation with the school board in particular that I'm talking about.  If someone puts information in the public sphere, they should anticipate other people will see it.  If there is the potential for abuse of that information, then the problem lies squarely with the person who put that information out there to begin with.  Putting potentially self-compromising information in the public domain is a really stupid thing to do; a lesson which not enough parents, nevermind their offspring, don't seem to understand.  Making policies like this school board's known are actually a really good prompt for people to educate themselves.

Perhaps I should have said to Luis earlier that the potential for abuse SHOULD be zero because we should expect that people are not posting compromising details in public.  Of course, we all know that people in general are stupid and that a lot of people have posted compromising information in public, but I have trouble with the idea of consequences of that posting resulting from school board collection being 'abuse.'  It's like the various idiots who post racist/misogynist/homophobic rants publicly on Twitter and facebook - sure, collecting, reproducing, and mocking them for that information is technically 'abuse' - but the victim is totally the architect of their own misfortune and I don't have much sympathy.

[karajorma]

I love how you're blaming the victim here. Especially when the victim is someone who is most likely a minor and could be as young as 11 or so.

Yeah, it's their fault when the system gets abused.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

MP, please remember these are not adults we're talking about. They're not helpless, but a lot of them are growing up in a culture of over-sharing and they think that it's completely normal, and that us old codgers shaking our walking sticks at them yelling at clouds about "privacy" are dinosaurs trapped in the past. They're wrong, but letting them reap the consequences of ignorance in a Darwinian atmosphere just doesn't sit right with me when we're talking about mostly teenagers who have a lot of things to worry about.


They need to learn that privacy is important, yes, but not by letting a bunch of them get thrown in juvie and having their lives ruined over misunderstandings blown completely out of proportion by power-mad adults enabled by the mass hysteria of helicopter parents.

[Luis Dias]

Yes, even in adults that particular idea is ridiculous. It is literally the old classic "If you have nothing to hide what's your problem?"

[MP-Ryan]

Yes, even in adults that particular idea is ridiculous. It is literally the old classic "If you have nothing to hide what's your problem?"

Except it's not, because this information is as easily available as if you walked next to a person yelling at the top of their lungs down a street.

The point is, like the policy or not, there is absolutely nothing that is stopping anyone, even a school board, from monitoring these people's social media posts.  And there can never be a law in a democratic society making that illegal, either.

So, much as I wouldn't be terribly comfortable with a school board monitoring my kids' posts, I'm much more worried about my kid posting stuff he shouldn't be.  So responsibility for NOT being a victim here lies with the person doing the posting.  Unlike crimes like sexual assault, where victims have no fault role in the crime, any abuse of personal information in this case is preventable entirely by the person not posting it for all the world to see.  Sure, criminal charges exist for people who commit offenses using other people's information, public or not, and the victim in that case is not responsible for the criminal actions of another.  But in general - if you don't want to be a victim of abuse, don't post information that can be used to abuse you in public.  Yeah, these kids are young, but this is a lesson that parents should be imparting early (and recall that the TOU for these sites set minimum age at 13 with parental monitoring).  If anything, a school board is one of the most benign parties that can be collecting this information.

Does the school board policy suck?  Sure.  Should it be opposed by the parents with kids in that district?  Yup.  However, if the school board refuses to retract the policy, there is an eminently simple solution:

Teach your kids that they should never post anything in the public areas of the Internet that can be used to harm or compromise them.  If anything, the argument that "parents don't properly monitor the information their kids put online and it can therefore be abused" is a pretty reasonable justification for a policy like this simply because parents clearly aren't monitoring their kids at all in that case.

I hate the argument that "people no longer feel any sense of personal responsibility," but there are a small few areas where that really has become the reality, and the **** people post on the Internet is at the top of the list.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

If anything, a school board is one of the most benign parties that can be collecting this information.

Just a quick aside: the school board in the original post's article actually hired a third-party contractor for the monitoring. I don't know if that changes anything for you, but third-party contractors hired for just about anything have a very long history of a complete lack of any kind of oversight.

You're absolutely right about the first and best option being to educate people about the consequences of sharing too much personal information in public forums. But you know who has to do that?

Me.

You. Pretty much anyone else in this thread.

We know the dangers. It's on us.

[karajorma]

MP-Ryan is also ignoring the fact that fairly innocuous data can be abused if you have enough of it.

[Luis Dias]

MP, nothing you said in that above comment is remotely relevant. Yes, parents should teach as best as they can to their kids about life and its pitfalls and how to deal with the internet, etc.

Yes, anyone *can* legally do this, etc.

The question is not *Can they?* but *Should they*. I never brought up the *can* aspect, and I was always damned clear about this, so why you keep bringing it up is beyond me. Especially when you then go all the way to agree with us:

Does the school board policy suck?  Sure.  Should it be opposed by the parents with kids in that district?  Yup.

Ok, I think I've had enough of this carroucel. My head is spinning.

[666maslo666]

The point is, like the policy or not, there is absolutely nothing that is stopping anyone, even a school board, from monitoring these people's social media posts.  And there can never be a law in a democratic society making that illegal, either.

If it is a public school, then it means that voters or politicians hold some authority over the school. Thus they can establish some law or local regulation to prevent public schools from monitoring or punishing kids for online posts. And it would not be "undemocratic".

[MP-Ryan]

The point is, like the policy or not, there is absolutely nothing that is stopping anyone, even a school board, from monitoring these people's social media posts.  And there can never be a law in a democratic society making that illegal, either.

If it is a public school, then it means that voters or politicians hold some authority over the school. Thus they can establish some law or local regulation to prevent public schools from monitoring or punishing kids for online posts. And it would not be "undemocratic".

Yeah, poor choice of words on my part.  There cannot be a general law against data collection from public realms of the Internet (which is what I was driving at), but you are correct that school boards in particular answer to both voters and local legislatures; they could be blocked via budgetary or legislative means.

MP-Ryan is also ignoring the fact that fairly innocuous data can be abused if you have enough of it.

No, I'm  saying that if people took responsibility for their digital citizenship then the actual abuse that can come out of innocuous data is more or less nothing.  I would expect this would be the case for most HLP users - you could assemble some general facts about us, but really not anything that can be abused in any way.

The question is not *Can they?* but *Should they*. I never brought up the *can* aspect, and I was always damned clear about this, so why you keep bringing it up is beyond me. Especially when you then go all the way to agree with us:

You are not the only person I've been responding to.  Yes, I agree that the policy is one that should be opposed, just not on legal grounds, and the 'abuse' argument is a pretty thin one.  Much better to avoid the inevitable argument with something like "I elected you to run the school under a responsible budget; if you want to spend money on things that don't fall within your mandate, then I'm going to elect someone else."  A few hundred/thousand angry parents saying that to the school board will get ridiculous policies like this eliminated in short order.  And if they don't, then the next election will.

[karajorma]

And once again you ignore the fact that we're dealing with children as young as 11 and not adults. Since when has any problem caused by children gone away completely by simply by having adults tell them what to do?  Expecting 11 year olds to act responsibly is a basic denial of what an 11 year old is. Sure the parent has to exercise some responsibility since their children can't, but expecting this problem to go away simply by telling children what they should and shouldn't do online is such a naive view of how parenting works that I'm amazed you can express it.

And that's if I even agree with you that you can't abuse even fairly innocuous sounding comments. Not to mention that you're also forgetting that you're also going to have to edit anything said before people knew their children would have their posts data mined. In the case of the older kids that's several years worth of posts that need to be edited or removed.

This isn't an issue that needs to be (or even can be) solved by the parents, except by getting themselves a less idiotic school board.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Not only that but you have to watch what everyone else is saying about your kids.  It would be very easy for other kids to turn this system around.  Get your friends together and start a rumor about someone you don't like and if enough hits come up about that rumor now you have an innocent kid that is in trouble. 

[Lorric]

So even MP-Ryan doesn't like the idea.

I guess I'm the only one who'd be happy to roll the dice. I think it would do more good than harm. For every abuser you'd have a whole bunch of good people who would do good things.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

So even MP-Ryan doesn't like the idea.

I guess I'm the only one who'd be happy to roll the dice. I think it would do more good than harm. For every abuser you'd have a whole bunch of good people who would do good things.

Unfortunately, good people doing good things are in the minority. For every time something good comes out of this, I predict several scandals where the third-party contractors hired to do this wind up being caught selling all their data to advertisers or with loads of pictures they've taken from remote webcam access of 13 year old girls in their underwear.

[Lorric]

Unfortunately, good people doing good things are in the minority.

I think it's the other way around.

[Dragon]

Yeah. Despite everything, most regular people are not assholes. It's merely that it's assholes who are most often reported on. Afterall, "A system operator came to job today and browsed Facebook for 6 hours." isn't exactly an exciting headline, especially since that's what most people do at work anyway. But if you've got a scandal, people will want to read about that. People tend to forget that for every asshole that makes the news, there are millions of decent people who don't.