My Space At School Watch – That is… watch out for the Secret Service!

We had a great chat with some of the folks at ISTE about the DOPA issue on Friday(Amongst other things). They agreed with what I understand is the general community opinion, “if we don’t teach them safe social networking in schools, who will?” There is a significant literacy gap between children today and their parents…. It was easy enough, fifty years ago, to explain that walking down dark alleys, in the middle of the night, holding a hundred bucks over your head wearing a bikini in November was asking for trouble. Or, for instance, that saying you wanted to do bodily harm to a public figure on the radio was not a good career move.

Enter the internet.

Enter the trials and tribulations of one Julia Wilson. She was visited by two secret service agents on Wednesday who visited her at her place of daily travail. She was hard at work and was pulled from the room and “yelled at me a lot” and threatened with incarceration. Apparently she had threatened to ‘Kill Bush’ on a very popular social networking site that you will find in the title of this post.

Catch is… Julia is a 14-year-old freshman at Sacramento’s McClatchy High School.

This SFGate article details the “unnecessarily mean” way she was treated by the agents. You’ll notice this key line inside the article “She replaced the page last spring after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.”

wow. talk about the standard issue kicking in your door.

They take her OUT of class, question her in private, scare the crap out of her and then send her back in. Beside the obvious didactic opportunity lost, does it not seem odd that the plan for dealing with kids posting inappropriate stuff online (and i certainly am not condoning her actions) is to send SECRET SERVICE AGENTS?!?

just wow. that is all.

Author: dave

I run this site... among other things.

40 thoughts on “My Space At School Watch – That is… watch out for the Secret Service!”

  1. At least this way the students will be easier to locate when they’re in their mid-30’s wearing tinfoil hats in their secluded mountain cabins blogging their manifestos.

    I wonder if this would cause a problem…”Defoliate Bush!” Not sure on that one.

    (knock, knock) ‘scuse me…need to answer the door.

  2. I think it is important to teach students what is appropriate online at school because many of their parents are just as clueless as they are.

  3. wut the… never mind i can’t believe this is stupid this is a free country just because you say your going to kill the president doesnt mean you will. good example if you say to a friend that you going to kill the president doesn’t mean you accually will hire a hitman from los vegas and tell to kill bush for a dolla. P.S we are being traced right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. Bush’s grandfather was hitler! Mabey not, but sure seems like it. Mabey bush is just inspired by hitler. What a great presedent we have. Seem more like the S.S. wanted to send a message to the public. “FEAR BUSH!” If you dont you’ll end up in guantanamo where you have no rights to phone, lawyer or trail. Who really need free speach or habeas corpus anyway. It was a silly idea to begin with.

  5. so, we have this effing nerd that comes around my school and he blocked just about EVERY way to get there. The websites ya’ll put don’t work! HELPPPPP!

  6. okay i honestly need a way to get on myspace.. my school gets ahold of everything we go on and they block it because of the history on the computers.. i need something.. something very very secret that noone knows!@

  7. i hate this how do u get on myspace from school i tink that they should let us we are not doing anything bad so let us on!!!

  8. i need a way to get on myspace but my school has blocked almost every web site excepted this one!!!!!!!!
    i need a help !!!!!!!!
    one that will take a while for the school to find!!!
    need it to be very secretive

  9. wat da bleepety is this bleep it aint helpful at bleepity all i tried all that bleep at school and it dont muthableepity work u dumbass bleeps!!!!!!!!!

  10. I tried these web site4s and none of them work i need anew way to be able to get on that nobody has firgured out yet HELP!!!!!!!

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