What's this about schools forcing pupils to hand over passwords?

[Joey_P]

@Dangerosa

Its one of those laws that is going to be a very nasty snafu for some school administrator and parent. The kids don’t HAVE to turn over their passwords and in fact, turning over their passwords is a violation of their use agreement with the social media sites. It does permit the school to ASK. However, what will happen is the administrator will ask, the student will refuse, the student will face disciplinary action, and the shit will hit the fan for some student whose parents want to make it a case.

You don’t need a law to ask someone for their password. I can ask anyone for their password to anything. I can ask you for the key to your house. The problem is, some 8th grader isn’t going to know that he can refuse when he has the principal and his homeroom teacher staring at him and he knows he sent those nasty private messages. He doesn’t know he’s allowed to say ‘no, I don’t have to give you my password, call my parents’.

It reminds me of when I watch an episode of Cops and they pull someone over for something silly and they cop says ‘mind of I search your car for drugs or weapons’. It seems that often times the guy will say ‘well, you’re gonna do it anyways so go ahead’. I always thing the cop should have to say ‘Can I search your car, keep in mind that at this point you do have the right to refuse to allow me to search your car’. Not that it matters since they’ll find a reason anyways, but still, most of those guys don’t know that they CAN refuse.

Similarly, some kid doesn’t know that he CAN refuse to turn over his password. He might not even be smart enough to know that if he didn’t do anything wrong this would be a great time to say ‘I’m not giving you my password, but I’ll log on and let you can poke around so I can clear my name’ whereas a guilty kid might not be smart enough to shut his yapper and get his parents down to the school.
Now, having said all that…When Kenny says “Look Mrs Jones, here’s the messages that John sent me” and John sits there with his mouth shut and won’t work with the school, that’s when it’s time to just hand it over to the local police and let them deal with it (assuming it’s that bad). Again, no he doesn’t have to hand over his password, but in some cases it may be in his best interest before he ends up with cyber-bullying on his record.

[Doctor_Jackson]

@Alley_Dweller

I underlined different words.

This particular paragraph does NOT say that a school may “request or require” such passwords. It only says that they must provide a notification that they may “request or require” such passwords.

That sentance makes no sense. Look at the words. Words have specific legal meaning - “may” (are permitted to) “request” (ask) "require (specify as compulsory). If the school is compelled by law to notify students and parents that the school has the legal standing to demand a password, then the writer of the law believes that legal standing to demand a password exists. That may not be what the lawmakers intended, but that is what they did.

It’s like if your teacher makes you say “I am very sorry I hit you.” You may be secretly gleeful you hit me, but you have to say the words to make the teacher go away.

Absolutely. You don’t have to like giving up their password(s), but the way the law is worded you may have to comply.

Nothing in that paragraph actually says that schools are granted the authority to request or require passwords. The only thing that paragraph says is that schools are required to provide a notification saying “we may request or require passwords.”

But it does. As noted above, the words “may” and “require” indicate that the school has the authority of law to make turning over a password mandatory. “Require” also infers a penalty for non-compliance. It is the penalty that is not specified. One may hold that if there is no penalty there is, in effect, no authority. There are laws on the books that are unenforceable because they have no penalty attached, so it could apply here.

If the notification only said “request”, then I would agree with your analysis but you can’t just ignore the word “require”.

I can’t find any section of the law that says that elementary or secondary schools can actually request or require passwords. Can you? Whoever drafted that law probably assumed there was some authority, but it’s not contained in this section of the law.

It is not specified in this section of this law. If you’ll notice, even on the official web page not all sections of the law apppear. Could it be buried in there, or in another law?

The ACLU and the state legislator who wrote the anti-cyberbullying law tell the Huffington Post that nothing in the law requires students to turn over their passwords.

This article, if anything, confuses the issue even further.
*The lawmaker is quoted as saying that “You can read the bill upside down and backwards; there is not one word about handing over a password”. Clearly there is.
*The author of the article states that “In fact, a bill that took effect in Illinois Jan. 1, 2014, made it was unlawful for a school to request or require a student or parent to provide the school with social media passwords.” when clearly that exclusion applies only to post-secondary schools and in some cases not even then.
*then the article states “But this is not a broad exception. A school could only request passwords if there is ample evidence of a school rule being violated – such as a football player drinking alcohol. Moreover, students weren’t required to provide the passwords – schools were simply allowed to request them under these circumstances.” The notification law clearly says “request or require”
*the General Council for the Illinois Principal Assoc. is quoted as saying ““We’ve advised our members that it’s really something that should only be used in very dire circumstances, if ever,” Schwartz said.”. So the authority does exist, according to his interpretation.
*the ACLU opposed the law, but referred to the lawmaker’s stated intent (not the law itself or their interpretation) in saying students would not be required to divulge passwords.

So the article says it’s illegal to request or require a student to surrender, but later says it could be “requested” and the General Council says the authority granted by the law should be used sparingly. I don’t think anyone involved knows what is going on.

Yes, the law is absurd. Nothing prevents legislators from writing absurd laws.

The law as written is beyond absurd, it’s scary. It needs to be rewritten to state clearly what schools can and cannot do. Some overzealous principal is going to use this “authority” and end up costing the school system a bundle in legal fees.

[Steve_MB]

@Smapti

IIRC, Facebook and the other social media moguls put it in their terms of service that you cannot give your password to anyone, and that doing so is grounds for closing the account, a few years ago in response to companies trying to demand that prospective employees give up their passwords.

That’s a pretty inept response. I can think of a much better one (set up the account so that Password A leads to fluffy bunnies and kittens while Password B leads to the real account), and they aren’t even paying me to figure this stuff out.

[Steve_MB]

@Joey_P

That reminds me of a case from a few years ago where schools had given students (loaned) laptops. If they suspected students of doing illegal things (I think if may have just been drug related activity) they would remotely turn on the camera to spy on them at home. That seemed absolutely awful.

Somebody arranged a setup where they could remotely webcam on (I’m presuming from the nature of the rationale) high school students?

I don’t see how anybody with a multidigit IQ could even consider using that kind of arrangement – turn on the wrong webcam at the wrong moment, and you’ve just earned yourself 5 to 20 for downloading kiddie porn. :eek:

[running_coach]

@Steve_MB

Somebody arranged a setup where they could remotely webcam on (I’m presuming from the nature of the rationale) high school students?

I don’t see how anybody with a multidigit IQ could even consider using that kind of arrangement – turn on the wrong webcam at the wrong moment, and you’ve just earned yourself 5 to 20 for downloading kiddie porn. :eek:

They were school issued laptops. The cameras could be turned on remotely if the laptop was lost or stolen.
Hilarity/lawsuit ensued. I believe over 50,000 pictures were on the school district servers.

Thread.

[Bouncer]

@GrumpyBunny

Block FB from school. Block Instagram and Twitter, too. There is no educational need for social media use in school.

I suspect in many cases it already is (or should be). Having said that, I don’t think this is about school resource use, but rather about investigating “cyber bullying”. The schools are looking for a way to verify that little Johnny said something about little Jeff or little Jennifer or did something to them. The behavior, not occurring on school grounds or using school resources, is still a violation of school policy. It can have impact on the behavior of students while in school, so the school may have a legitimate interest in both protecting the student and protecting the school as a whole. Per the supreme court ruling, the schools believe they have the right (and possibly the legal obligation) to both take proactive investigatory steps and impose sanctions.

The legal questions this raises are multiple, including not only students privacy and rights of expression, but also evidence gathering and possible criminal charges. You can come up with any number of scenarios, but in general terms, the questions are these (among others):

1. What happens if the school investigator (who may not be a sworn law enforcement officer) uncovers evidence (say photographs or videos) of a possible crime or intent to commit a crime not publicly visible but present on the account?

2. What happens if this is not related to the original reason for the investigation?

3. What happens if this evidence would normally require a subpoena for a police officer to access?

It can become a bigger can of worms fast, depending on whether they are then required (they probably are) to inform the police of the evidence and/or give them access to the account. You get into 4th Amendment territory (and possibly 5th Amendment as well) very quickly.

As an easy and more likely example: During the course of a cyber-bullying investigation the investigator finds images (or video) of two underage persons opening and sharing a bottle of liquor. That’s a criminal offense everywhere in the United States. Now what?

Regards,
-Bouncer-