ACLU demands school apologizes for searching student's Facebook page
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the Everett School District to apologize to a student because a supervisor pressured her to make her Facebook page available during an investigation of a complaint of cyber-bullying that involved other students.
The group sent a letter to Superintendent Gary Cohn on Friday regarding an incident last month involving a North Middle School vice principal and student Samantha Negrete, The Everett Herald reported.
"Our hope is to work together with the school district to find a resolution to this that allows Samantha to return to a safe and welcoming school environment," said Linda Mangel, an ACLU attorney.
Samantha said she did not willingly disclose the contents of her Facebook page. The ACLU said that the request for Toutant's transfer was made because Samantha fears "he will seek to abuse his power and punish her for reporting his illegal search."
Samantha is "being called a snitch, a tattletale," Mangel said. "She's being ostracized. She's afraid."
The group wants students to be formally notified that Samantha's Facebook page was involuntarily and improperly searched; for students to be trained on their rights and responsibilities in using online technology and their rights regarding school searches; and for a new school district policy outlining when school officials may access students' online accounts.
It called for Bryan Toutant, North Middle School's vice principal, to be re-assigned to another school for the remainder of the school year.
School district spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said Cohn had not seen a copy of the letter.
"If something was done that was inappropriate, we would always apologize," she said.
A report on the North Middle School incident is expected next week, she said. Any decision on whether disciplinary action will be taken against staff will occur after the superintendent gets a chance to review the report, Waggoner said.
Waggoner said that Toutant has not been at North Middle School this past week because he was involved in the investigation of the Facebook incident.
The group sent a letter to Superintendent Gary Cohn on Friday regarding an incident last month involving a North Middle School vice principal and student Samantha Negrete, The Everett Herald reported.
"Our hope is to work together with the school district to find a resolution to this that allows Samantha to return to a safe and welcoming school environment," said Linda Mangel, an ACLU attorney.
Samantha said she did not willingly disclose the contents of her Facebook page. The ACLU said that the request for Toutant's transfer was made because Samantha fears "he will seek to abuse his power and punish her for reporting his illegal search."
Samantha is "being called a snitch, a tattletale," Mangel said. "She's being ostracized. She's afraid."
The group wants students to be formally notified that Samantha's Facebook page was involuntarily and improperly searched; for students to be trained on their rights and responsibilities in using online technology and their rights regarding school searches; and for a new school district policy outlining when school officials may access students' online accounts.
It called for Bryan Toutant, North Middle School's vice principal, to be re-assigned to another school for the remainder of the school year.
School district spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said Cohn had not seen a copy of the letter.
"If something was done that was inappropriate, we would always apologize," she said.
A report on the North Middle School incident is expected next week, she said. Any decision on whether disciplinary action will be taken against staff will occur after the superintendent gets a chance to review the report, Waggoner said.
Waggoner said that Toutant has not been at North Middle School this past week because he was involved in the investigation of the Facebook incident.
This is yet another reason that many school district in Washington will block access to Social Networking sites from School Owned equipment, because the school is liable for enforcing all these anti bullying and content filtering rules from the Federal and State Governments. By blocking them from School Equipment, they can now push the "enforcement" of these laws to the parents (if the school can even know it is happening), simply by notifying the parents that their child is getting bullied using the parent's contracted technology devices.
Kids will bully, because they have seen adults get away with it at HOME and at SCHOOL!
Schools barely have enough money to teach, let alone monitor everyone for everything that "might" hurt them!
is Samantha the one suspected of doing the cyber bullying? anyone?
@jennieb No.
The parents should have been notified to give consent since she is a minor. Â Â
@The WA Mama You think they are your kids?  Heck no, they belong to the Republik Of Amerika,  They will teach them anything they want too and do what they want with them.  They are future voters and supporters of the teachers union,  politically correct little robots with no mind or will of their own.  They are going to be progressive, anti-gun, tree hugging voters of the Democratic Party.   Â
@PlumBUSTED!what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
@DeadRabitz @PlumBUSTED! Ignore those Bushites. The only thing we should be hearing from them these day's is "I'm so very sorry. I will never ever vote again and I will just STFU from now on."
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@jackcorey4Â Of course your mother earned that much with her webcam. Although... what sort of chap would pay for it is a good question. Why are you surprised what that did Robert said?
Headline - ..."demanding"...Â
Article - "ACLU asking" ...Â
Very confusing. Â Article lacks consistency leading to some confusion on the use of operative words.Â
Shouldn't the headline read, "apologize?"
"Apologizes" is the superperplective indicative current tense, no? Or something.
@Getov Mylon Yup.
The simple fact is Junior High School kids have and always get out of control when it comes to bullying. If the kids are using Facebook or any other online social media outlet as a bullying tool then there needs to a way to monitor this and stop it. If this isn't done then get used to reading stories about kids hanging themselves in the school playground once in awhile.
@Ankle Biter So we sacrifice our rights and the rights of our kids all in the name of "safety"?  No thanks, Ill keep my rights, the rights of my children and simply be an involved parent.  You know, parenting that thing that I do that so many think is the schools job.
@Ankle Biter Another "simple fact" is that employees have and always will talk about the boss behind their back - and now they use FaceBook to do so.Â
Would you willingly hand over your password so that boss can search for such comments?Â
What's next, will you wear a wire at the next gathering of your co-workers at the pub?Â
If you do these things, you give up your right to speak freely.
@OrcasThunder @Ankle Biter The difference here is we are dealing with juveniles who shouldn't be expected to act with the same level of maturity that adults do. I completely agree with your viewpoint for 18 and over Facebook users. The ACLU may be in the right but this is also a situation where being in the right isn't best. In a perfect world parents would be watching their teenage kids social media sites for bad behavior but we know that isn't always going to happen so who gets the job of making up for that? I don't have an answer for that but I do know that letting 14 year old's run amok online isn't a great idea regardless of what the ACLU thinks.
@pete1427 @Ankle Biter Fine. You are correct. Our rights must be upheld for all ages above all. I'll just consider the problem of cyber bullying unsolvable. I guess we can all get used to a few kids killing themselves now and then. Small price to pay compared to the importance of our rights.
@SilverGryphon It was a public school an extension of the government.
@SilverGryphon Public schools ARE governmental agencies.
@SilverGryphon Â
The public school system is part of theÂ
government and those protections fromÂ
illegal do indeed apply to them.Â
@SilverGryphon I have a question, if the schools are supported by taxpayers dollars, controlled by government are the not a government entity? They sure seem like a government agency, not being able to perform the function they exist for.
@Ankle Biter First, I don't believe that constitutionally protected rights have an age limit on them.  Second, what are we teaching our kids? It is not okay to give up your rights in an illegal pursuit of justice.  If they taught to believe that it is okay to be treated illegally now, what happens when they become the ones making the decisions of protecting our rights?
The fourth amendment protects the rights of US citizens from illegal search and seizure from the GOVERNMENT ONLY.
@Ankle Biter Â
The US Supreme Court has stated that minors are protected byÂ
the US Constitution and Bill of Rights just as adults are. ThatÂ
means that the search violated her rights as no search warrantÂ
was ever granted. That fact does not even consider that privacyÂ
laws were also violated. The privacy laws, like her guaranteed
protection against illegal search were violated and those laws
are also not restricted to just adults, but also apply to minors.
@Ankle Biter"The difference here is we are dealing with juveniles who shouldn't be expected to act with the same level of maturity that adults do."
So, you say the freedom of speech thing only applies to "adults"?
If the kids are suspected, talk to the parents to get permission to search the kids files - don't subject one person who is not involved in finding the evidence - and making the girl a pariah.
That's a fine lesson to give to young people..
The constitution clearly says that we have the right to be "secure in our person, papers, and belongings", and yet consistently the courts have interpreted new technologies to favor the government searching us. Somehow our cars are not subject to warrants, and employers and schools are allowed to violate our person, papers and belongings as a proxy for the government, with the argument that it's "our choice" to work there, or whatever.Â
It doesn't matter who does the searching, or demanding of private information with no warrant or just cause, we should have the right to be secure in our person, papers and belongings, and the courts should be interpreting electronic private data as our personal belongings and papers. People in apartments should have the same rights as people who own homes, meaning the fire inspector or landlord can't act as a proxy to the courts to inspect and search under the pretext of safety. And the list goes on.Â
Why we have allowed both government and private entities the ability to violate us physically and our property without massive violent protest is beyond me.
The Fourth Amendment only protects you from the Government, not private entities.
@SilverGryphon Again, the public school system is a part of the government an is bound under the Constitution.  They are wrong and should apologize and make amends before this turns into a actual court case and costs us all money.
@SilverGryphon How is the 'public school system' a private entity?  Are they not against 'private schools'?  Seems like any othey dysfunctional government entity to me.
As a general rule, I really despise the ACLU. Â As much as I hate to admit it, I don't think they're going far enough this time. Â Someone needs to lose their job over this. Â If a person has a public profile, I'm OK with the world looking at it. Â If a person has a private profile, they shouldn't have to give up their password to anyone. Â If there's a real need for that, get a search warrant.
We have taught our children to not let someone touch them inappropriately. Now we need to teach them that their online accounts should be kept as private as their bodies?
Social media in general is getting way out of hand, I think. It's reshaping society, and not for the better.Â
@jowsuf As did the automobile, the telephone, the computer...
The one thing I take away from all the comments is that a whole lot of people failed, or should have failed, their high school English language courses. I've never seen so many disjointed, poorly punctuated and hard to read comments as I have for this story.
As for the ACLU, this story makes my 25-plus years of membership worthwhile.
@Furd When people comment on line they are not expecting a red pen to strike through punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors. Are you an English teacher?
@jennieb @Furd No, I am not now nor have I ever been, an English teacher. Â
When people attempt to communicate they need to do so in a standardized manner so as to leave little or no ambiguity in their statements or questions. Changing the spelling by only a single letter can change the meaning of the word completely from what is intended. Punctuation is used to help describe the manner in which a sentence is to be interpreted. When someone is sloppy with either it give the impression that they do not care how others will interpret what they are attempting to communicate.
It is NOT the job of the reader to try and decipher what a person might be thinking, it is the job of the writer to properly communicate their position from the beginning.
All that stated, it does happen that a person can mistype, I do it all the time but I also proofread my posts before sending to try to reduce my mistakes. If I were to comment on every single mistake I see I would never get a chance to do anything else and THAT is not my purpose in life. I DO try to point out the more egregious mistakes in order to facilitate better communication.
Facebook pages can say a lot about a person but can you really interpret what is on that page in the way the owner of the page intended it to be portrayed? Â The information is objective to the viewers interpretation. Â Someone could be joking and a viewer of the page could take that joke seriously not knowing any background of the person. Â
Don't get me wrong I feel it is extremely stupid to share too much on a facebook page. Â Political views, personal info etc.. can get out of hand. Â
Forget the apology: accessing a computer system without proper permission is a federal crime. Someone needs to go to jail.
@JLS1950 I am all for intervention in cyber bullying cases but that really needs to be carried out by law enforcement with a warrant. Academic culture suffers from the illusion they have God like power over students lives and they really do not.Â
@Citizen#3457899654Â @JLS1950Â You are preaching to the choir, Citizen... preaching to the choir.
If you want that job, then get off of Facebook. You might as well learn it in school. Do you seriously think the nice employee who wants to friend you isn't reporting to HR?
@krog So, you are willing to your your life over to the company you work for?Â
When, exactly, did you forfeit your right to free speech at home, in public, at a gathering of friends?
@krog ... All of that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. At all. The VP intimidated the girl into logging into her Facebook page so that he could look at the profiles of other students for a picture that was posted by another student, due to a bullying complaint that didn't even involve the girl who was called to the office and made to log into her account. It was wrong all around, and even employers are not or will not be allowed to do stuff like that soon (there's legislation in the works in this state and others). What your friends who are coworkers report to your boss willingly is a completely different issue. This was a child who was coerced into giving up her right to privacy. And it was wrong.
Its YOUR FaceBook account! Your boss has no right and schools dont either!
Because many teachers think they can do whatever they want to a 'kid' and get away with it. Â They work around kids all freaking day long and do not have a clue. Â This vice-principal was a short-sighted P.O.S. pulling aside a girl who was no trouble and .. easy to manipulate .. Â Now her life is a living hell and the bully is probably laughing at her too. Â I bet the high and mighty faculty member never considered of that. Â They tell us all the F'in time to consider the consequences of our actions, but the hypocritical jerks don't do the same. Â That a** deserves to be fired!!!
@Sissy ...May I ask what side of the social ladder you were on in school?...
@Freespeech@Sissy"May I ask what side of the social ladder you were on in school?..."
You go by the name you use - and still ask a question like that?Â
@OrcasThunder He did a 'hit & run' too, he never came back and answered her reply. That was a cheap shot.
@Freespeech @Sissy r u disagreeing? ok, the staff feel they can or dont have to do anything and its their way or the students high way and as for parents ...YOU WONT BE HEARD they dont have to hear you! they have no responsibility to your child's well being . nor is the pay enough to influence it as a career. in fact the staff feels they r doing parents a favor so bug off! they would love to see that a parent thinks they dare hold a school accountable, STAFF. oh this statement is beyond fair for the staff that feel other wise. the staff do not have to teach your child, they simply give out the home work and you as a parent has to teach your child how to do it and make sure its correct. get over it?
@Freespeech @SissyR.S., a minor, by and through her mother, S.S., individually and on behalf ofher daughter, what does that matter? Troll much? The VP tried to get away with something unethical. He went outside the lawful boundaries - CASE 0:12-cv-00588-his butt should be in a sling.Â
There is a way to go about handling these things - and questioning a minor without permission from her parents is out of bounds - and if he didn't know that - he should have. He used her. He manipulated her. And he gets to go home and sip wine with his wife - while she deals with the social blowback. I would like to see him barred from public service involving children, period.Â
So save your holier than though trolling efforts, they are transparent.Â
@Freespeech @Sissy Cripes, came back and the post is a train wreck. copy and paste split up, and spell it thou, not though.Â
derp derp derpa... my bad.