A recently-passed law in Missouri attempts to ban teachers from friending students on social network websites. According to the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act:
I thoroughly enjoyed Jack Balkin’s Constitutional Redemption, and I found myself largely in agreement with many of Jack’s major claims. But overall, I find it hard to share his optimism.
At its core, Balkin’s constitutional jurisprudence is one founded upon faith — a faith in redemption. He concludes his book with the following paragraph (SPOILER ALERT):
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently upheld a school’s discipline of a student for engaging in off-campus cyberbullying of another student. In Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, — F.3d — (4th Cir. July 27, 2011), a student (Kara Kowalski) created a MySpace profile called “S.A.S.H.,” which she said was short for “Students Against Sluts Herpes.” Another student, however, claimed it really stood for “Students Against Shay’s Herpes,” referring to a student named Shay N. Kowalski invited about 100 people to join the page, and about 24 people joined.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately focusing on privacy issues at schools. I find these issues fascinating, and I have been working on them in the trenches, as I created a company last year to provide tools and resources to schools to help them better address privacy problems and to develop a comprehensive privacy program (or enhance their existing privacy program). The company is called TeachPrivacy. If you’re a school official (K-12, higher ed), a teacher/professor, or a concerned parent, please contact me if you’re interested in my project.
I have been spending a lot of time examining education privacy lately, and there are some very troubling things going on in this field. At a general level, schools lack much sophistication in how they handle privacy issues. Other industry sectors that handle sensitive personal data have Chief Privacy Officers and a comprehensive privacy program. Most schools lack anyone to handle privacy or any kind of privacy program. I recently started a new company called TeachPrivacy to address these issues and help schools better develop a privacy program.
The tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi has been raising awareness of the profound issue of privacy and young people. Two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, have been criminally charged with invasion of privacy for secretly recording Clementi’s sexual activities in his dorm room and then disseminating the video on the Internet.
I’m pleased to announce the publication of my new book, NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PRIVACY AND SECURITY (Yale University Press, May 2011). Here’s the book jacket description:
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Professor Paul Schwartz (Berkeley School of Law) and I recently published a new book, PRIVACY LAW FUNDAMENTALS. This book is a distilled guide to the essential elements of U.S. data privacy law. In an easily-digestible format, the book covers core concepts, key laws, and leading cases.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has decided NASA v. Nelson, reversing the 9th Circuit 8-0. My thoughts about the case are here and here [links no longer available], and as I predicted, the Court rejected the 9th Circuit holding that the government employment background check questionnaires violated the constitutional right to information privacy. Fortunately, the Court kept its opinion narrow and didn’t use it as an opportunity to wipe out the constitutional right to information privacy, a right that the Court mentioned just a few times but that has taken on more of a life in the circuit courts.
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