Orange County, Fla., schools to monitor social media posts of students, staff

[Newsjock]

Source: Orlando Sentinel

What Orange County students -- and staff -- post on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is now being monitored by their school district to "ensure safe school operations," the district announced this morning (Thursday).

Central Florida's largest school district said it had a new licensing agreement for software that would allow it to monitor a number of social media sites for posts "that may impact students and staff."

... "The company will assist district law enforcement and security personnel in monitoring publicly available social media communications that are relevant to school operations and personnel," it added.

The news release about the new program said the software was from the firm Snaptrends and that Central Florida law enforcement agencies already use the firm's system.

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-orange-schools-to-monitor-social-media-posts-of-students-staff-20150528-post.html

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. I think it's time for all the students to change their Facebook cover photos.

[Lifelong Protester]

2. And of course the ubiquitous "they"

decide which communications "are relevant to school operations and personnel".

[Journeyman]

3. Wonder how many corporations already use this Snaptrends software? . . .

[djean111]

4. The police use something similar to determine if you are a threat - using

social media and recent purchases. As far as privacy is concerned, the Patriot Act is likely moot.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/12/12/police-data-mining-looks-through-social-media-assigns-you-a-threat-level/

......
Crunching all the database information in a matter of seconds, the Beware algorithm then assigns a score and “threat rating” to a person — green, yellow or red. It sends that rating to a requesting officer.

For example, working off a home address, Beware can send an officer basic information about who lives there, their cell phone numbers, whether they have past convictions and the cars registered to the address. Police have had access to this information before, but Beware makes it available immediately.

Yet it does far more — scanning the residents’ online comments, social media and recent purchases for warning signs. Commercial, criminal and social media information, including, as Intrado vice president Steve Reed said in an interview with urgentcomm.com, “any comments that could be construed as offensive,” all contribute to the threat score.
.......
Beware can also encourage fishing expeditions and indiscriminate surveillance in the hopes of finding offenders. Police used Beware recently at a Phish concert in Colorado, for example, checking up on concertgoers based on car license plates.
.......

Of course, "if you are not doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry". Then again, if software like this mixes your data with the data of someone with the same name, for example, I think your life can get fucked up very quickly. Like identity theft on steroids, in a way.