12-Year-Old Sues School Over Facebook Privacy

By Melissa Daniels | Mon Mar 12, 2012 4:13 pm
A 12-year-old student is suing her school for demanding her Facebook password, escalating the growing debate over privacy and social media as profiles become public property.
The 12-year-old Minnesota student's school district demanded her passwords for Facebook and email in order to search her saved information. Her suit is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The suit comes as agencies, schools, and employers demand increasing access to Facebook profiles of students and employees at a rapid rate. Organizations are safeguarding against inflammatory content on social media sites, but how they handle the situation can potentially violate constitutional rights, raising questions on whether Facebook posts can be treated as public, or subject to search.
The case stems from two incidents from the girl's Facebook. In one post, she called a hall monitor "mean" and said she hated her. A screenshot of the post made its way to the district, and someone showed the postings to the principal, resulting in a detention sentence and an apology to the hall monitor.
A subsequent post calling out whoever turned in the screenshot resulted in an in-school suspension. In the second incident, a male student's parent come forward, claiming the students were having inappropriate discussions on Facebook.
Administrators then called the girl to surrender her passwords in front of a school counselor and a county sheriff's deputy, in order to check her postings and chat records. The girl's mother says the district did not ask for her consent before its request.
Schools are examining Facebook activity, so the network is no longer the perceived safe haven students think it is. However, they still use the site as a place to express views about their school that, while maybe offensive, are not necessarily incendiary or criminal. In this case, the ACLU says the school district violated the student's First and Fourth Amendments.
"Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the school house gate," an ACLU spokesperson said in a statement. "The Supreme Court ruled on that in the 1970s, yet schools like Minnewaska seem to have no regard for the standard."
But the district says as more facts about the case come out it will be clear its actions were "reasonable and appropriate." Meanwhile, it "disputes the one-sided version of events set forth in the complaint written by the ACLU," according to a statement.
Social media profiles are an informal communications that are, at an increasingly rapid rate, treated as an extension of that person's beliefs, reputation and associated organizations. Employers, and colleges, demand access to profiles through friending an employee or staff member, a growing trend that puts profiles under the microscope.
The findings can lead to disaster if someone's posts cast an unflattering light, like the much-discussed case of Apple firing an employee over rants about the company on their private page.
Schools demanding access to Facebook activity could have a chilling effect on the speech of students to rant about their school. But beyond the immediate school setting, the case could set a precedent for more users to fire back at organizations who probe pages for details.


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