Electronic Devices Research Materials (CON)

Transcription

Electronic Devices Research Materials (CON)
Table of Contents
Cell Phones Should Be Banned in Schools
Texting Increases the Risk of Having a Crash in Both Trucks and Cars
Study: Walking While Talking on Cell Phones Hazardous for Students
Study Finds Link Between Cell Phone Use, Rare Type of Brain Tumor
Cell Phones for Children: Are Kids at Greater Risk?
The Internet Can Disrupt Learning
Cyber-Bullying Is Worse than Physical Bullying
MySpace and Other Social Networking Web Sites Should Be Banned
Schoolchildren Are Not Ready for Social Networking
Social Networking Sites Harm Children's Brains
Amherst Student Pushes for Rules on Facebook Among Teachers, Staff
Spy School: When Educators ‘follow’ a student home
New Scanners Break Child Porn Laws
Cellphone Spying Getting Easier for Abusers, Stalkers
Deaths Pose Test for Facebook
Doctors Wary of Switch to Digital Records
Facebook Post Gets Teen Expelled
Hackers Aren't Only Threat to Privacy
Hackers Invade iTunes Accounts
Hyping Tech Will Not Help Students
Hackers-for-Hire Are Easy to Find
Law Blocks Iowa School's Call for Jamming Device
More Youth Seeing Their Facebook, Email Hacked
New Law Aimed to Prevent Sexting Among Teens
Online Security Breaches Threaten Consumers' Confidence
Students Crave a Break on Cellphone Ban
Turn Off the Cell and Tune In
Viral Chicago Video Points to Disturbing Trend
Tough call: should all cell phone use by drivers be banned?
Texting, driving and insurance
Identity Theft Can Lead to Lawsuits Against Victims
Teen's Suicide Prompts a Look at Bullying
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Cell Phones Should Be Banned in Schools
School Policies, 2008
Armstrong Williams, "Classrooms Are No Place for Cell Phones," Townhall.com, June 26, 2006. Reproduced by
permission of the author. www.armstrongwilliams.com.
"Students survived for hundreds of years without cell phones and they don't need them now."
In this viewpoint, Armstrong Williams recommends prohibiting cell phones in school because, in his
opinion, they are distracting to the user and to other students. Cell phones, he claims, are used to send
text messages during class, browse sexual content on the Internet, cheat on tests, and even coordinate
drug deals on school grounds. Regulating the use of cell phones in schools puts undue stress on
administrators and teachers, he explains. A Christian conservative, Williams writes nationally syndicated
columns and hosts radio and television shows.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1. In what two ways did Councilwoman Letitia James respond to the cell phone ban, in the author's assertion?
2. The notion that cell phones should be allowed in schools for safety is comparable to what other idea,
according to Williams?
3. In the author's view, how do students use cell phones to incite violence?
Last month [May 2006] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein teamed up to ban cell
phones from New York public schools. As expected, uproar ensued, but you may be shocked at where the
racket came from. No, it was not the students who were up in arms about having their precious lifelines taken
away. It was the local politicos and parent groups who most opposed the ban.
An Uproar by Parents and Politicians
When I first heard about the cell phone ban for New York schools, I figured students would most vehemently
oppose the ban. I guessed that they would be so disappointed about losing the opportunity to text-message their
friends while in class, take pictures during breaks, surf the internet during lectures, and talk on the phone
between periods that they would do all they could to overturn the ban. Instead, these students simply adjusted to
the new rules and went back to the good old days of passing notes under the desks. But their parents and
politicians did not back down so easily.
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, city Controller William Thompson, several ranking members of the City Council,
including Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson and Land Use Committee Chairwoman Melinda Katz,
all came out against the ban. A parents' group collected more than 1,200 signatures on a petition opposing the
ban. And City Councilwoman Letitia James (Brooklyn) introduced legislation calling for a moratorium on cell
phone confiscation. James also is exploring whether the Council has the authority to override Mayor Bloomberg
and Klein on the issue, she said.
Excuses
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Parent and political groups claim that students need the phones before and after school for safety and security
reasons. They cite the scarce supply of pay phones and the non-existent after school programs as reasons why
cell phones are needed to arrange for transportation or deal with an emergency. Also, most parents enjoy the
idea of being able to contact their child at a moment's notice to inquire about their whereabouts and current
activity.
I am shocked and disappointed that some parents and politicians believe that cell phones as safety devices are a
worthy tradeoff for disruptions at school. That philosophy is comparable to claiming that weapons should be
allowed in school to prevent after school attacks. Frankly, it just doesn't make sense. Students survived for
hundreds of years without cell phones and they don't need them now. If parents are seriously worried about the
safety of their children, they can take other steps to ensure their safety. A cell phone is not the answer.
Support Teachers by Upholding the Cell Phone Ban
Public schools have become war zones with teachers and administrators acting as the unequipped arbitrators.
Cell phones are a big reason these behavior problems are occurring in schools everywhere around the country.
Students are inciting violence by calling gangs and older kids anytime an argument occurs, running away from
teachers who see them talking on the phone, and turning their cell phone ring tones to a pitch that adults cannot
notice because of hearing deficiencies. Students are downloading inappropriate movies and images and sharing
them between friends which disrupts class and can lead to sexual harassment situations. Students are using cell
phones to cheat by either taking pictures of their answer sheet, sending the image to other fellow students or
even by text-messaging the answers. They also use cell phones to coordinate drug deals and to call into schools
where they fake absences by pretending to be their parents or other false identities. Besides distracting the cell
phone users, other students are unable to focus because of cell phone disruptions.
Cell phones put unneeded stress on teachers and administrators as they exhaust all of their tools to reach
students. Kids today are more rebellious, more disrespectful and more undisciplined than ever. Adults need to
take a stand and give kids more boundaries, not more freedom. This discipline starts at home, but it spreads to
school as well. If teachers agree with the Mayor's ban (which they overwhelmingly do), then parents and
politicians should too. Teachers have a tough enough job as it is and we must make it easier for them by
upholding this ban on cell phones at schools.
Further Readings
Books
Kern Alexander The Law of Schools, Students and Teachers in a Nutshell. St. Paul, MN: West Group, July
2003.
Anti-Defamation League Responding to Bigotry and Intergroup Strife on Campus. New York: Anti-Defamation
League, 2001.
Rami Benbenishty and Ron Avi Astor School Violence in Context: Culture, Neighborhood, Family, School,
and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
William C. Bosher Jr. et al. The School Law Handbook: What Every Leader Needs to Know. Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2004.
Susan Brooks-Young Critical Technology Issues for School Leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2006.
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David L. Brunsma The School Uniform Movement and What It Tells Us About American Education. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2004.
Ronnie Casella Selling Us the Fortress: The Promotion of Techno-Security Equipment for Schools. New York:
Routledge, 2006.
Bruce S. Cooper et al. Better Policies, Better Schools: Theories and Applications. Boston: Allyn & Bacon,
2003.
Joan Del Fattore The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in America's Public Schools. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2005.
Michael Dorn and Chris Dorn Innocent Targets: When Terrorism Comes to School. Macon, GA: Safe Havens
International, 2005.
Laura Finley and Peter Finley Piss Off!: How Drug Testing and Other Privacy Violations Are Alienating
America's Youth. Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2004.
Patricia H. Hinchey Student Rights: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001.
Ian K. Macgillivray Sexual Orientation and School Policy: A Practical Guide for Teachers, Administrators, and
Community Activists. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Erica R. Meiners Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies. New York:
Routledge, 2007.
Katherine S. Newman et al. Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
Jamin B. Raskin We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and About Students. Washington, DC: CQ,
2003.
Charles Russo et al. The Educational Rights of Students: International Perspectives on Demystifying the
Legal Issues. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2006.
Winn Schwartau Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids (and Parents & Teachers Who Haven't Got a Clue).
Seminole, FL: Interpact, 2001.
James T. Sears, ed. Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Issues in Education: Programs, Policies, and Practice.
New York: Harrington Park, 2005.
Russell J. Skiba and Gil G. Noam Zero Tolerance: Can Suspension and Expulsion Keep Schools Safe? San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.
Harvey Silverglate and Josh Gewolb FIRE's Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus.
Philadelphia: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, 2004.
May Taylor and Ethel Quayle Child Pornography: An Internet Crime. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.
R. Murray Thomas God in the Classroom: Religion and America's Public Schools. Westport, CT: Praeger,
2007.
Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, eds. Youth, Pornography, and the Internet. Washington, DC: National
Academy, 2002.
Nancy E. Willard Computer Ethics, Etiquette, and Safety for the 21st-Century Student. Eugene, OR:
International Society for Technology in Education, 2002.
Periodicals
Associated Press "School Cell Phone Ban Causes Uproar," May 12, 2006.
Andy Carvin "New Federal Legislation Would Ban Online Social Networks in Schools & Libraries," PBS
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Teachers learning.now, May 11, 2006. www.pbs.org.
Michael Fitzpatrick "Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006," H.R. 5319, May 9, 2006. www.govtrack.us.
Forsite Group "MySpace: Safeguard Your Students, Protect Your Network," 8e6 Technologies, 2006.
www.8e6.com.
Declan McCullagh "Lawmakers Take Aim at Social-Networking Sites," CNET News.com, May 10, 2006.
Samuel C. McQuade III "We Must Educate Young People About Cybercrime Before They Start College,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 5, 2007.
National School Boards Association Leadership Insider, August 2006. www.nsba.org.
National Public Radio "How Far Should Schools Go to Fight Obesity?" Talk of the Nation, April 24, 2007.
www.npr.org.
National School Safety and Security Services "School Safety Issues Related to the Terrorist Attacks on the
United States," 2007. www.schoolsecurity.org.
Kevin Poulsen "Scenes from the MySpace Backlash," Wired, February 27, 2006.
Julie Sturgeon "Bullies in Cyberspace," District Administration, September 2006.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
"Cell Phones Should Be Banned in Schools." School Policies. Ed. Jamuna Carroll.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In
Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
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splayGroupName=Viewpoints&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&am
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Texting Increases the Risk of Having a Crash in
Both Trucks and Cars
Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, 2010
Matt Richtel, "In Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Large Margin," The New York Times, July 28, 2009. © 2009
The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United
States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission
is prohibited.
In the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking
at their devices—enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a
football field.
In the following viewpoint, Matt Richtel describes recent studies showing that texting while driving is the
most dangerous distraction drivers face on the road. Despite the more sophisticated electronic devices
installed in trucks, using these devices while driving is not any safer than texting in cars. Further, while
most drivers surveyed said they understand the risks associated with texting, they continued to text
while driving anyway.
1. How might the presence of cameras in truck cabs have affected the results of the study?
2. Based on the information from these studies, should texting while driving be illegal?
3. Why might younger drivers be more likely to engage in texting while driving?
The first study of drivers texting inside their vehicles shows that the risk sharply exceeds previous estimates
based on laboratory research—and far surpasses the dangers of other driving distractions.
The new study, which entailed outfitting the cabs of long-haul trucks with video cameras over 18 months, found
that when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which compiled the research and plans to release its findings on
Tuesday, also measured the time drivers took their eyes from the road to send or receive texts.
In the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking at their
devices—enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a football field.
Even though trucks take longer to stop and are less maneuverable than cars, the findings generally applied to all
drivers, who tend to exhibit the same behaviors as the more than 100 truckers studied, the researchers said.
Truckers, they said, do not appear to text more or less than typical car drivers, but they said the study did not
compare use patterns that way.
Compared with other sources of driver distraction, "texting is in its own universe of risk," said Rich Hanowski,
who oversaw the study at the institute.
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Mr. Hanowski said the texting analysis was financed by $300,000 from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, which has the mission of improving safety in trucks and buses. More broadly, the research
yielding the results represent a significant logistical undertaking.
The overall cost was $6 million to equip the trucks with video cameras and track them for three million miles as
they hauled furniture, frozen foods and other goods across the country.
The final analysis of the data is undergoing peer review before formal publication.
Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech institute, one of the world's largest vehicle safety research
organizations, said the study's message was clear.
"You should never do this," he said of texting while driving. "It should be illegal."
Thirty-six states do not ban texting while driving; 14 do, including Alaska, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.
New York legislators have sent a bill to Gov. David A. Paterson. But legislators in some states have rejected
such rules, and elected officials say they need more data to determine whether to ban the activity.
One difficulty in measuring crashes caused by texting drivers—and by drivers talking on phones—is that many
police agencies do not collect this data or have not compiled long-term studies. Texting also is a relatively new
phenomenon.
The issue has drawn attention after several recent highly publicized crashes caused by texting drivers, including
an episode in May involving a trolley car driver in Boston who crashed while texting his girlfriend.
Over all, texting has soared. In December, phone users in the United States sent 110 billion messages, a tenfold
increase in just three years, according to the cellular phone industry's trade group, CTIA.
The results of the Virginia Tech study are buttressed by new laboratory research from the University of Utah. In a
study over the last 18 months, college students using a sophisticated driving simulator showed an eight times
greater crash risk when texting than when not texting.
That study, which is undergoing peer review and has been submitted for publication in The Journal for Human
Factors, also found that drivers took their eyes off the road for around five seconds when texting.
David Strayer, a professor who co-wrote the University of Utah report, offered two explanations for the
simulator's showing lower risks than the Virginia study. Trucks are tougher to maneuver and stop, he noted, and
the college students in his study might be somewhat better at multitasking.
But the differences in the studies are not the point, Mr. Strayer said. "You're off the charts in both cases," he
added. "It's crazy to be doing it."
At Virginia Tech, researchers said they focused on texting among truckers simply because the trucking study
was relatively new and thus better reflected the explosive growth of texting. But another new study from the
organization is focusing on texting among so-called light-vehicle drivers, specifically teenagers.
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Preliminary results from that study show risk levels for texters roughly comparable to those of the truck drivers.
The formal results of the light-vehicle study should be available later this year. By comparison, several field and
laboratory studies show that drivers talking on cellphones are four times more likely to cause a crash than other
drivers. And a previous Virginia institute study videotaping car drivers found that they were three times more
likely to crash or come close to a crash when dialing a phone and 1.3 times more likely when talking on it.
Researchers focused on distracted driving disagree about whether to place greater value on the results of such a
so-called naturalistic study or laboratory studies, which allow the scientists to recreate conditions and measure
individual drivers against themselves.
But, in the case of texting, laboratory and real-world researchers say the results are significant—from both
scientific methodologies, texting represents a much greater risk to drivers than other distractions.
A new poll shows that many drivers know the risks of texting while driving—and do it anyway. The AAA
Foundation for Traffic Safety plans on Tuesday to publish polling data that show that 87 percent of people
consider drivers texting or e-mailing to pose a "very serious" safety threat (roughly equal to the 90 percent who
consider drunken drivers a threat).
Of the 2,501 drivers surveyed this spring, 95 percent said that texting was unacceptable behavior. Yet 21
percent of drivers said they had recently texted or e-mailed while driving.
About half of drivers 16 to 24 said they had texted while driving, compared with 22 percent of drivers 35 to 44.
"It's convenient," said Robert Smith, 22, a recent college graduate in Windham, Me. He says he regularly texts
and drives even though he recognizes that it is a serious risk. He would rather text, he said, than take time on a
phone call.
"I put the phone on top of the steering wheel and text with both thumbs," he said, adding that he often has
exchanges of 10 messages or more. Sometimes, "I'll look up and realize there's a car sitting there and swerve
around it."
Mr. Smith, who was not part of the AAA survey, said he was surprised by the findings in the new research about
texting.
"I'm pretty sure that someday it's going to come back to bite me," he said of his behavior.
Source Citation:
"Texting Increases the Risk of Having a Crash in Both Trucks and Cars." Opposing
Viewpoints Online Collection. Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. Gale Opposing
Viewpoints In Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=d81bcab478caadd5a9164eb37552fcf9
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The Internet Can Disrupt Learning
Has Technology Increased Learning?, 2009
Tim Lougheed, "The Internet as a Class Distraction," University Affairs, January 2002, pp. 26-28. Reproduced by
permission.
Tim Lougheed is president of the Canadian Science Writers' Association and a writer specializing in science,
medicine, and education.
The Internet has many merits as an educational tool, but it can be a disruptive presence in the
classroom. During lectures, discussions, or class presentations, students using laptops may be
distracted by surfing on the Internet or instant messaging with classmates or friends, leaving instructors
and presenters to compete for students' attention. Consequently, as schools increase the availability of
wireless Internet in classrooms and offices and encourage or require students to own laptops, they must
balance the advantages offered by the Internet with "chalk talk" and foster the student-teacher
relationship. Allowing students to access the Internet in the classroom also calls for a new electronic
etiquette for them to follow in respect for instructors.
When Mala Thakoor was doing her BA at York University in the early 1990s, the Web and its associated
applications were just beginning to make their presence felt. The idea of introducing this new technology into a
classroom would not have occurred to most instructors, unless perhaps they were teaching a specialized course
in computer science. Nor would it have occurred to most students to demand it.
Now an administrative assistant with York's Centre for the Support of Teaching, Ms. Thakoor returned to
classroom this fall to begin arts course in multimedia design, and was surprised at how much had changed. The
class took place in a computer lab with each student at a separate workstation, linked to the others through an
internal network as well as to the Internet. The arrangement allowed students to examine computer-generated
images and share their own graphics work with other members of the class.
Ms. Thakoor discovered that the presence of computers also carried some unintended consequences. The
instructor had to compete for students' attention as they e-mailed messages to one another or surfed the Web.
After repeatedly asking them to look his way, he ordered everyone to turn their chairs away from their monitors.
"It took at lot of prying." says Ms. Thakoor. "They were so hesitant to leave their terminals."
None of this was new to Don Sinclair, the York faculty of fine arts instructor who has been teaching multimedia
courses using the Internet in class since 1990. The subject matter makes computer labs the ideal classroom for
this course, and over the years he has seen students become much more comfortable in this computer-intensive
setting. So much so, in fact, that their distraction has become one of his leading challenges. "You have to
explicitly say 'please look at me'," he observes. "Because if they have the computer in front of them, the
keyboards and the mice will be clicking."
At the request of complaining instructors, some classrooms have been outfitted with "kill switches" that
temporarily disconnect a classroom's data ports from Internet access.
Instructors who have to meet this challenge remain the exception rather than the rule in most Canadian post
secondary institutions, but the mesmerizing power of information technology is intruding on more classrooms
than ever before. Distance education facilities, for example, often rely on connecting two or more remote sites
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using the Internet. Computers have been finding their way into many traditional lecture theatres or seminar
rooms, with a monitor sprouting at each desk. In other cases, such as Mr. Sinclair's multimedia course, there are
advantages to having students linked to a local network to work on a common piece of software or view a
common set of images. In a number of academic programs, students are expected to supply their own laptop
computers and each seat will have an independent port to connect them to the network.
In the U.S., business schools that have invested a great deal of effort and expense to embrace this technology
are now finding they have to set rules to curtail the distractions it's causing in class. At the request of complaining
instructors, some classrooms have been outfitted with "kill switches" that temporarily disconnect a classroom's
data ports from Internet access. This technically complicated response may not yet have been deemed
necessary on Canadian campuses, but instructor complaints can be heard there, too.
Among them is McMaster University sociology professor Carl Cuneo, director of the Network for the Evaluation
of Education and Training Technologies, a national research consortium that examines issues such as the role of
the Internet in teaching. His own perspective was shaped by an experience with a distance education course that
was held in a computer lab to allow remote members of the class to take part in the proceedings online. When
he asked those students to make presentations to the rest of the class, he encountered many of the same
frustrations as Mr. Sinclair.
"Other students were at their terminals and they had open chat lines," he says. "During the presentations the
other students were chatting with one another, making snide remarks about the student doing the presentation.
They were also engaged in all kinds of other socializing and surfing the Net. This had nothing to do with the
presentation. This clearly was an inappropriate atmosphere."
The Perennial Challenges of Classroom Etiquette
Of course, students were finding ways of distracting themselves in the classroom long before the Internet
showed up, and teachers have always had to cope with individuals who chat in class, pass notes to one another
or read comics behind a strategically positioned textbook. Christopher Knapper, director of Queen's University's
Instructional Development Centre, suggest this new technology has merely added another dimension to these
perennial challenges of classroom etiquette. It has always been up to instructors to meet those challenges, he
says, preferably with more imaginative measures than an "off" switch for the Web.
Dr. Knapper says the most successful instructors are able to engage a student's interest. "What you're seeing
with students who are surfing the Web is that you have provided another possible source of engagement,
another source of attention," he says. "You're competing with that. If you don't have engagement, you don't have
attention. If you don't have attention, you don't really have learning."
Some modest debate over the presence of the Internet in classrooms surfaced at Queen's four years ago [in
1998], when its school of business quietly launched a program to incorporate student laptops into more teaching
activities. But Brent Gallupe, one of the professors responsible for the initiative, says instructors at Queen's have
seldom encountered the serious problems that have dogged their counterparts south of the border. "We're still
learning what works and what doesn't," he says.
What works for him is presenting students with a set of straightforward guidelines, including rules such as "tops
down'"—laptops closed when they are not needed for classroom activities. Such rules reflect standards of
behaviour that prospective business people might be expected to follow in the working world. But Dr. Gallupe
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has a more important distinction in mind. "I view the class and the classroom sessions as a compilation of human
moments and technology moments," he says.
That distinction sits well with Maurice Tugwell. assistant dean of arts at Acadia University. For more than five
years, his campus has been on the front lines of writing classrooms and dealing with the consequences. Every
student is now required to own a laptop, and access ports for linking them to the Internet are in every nook and
cranny. Classrooms, residence rooms and library carrels are only the most obvious of those locations. Hallway
kiosks make it possible to log on without even sitting down. Students bring their computers to surf together over
a pitcher of beer in the pub. Professors' offices now feature extra ports next to their desks, so that students can
set up their laptops during a visit.
Dr. Tugwell regards himself as typical of Acadia instructors who have tried to strike a balance between taking
advantage of computers in some teaching situations and ignoring them in others. For instance, he finds it helpful
to have the students use their laptops to work out complex exercises or case studies during a statistics course
that he teaches. In other cases, he finds it more useful to resort to "chalk talk", the time-tested approach of
lecturing and writing on a blackboard. He finds it revealing that chalk talk dominates an executive MBA course he
teaches, though his students there are among the most ardent laptop users to be found anywhere.
"Many of them are much more technologically precocious than I am, but interestingly enough we don't use the
laptops, because we have so much material to cover in such a short period time," he says. "I find it's more
effective to give them reading assignments in advance and then hit the high spots."
In 30 years of teaching, Dr. Tugwell has witnessed the ebb and flow of various teaching technologies. The most
recent innovations associated with the computer have presented him with many new opportunities as well as
some new problems. On the one hand, he is not above treating students to a little Dire Straits or Pink Floyd
before class starts, played through his laptop over the high-quality speakers that have been installed in many
Acadia lecture halls. By the same token, he now has to cope with inadvertent disruptions such as the one
caused by a student's Pamela Anderson screen saver.
Technical staff at Acadia bristle at the idea that such problems might inspire an instructor to ask for Internet
access to be temporarily denied to a particular classroom. While not impossible, the procedure is complicated,
and staff members have better things to do with their time. For professors who find themselves having difficulties
coping with the Web in their classes, the recommended course is to deal with the classes first and Web
afterward.
Moreover, Jacques Nantel a marketing professor at Montreal's École des Hautes Études Commerciales, adds
that even the supposedly definitive solution of an "off" switch could prove futile. HEC introduced a program that
made laptops universally required by students in many programs, and many of the models used by students can
establish a wireless link with the Internet. Regardless of whether the data ports in the classroom are available,
this hardware makes it possible to dial up the network in much the same way as using a cellular phone.
From Screen to Screen
In fact, the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business installed wireless Internet links in its
classrooms. The move eliminated the expense of running wiring through the floors and walls of the school's older
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buildings. It also showed many instructors what could lie ahead: classrooms occupied by students using
laptops—or even more discreet hand-held computers—linked to the Internet regardless of whether the
classroom itself had any visible telecommunications nodes.
That prospect doesn't bother Acadia's Dr. Tugwell, whose students continue to find it productive and more
rewarding to interact with him in much the same way as he has done for decades. In his specialty course on
environmental economics, he sticks to the tried and true.
"I only use a laptop there for a special presentation, or to take students to Web sites that might be interesting,"
he says. "I use it much more out of class as a communications device or discussion device. There are only 30
[students] in the class, and if they're really interested in the class, then we should be talking to each other. I don't
like the notion of talking to them from my screen to their screen."
He also resents the popularity of software such as PowerPoint, which presents too much information in too stilted
a fashion. Professor Tugwell urges instructors to avoid bombarding their students in this way, just for the sake of
using new technology. At the same time, he reminds them that resources like the Web always deserve a fair trial,
since they can bring exciting features to teaching and learning.
"I really embraced it in the sense that I have a healthy respect for it, as a substitute and a complement,
depending on the circumstances," he says. "It will never replace the relationship you have with fellow humans in
this journey with your students."
Further Readings
Books
Tara Brabazon Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching. Sydney, AU: University of
New South Wales Press, 2003.
Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. HornDisrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation
Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Williams Clyde and Andrew DeloheryUsing Technology in Education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2005.
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. KatzThe Race Between Education and Technology. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 2008.
James Paul GeeWhat Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2nd edition. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Mary E. HessEngaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can't Leave Behind. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.
David HutchisonPlaying to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom. Westport, CT: Teacher Ideas Press, 2007.
Joe Lockard and Mark Pegrum, eds. Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet. New
York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006.
Marc PrenskyDon't Bother Me Mom—I'm Learning. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House Publishers, 2006.
Olivia N. Saracho and Bernard Spodek, eds. Contemporary Perspectives on Science and Technology in
Early Childhood Education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2007.
19
Harold WenglinksyUsing Technology Wisely: The Keys To Success In Schools. New York: Teachers College
Press, 2005.
Periodicals
Kate Baggott"Literacy and Text Messaging: How Will the Next Generation Read and Write?" Technology
Review, December 21, 2006.
Brenda J. Buote "Home Schooled," Boston Globe, May 15, 2008.
John Cox"Higher Education Struggles to Recast Classrooms with Technology; Online Learning Techniques,
Strategies Change Face of Education," Network World, March 21, 2007.
eSchool News"Blogging Helps Encourage Teen Writing," eSchool News, April 30, 2008.
Ben Feller"Scientists: Video Games Can Reshape Education," USA Today, October 18, 2006.
James Paul Gee"High Score Education," Wired, May 2003.
Patrick Greene"The Potential of Gaming on K-12 Education," Multimedia & InternetSchools, May-June 2006.
Ann McClure"Distant, Not Absent: Keeping Online Learners Engaged Can Help Them Reach the Finish Line,"
University Business, November 2007.
Kirsten Nelson"Hardly a Blank Slate—Electronic Whiteboard Technology Enhances Classroom Learning,"
Government Video, May 1, 2006.
Amit R. Paley"Software's Benefits on Tests in Doubt," Washington Post, April 5, 2007.
Will Richardson"What's a Wiki? A Powerful Collaboration Tool for Learning. That's What!" Multimedia &
InternetSchools, November-December 2005.
Rodney P. Riegle"Viewpoint: Online Courses as Video Games," Campus Technology, June 14, 2005.
Terrie Hale Scheckelhoff"Girls & Technology: How Can We Support Girls in Integrating Technologies More
Fully in Their Learning," Library Media Connection, August-September 2006.
Del Siegle"Podcasts and Blogs: Learning Opportunities on the Information Highway," Gifted Child Today,
Summer 2007.
David Warlick"A Day in the Life of Web 2.0: The Latest Powerful Online Tools Can Be Harnessed to
Transform and Expand the Learning Experience," Technology & Learning, October 2006.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2009 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
"The Internet Can Disrupt Learning." Has Technology Increased Learning? Ed. Roman
Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In
Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=cf7abe65fa99e4ce9567a99b9da99d8e
20
Cyber-Bullying Is Worse than Physical Bullying
Media Violence, 2009
Scott Meech, "Cyber Bullying: Worse Than Traditional Bullying," Educators' eZine, May 1, 2007.
www.techlearning.com. Copyright © 2007 NewBay Media, LLC. Reproduced by permission.
"Although [cyber-bullying] is less physical than traditional forms of bullying, it can have more
devastating and longer-lasting effects."
In the following viewpoint, Scott Meech discusses the rise of cyber-bullying, schoolchildren's use of the
Internet or cell phones to intimidate their peers. Meech claims that cyber-bullying is widespread in
America. He also asserts that this form of harassment is worse than physical bullying because it
subjects the victim to humiliation from a large audience, since embarrassing pictures or taunts are
typically spread throughout a peer group. Furthermore, Meech states that victims have no safe haven
from cyber-bullying because it reaches into homes and invades the technologies most children now
depend upon for communication. Scott Meech is a computer and technology teacher at the Plano Middle
School in Illinois.
1. According to the author, how do Paris and Robert Strom define cyber-bullying? How does Meech wish to
amend their definition?
2. Why is cyber-bullying a difficult problem for authorities to handle, in Meech's view?
3. What two pieces of advice does Meech give to protect oneself from cyber-bullying?
To most teachers, the general stereotype of a bully is an over-sized male student who uses verbal and/or
physical abuse to torment the smaller or weaker child. This stereotype is perpetuated throughout pop culture.
But the Internet has changed that, as it has changed so much else. Now there is "Cyber Bullying," and although
it is less physical than traditional forms of bullying, it can have more devastating and longer-lasting effects. It is
rapidly becoming a major problem. Now, a small physically weak child can be as much of a bully as the big brute
but with more impact. Educators definitely need to understand how powerful and dangerous this new type of
bullying has become as it has greatly impacted the classroom.
[Education professors] Paris and Robert Strom define cyber bullying as harassment using an electronic medium
(e-mail, chat rooms, cell phones, instant messaging, and online voting booths) to threaten or harm others. This
author believes that the definition should also include any form of information posted on the Internet, as in blogs,
forums, etc. This latter form of cyber bullying involves gossip, humiliation, and threats.
Many Children Are Victims
The statistics are shocking. In the year 2000 a University of New Hampshire study found that one out of every
17, or 6 percent of kids in the United States, had been threatened or harassed online. But in March of 2006,
statistics showed that 75 to 80 percent of 12 to 14 year olds had been cyber bullied. Furthermore, 20 percent of
kids under 18 have received a sexual solicitation. So cyber bullying is clearly on the rise, and it affects both
21
genders. An American Educational Research Association study [from 2006] shows that female bullies preferred
the use of text messaging harassment versus face-to-face bullying by 2 to 1.
Cyber bullying is a very difficult form of bullying to prevent and to police. A major difference between cyber
bullying and traditional bullying is the ability to bully without a face-to-face confrontation. Kids become
emboldened by the false feeling of being anonymous and they say things they might not have said in person.
Unfortunately, identifying a cyber bully isn't as easy as identifying the traditional big bad bully.
Authorities have greater difficulty in tracking down the bully because of problems in identification. Students are
too often lax in their security with usernames and passwords so messages can be falsely written by individuals
and misrepresented.
No Refuge from Harassment
The long-term impact of cyber bullying is greater than with traditional bullying. Digital images, cell phones, and
other electronic means can greatly increase the speed in which the bully's messages can spread. Strom and
Strom write, "Harmful messages intended to undermine the reputation of a victim can be far more damaging than
face-to-face altercations. Instead of remaining a private matter or event known by only a small group, text or
photographs can be communicated to a large audience in a short time."
Perhaps the greatest long-term effect is the loss of the home as a safe-zone. Traditional bullying usually ended
when a person was home, safe with his or her family. Cyber bullying enters into the home and is with the
students at all times. As [USA Today reporter] Greg Toppo writes, "Vulnerable children have virtually no refuge
from harassment. It's a non-stop type of harassment and it creates a sense of helplessness." Bullies use this
additional terror to traumatize their victims even more.
Our youth have grown up with technology; to them it is commonplace and part of their everyday life. Taking
technology away from kids to protect them is not the answer, as they have integrated its use to such an extent
that it would now begin to isolate them within their peer circles. Besides, the technology in itself is not bad; it is
the manner in which it is used.
Educating Children About Cyber-Bullying
Students need to be educated on how to deal with cyber bullying as much as learning the traditional issues of
drugs, sex, and nutrition. There are additional strategies that should be employed when dealing with cyber
bullying. Never respond to a cyber bully. This just provides fodder and they now know that have actually made
official contact. Protect your personal information with technology and change your online information including
password and screen names on a regular basis.
Technology is changing the world in many ways. However, new negative uses of it have increased as well.
Cyber bullying is on the rise and it is very serious.
Further Readings
Books
22
Tim Allen and Jean Seaton The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence.
New York: Zed Books, 1999.
Bonnie Anderson News Flash: Journalism, Infotainment and the Bottom-Line Business of Broadcast News.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.
Craig A. Anderson, Douglas A. Gentile, and Katherine E. Buckley Violent Video Game Effects on Children
and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Martin Barker and Julian Petley, eds. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Karen Boyle Media and Violence: Gendering the Debates. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005.
Cynthia Carter Violence and the Media. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2003.
Cynthia A. Cooper Violence in the Media and Its Influence on Criminal Defense. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &
Co., 2007.
Jib Fowles The Case for Television Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999.
Jonathan L. Freedman Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression. Toronto, Ont: University of Toronto
Press, 2002.
Jeffrey Goldstein, ed. Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
Tom Grimes, James A. Anderson Media Violence and Aggression: Science and Ideology. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2008.
Dave Grossman and Gloria Degaetano Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie
and Video Game Violence. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999.
Gerard Jones Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. New
York: Basic Books, 2003.
Douglas Kellner Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the
Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Stephen J. Kirsh Children, Adolescents, and Media Violence: A Critical Look at the Research. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006.
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games
and What Parents Can Do. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Joshua Meyrowitz No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
Hillel Nossek, Annabelle Sreberny, and Prasun Sonwalker, eds. Media and Political Violence. Cresskill, NJ:
Hapton Press, 2007.
Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1994.
W. James Potter The 11 Myths of Media Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.
Thomas Rosenstiel and Amy S. Mitchell Thinking Clearly: Cases in Journalistic Decision-Making. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003.
Harold Schechter Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 2005.
Jean Seaton Carnage and the Media: The Making and Breaking of News About Violence. New York: Penguin
23
Books, 2005.
Roger Simpson Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2006.
Karen Sternheimer It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children. Boulder, CO:
Westview, 2003.
James P. Steyer The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children. New York: Atria,
2002.
David Trend The Myth of Media Violence: A Critical Introduction. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007.
Periodicals
Atlantic Monthly "Waving the Bloody JPEG," October 2004.
Christopher Dickey "Inside the Cyber-Jihad," Newsweek, July 30, 2007.
Thomas L. Friedman "Barney and Baghdad," New York Times, October 18, 2006.
Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin "Offline Consequences of Online Victimization: School Violence and
Delinquency," Journal of School Violence, 6.3, 2007.
Phil McKenna "The Rise of Cyberbullying," New Scientist, July 21, 2007.
Jonathan Milne "What Have We Got To Be Scared Of?" Times Educational Supplement, January 25, 2008.
New York Times "Teenagers Misbehaving, for All Online to Watch," February 13, 2007.
Jamie Reno "Over the (Border) Line," Newsweek, May 8, 2006.
Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter "Cyber-Bullies R 4 Real," Woman's Day, February 1, 2007.
Sue Tait "Pornographies of Violence? Internet Spectatorship on Body Horror," Critical Studies in Media
Communication, March 2008.
Henry Walpole "Video Bullies Can Do Your Head In," Times Educational Supplement, August 17, 2007.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 Greenhaven Press, COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale.
Source Citation:
Meech, Scott. "Cyber-Bullying Is Worse than Physical Bullying." Educators' eZine (1 May
2007). Rpt. in Media Violence. Ed. Louise I. Gerdes. San Diego: Greenhaven Press,
2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=07d1777bb2b0221c82ea4aaa4e920d6b
24
MySpace and Other Social Networking Web Sites
Should Be Banned
Should Social Networking Websites Be Banned?, 2008
Michael G. Fitzpatrick, "Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Internet: How the State of New Jersey Is
Combating Child Predators on the Internet," Before the Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, United States House of Representatives, June 10, 2006.
Michael G. Fitzpatrick is a politician and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing
Pennsylvania's Eighth Congressional District from 2005 to 2007. In May 2006, he introduced the Deleting Online
Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA).
The massive popularity of social networking Web sites like MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook, as well
as chat rooms, undoubtedly brings people together. They come, however, with numerous risks,
increasing minors' exposure to child predators, sexual solicitation, pornography, and bullying. Without
parental supervision, children and teenagers are vulnerable to these dangers. Therefore, they should not
be allowed to access these Web sites at schools or libraries. If enacted, the Deleting Online Predators
Act would prohibit schools, libraries, and other institutions receiving federal funding from allowing minors
to access social networking and similar Web sites. Though there is no single solution to ending the
sexual exploitation of children, the enactment of this bill would further the protection and well-being of
minors on the Internet.
Using the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center, research online social networks. Imagine that you are
creating a new network application for school computers. Write a business proposal for your new application,
outlining the role it would play compared to other online social networks. Outline what steps you have taken, if
any, to keep students safe when using the application.
Mr. Chairman,
Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and for allowing me to give testimony on what I feel is
a new and emerging problem confronting our nation's children and their safety while using the Internet. I am
speaking of the rapid increase in popularity of Internet social networking sites and their use by child predators to
hunt and harass our children at home, in schools and in our libraries.
As the father of six children, I know very well the challenges technology poses to our families. In a world that
moves at a dizzying pace, being a father gets harder all the time. Monitoring our children's use of emerging
technologies is a huge task and the Internet remains the focus of many parents' concerns.
A Worrying Development
The technological breakthrough of the World Wide Web has been enormously beneficial to society. The Internet
has brought communities across the globe closer together through instant communication. It has enabled an
unfiltered free-flow of thought, ideas and opinion. The Internet has opened a window to the world right at our
fingertips. However, this window opens both ways. The freedom to connect to the world anywhere at anytime
25
brings with it the threat of unscrupulous predators and criminals who mask their activities with the anonymity the
Internet provides to its users. And among its many applications, one of the most worrying developments of late
has been the growth in what are known as "social networking sites."
Social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook have literally exploded in popularity in just a few
short years. MySpace alone has almost 90 million users and ranks as the sixth most popular English language
website and the eighth most popular site in the world.
Anyone can use these sites—companies and colleges, teachers and students, young and old all make use of
networking sites to connect with people electronically to share pictures, information, course work, and common
interests. These sites have torn down the geographical divide that once prevented long distance social
relationships from forming, allowing instant communication and connections to take place and a virtual second
life to take hold for its users.
For adults, these sites are fairly benign. For children, they open the door to many dangers including online
bullying and exposure to child predators that have turned the Internet into their own virtual hunting ground. I
became personally aware of the danger the Internet can pose after my 16-year-old daughter began using the
social networking site MySpace.com. I quickly realized that while my daughter thought she was only chatting with
her friends, other people, some with criminal intent, could be looking in.
No Enforcement
Although age limits exist on many of these sites, there is almost no enforcement of these rules. Frequently,
children under the age of 16—the cut off age for a profile on MySpace [fourteen as of April 2007]—simply lie
about their age and fake being 16, 18 or even older. Predators also use this anonymity to their advantage by
profiling themselves as teenagers to more easily identify and navigate the profiles of their prey.
The dangers our children are exposed to by these sites is clear and compelling. According to a study conducted
by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in 1998 there were 3,267 tips reporting
child pornography. Since then, the number has risen by over 3,000 percent to an astounding 106,119 tips in
2004. The Department of Justice recognizes child pornography as a precursor for pedophiles and is often linked
to online predators. According to Attorney General [Alberto] Gonzales, one in five children has been approached
sexually on the Internet. One in five. Worse still, a survey conducted by the Crimes Against Children Research
Center found that less than one in four children told their parents about the sexual solicitation they received.
MySpace, which is self regulated, has removed an estimated 200,000 objectionable profiles since it began
operating in 2003. And while it is difficult to predict the exact number of total predators on the Internet at any one
time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that there are more than 2,400 active child sexual
exploitation investigations under way at any given time.
This problem is finally gaining the public's attention. Look closely at local and national news stories and you will
undoubtedly see a story of a crime linked to social networking sites. Recently, national news reports have
focused on the case of Katherine R. Lester, a 16-year-old Michigan honors student who fled to Israel with hopes
of meeting a 25-year-old man she met on MySpace. Two months ago, in my own congressional district, a
25-year-old man, Shawn Little, was arrested for posing as a teenager online to solicit a 14-year-old boy. Little's
communications with the child resulted in a sexual encounter. And NBC's Dateline program has brought the
26
threat of online predators to the televisions of millions of Americans through their acclaimed, but disturbing, "To
Catch a Predator" series. While these high-profile cases make a splash on the headlines, how many other, less
publicized cases of child exploitation go unnoticed?
While these [child predator] stories have pressured many social networking sites to take action to
improve their safety , like MySpace has recently done, these changes fall short of real reform.
The Deleting Online Predators Act
While these stories have pressured many social networking sites to take action to improve their safety protocols,
like MySpace has recently done, these changes fall short of real reform. That is why I introduced the Deleting
Online Predators Act.
Parents have the ability to screen their children's Internet access at home. But this protection ends when their
child leaves for school or the library. My legislation would require schools and libraries to monitor the internet
activities of minors and implement technology to protect children from accessing:
1. Commercial networking sites like MySpace.com and chat rooms which allow children to be preyed upon by
individuals seeking to do harm to our children; and
2. Visual depictions that are obscene or child pornography.
Preventing access to social networking sites in these situations is not designed to underestimate the importance
of parental supervision. Internet safety begins at home and that is why my legislation would require the Federal
Trade Commission [FTC] to design and publish a unique website to serve as a clearinghouse and resource for
parents, teachers and children for information on the dangers of surfing the Internet. The website would include
detailed information about commercial networking sites. The FTC would also be responsible for issuing
consumer alerts to parents, teachers, school officials and others regarding the potential dangers of internet child
predators and their ability to contact children through MySpace.com and other social networking sites.
In addition, my Bill would require the Federal Communications Commission to establish an advisory board to
review and report commercial social networking sites like MySpace.com and chat rooms that have been shown
to allow sexual predators easy access to personal information of, and contact with, children.
Predators will look for any way to talk to children online whether through sites like MySpace, instant
messaging, or even online games.
Make no mistake; child predation on the Internet is a growing problem. Predators will look for any way to talk to
children online whether through sites like MySpace, instant messaging, or even online games. The best defense
against these people is to educate parents and children of the dangers that come along with the Internet and by
limiting access to certain sites during the school day.
No "Silver Bullet" Solution
This is not all. Congress and state legislatures must also act to dedicate funds to law enforcement programs
designed to combat child predators. Last month, I actively fought for and Congress passed legislation to increase
funding to the FBI's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces and the Innocent Images National Initiative,
27
which serves as the hub for all of the FBI's child predator initiatives. Supporting these programs will send a clear
signal to child predators and pedophiles that the hunters have become the hunted and law enforcement will not
relent until these criminals are apprehended.
There is no "silver bullet" solution to the problem of online predators. It will take the combined effort of parents,
children, law enforcement and the legislature to take action against these crimes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
inviting me to address this committee and remark on my efforts to address this important issue.
Further Readings
Books
W.D. Edmiston Why Parents Should Fear MySpace. Longwood, FL: Xulon, 2007.
Allison Fine Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Gerard Goggin Cell Phone Culture: Mobile Technology in Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Jay Liebowitz Social Networking: The Essence of Innovation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Sydney Eve Matrix Cyberpop: Digital lifestyles and Commodity Culture. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Mark Nunes Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Christian and Amy Piatt MySpace to Sacred Space: God for a New Generation. Duluth, GA: Chalice, 2007.
Howard Rheingold Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
Max Taylor and Ethel Quayle Child Pornography: An Internet Crime. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.
Periodicals
Megan Bakker "The Dangerous Trend of Posting Personal Information on MySpace," Collegian, April 19,
2006.
Mark Boslet "Two Different Neighborhoods in Cyberspace," San Jose Mercury News, August 5, 2007.
Thomas Claburn "Second Life Loses Gamblers but Finds God," InformationWeek, July 30, 2007.
Laura Deeley "I'm Single, I'm Sexy, and I'm Only 13," Times (London), July 28, 2007.
Chris DeWolf "The MySpace Generation," Forbes, May 7, 2007.
Odvard Egil Dyrli "Online Social Networking: Sites Such as MySpace, Facebook and Xanga are Transforming
Teen Cultures," District Administration, March 1, 2006.
Geoffrey H. Fletcher "Power Up, Don't Power Down: Barring Students from Using Cell Phones, MySpace,
and Other Communication Technologies Once They Enter the Classroom Is the Wrong Approach," Technical
Horizons in Education, September 1, 2006.
Maryann James "Jane Is Listed as Single; All of Facebook Knows It," Baltimore Sun, August 4, 2007.
Janet Kornblum "Rudeness, Threats Make the Web a Cruel World," USA Today, July 30, 2007.
Steven Levy "Social Networking and Class Warfare," Newsweek International, August 13, 2007.
Nikki Schwab and Sean Dustman "The World of Military Blogging," Washington Post, May 3, 2007.
Alan Sipress and Sam Diaz "A Casualty of War: MySpace," Washington Post, May 15, 2007.
28
Michelle Slatalla "Online Worlds Give Kids a Chance to Run Their Own Show," New York Times, May 6,
2007.
Brad Stone "On Facebook, a Rising Concern Over Predators," Boston Globe, July 30, 2007.
Mark Sullivan "A MySpace Law? Let's Get Real About Online Communities," PC World, July 25, 2007.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
"MySpace and Other Social Networking Web Sites Should Be Banned." Should Social
Networking Websites Be Banned? Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press,
2008. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=b60f3601be8cd040698b1a46e74f6277
29
Schoolchildren Are Not Ready for Social Networking
Are Social Networking Sites Harmful?, 2011
Kari Henley, "Facebook and Kids: Are Their Brains Ready for Social Networking?" Huffington Post, March 22,
2009. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Kari Henley is the president of the board of directors at the Women & Family Life Center in Guilford, Connecticut.
She also organizes and facilitates the Association of Women Business Leaders and runs her own training and
consulting practice.
While new Internet-based networking sites can be challenging for all users, children and teenagers
might not yet have the maturity to use them properly, hurting friends and fellow students unintentionally.
A child's brain does not have the capabilities to properly navigate the dangers of Facebook and
MySpace, and parents need to be involved in their teenagers' social networking activities to ensure
everyone's safety.
As a mother, I have recently discovered Facebook. My kids knew about it long ago and I poo pooed it as another
mindless waste of time. Finally, I joined so I could track my kid's antics like a sneaky James Bond spy. Trouble
is—I somehow got hooked myself. Suddenly, friends from far and wide started popping up. People from the dim
recesses of my childhood resurfaced. Facebook is like a really good piece of chocolate or a bag of those great
salt and vinegar potato chips.
However, the way I use Facebook is a bit different than the way my kids do, and plenty of kids are getting
addicted beyond reason, using it for brutal cyber bullying or daring to say the types of things they would never
dream of in person. Kids' depression rates are sky high, average onset at age 14, and there have been many
reports of teen suicide from internet related bullying.
For over 25 million youth, Facebook is replacing email as "the" way to communicate, and parents are often left in
the dust and wondering is it safe? What age can kids safely have a Facebook page? Should they [the parents]
insist to be their "Friend" and monitor their endless chatter?
Jill is a mother of three children ages 10-14, who are fully into the digital generation. All have iPods, computers,
Wii games, cell phones, and are addicted to Facebook. They are like most middle school aged kids in America
today who have their hands on toys most adults only recently acquired themselves.
The Problem of Cyber Bullying
One day, a call came from the principal informing Jill and her husband, their middle daughter was being given
in-school suspension for creating a Facebook group used to make fun of another student. Called something like,
"Eric is a Hairy Beast," the group quickly filled with loads of kids making fun of a quiet Armenian boy, uploading
cell phone pictures of him and becoming more brazen by the day.
For over 25 million youth, Facebook is replacing email as "the" way to communicate, and parents are
often left in the dust and wondering is it safe?
30
These kids are "A" students, and far from brats; but most are not cognitively developed enough to recognize their
behavior is hurtful to others. According to Lisa Ott, the Youth Empowerment Coordinator at the Women and
Family Life Center, this is on target with research in adolescent brain development.
Kids get into trouble with sites like Facebook and MySpace because they are too self-centered in their
overall development to understand the impact of what they are doing, she said. Middle school age
children are the most susceptible to cyber bullying, and high school students most likely to use poor
judgment in giving out information.
Dr. Jay Giedd is the chief of brain imaging in the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental
Health, and an expert in adolescent brain development. His research shows the brain is not fully developed at
age 12 as was believed, but reaches full maturity in our mid-twenties. Adolescence is a time of profound brain
development, surpassing that of toddlers. The area of the pre-frontal cortex develops last, which is in charge of
higher reasoning and understanding consequences. The emotional centers of the brain that control happiness,
fear, anger and sadness often over-compensate, and can be 50% stronger during adolescence.
I set about interviewing scores of parents with children from elementary to high school, asking their opinions
about Facebook and kids. While most felt it was a relatively safe place for kids to connect to each other, many
expressed concern over the obsessive nature of these sites. Designed to be "sticky;" a site is deemed successful
the longer it entices you to stay on, yet these hours are replacing other activities critical for healthy development.
Most kids today don't have a local bowling alley or soda shop to hang out, like the baby boomer
generations had.
A Critical Stage
A child's brain reaches its full size at age six and the gray matter is actually the thickest around age 12.
Remember how the world was full of possibilities at that age? Because it truly is. After this stage, the brain
begins to prune back gray matter and the phrase "use it or lose it" becomes key as certain brain cells die forever.
The skills your child learns during adolescence; like sports, dancing, music or academics become hard wired.
Other skills that are not being used will fall away....
Most kids today don't have a local bowling alley or soda shop to hang out, like the baby boomer generations had.
They also aren't allowed to play outside until the street lights come on as recent generations enjoyed. Hours of
skipping rope, climbing trees and building forts is replaced with the tap tapping of tiny keyboards. The cyber
playground has replaced the physical one, for better or worse....
Peggy Orenstein, author of Growing Up Daisy recently wrote about "Growing Up on Facebook" in the New York
Times. She notes most kids now going to college have been 'facebooking' since middle school, and wonders
how our youth will be able to take the important steps of "reinventing themselves" with "450 friends watching, all
tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?"
Time will tell.
Further Readings
Books
31
Jason Alba I'm on LinkedIn—Now What???: A Guide to Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn. 2nd ed. Cupertino,
CA: Happy About, 2009.
Julia Angwin Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. New York:
Random House, 2009.
Patti Anklam Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World .
Boston: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007.
Dave Awl Facebook Me! A Guide to Having Fun with Your Friends and Promoting Your Projects on Facebook
. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2009.
Jack Balkin et al, eds. Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment. New York: New York University
Press, 2007.
John Bush, ed. Child Safety: From Sexual Predators. CreateSpace, 2008.
Christina Garsten and Helena Wulff New Technologies at Work: People, Screens, and Social Virtuality.
Oxford, UK: Berg, 2003.
Jay Goldman Facebook Cookbook: Building Applications to Grow Your Facebook Empire. Sebastopol, CA:
O'Reilly Media, 2009.
Steve Holzner Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business. Indianapolis, IN: Que
Publishing, 2009.
Dennis Howitt and Kerry Sheldon Sex Offenders and the Internet. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
John Maver and Cappy Popp Essential Facebook Development: Build Successful Applications for the
Facebook Platform. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010.
Samuel McQuade III, James Colt, and Nancy Meyer Cyber Bullying: Protecting Kids and Adults from Online
Bullies. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.
Ben Mezrich The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and
Betrayal. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Mike O'Neil and Lori Ruff Rock the World with Your Online Presence: Your Ticket to a Multi-Platinum
LinkedIn Profile. Chicago: Networlding, 2010.
John Pospisil Hacking MySpace: Customizations and Mods to Make MySpace Your Space. Indianapolis, IN:
Wiley, 2006.
Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey Digital Citizenship in Schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for
Technology in Education, 2007.
Jean Marie Rusin Poison Pen Pal: Secrets, Lies, and Online Predators. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.
Diana Saco Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2002.
Neal Schaffer Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn; An Unofficial,
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating & Implementing Your LinkedIn Brand. Charleston, SC: BookSurge
Publishing, 2009.
Clara Chung-wai Shih The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach
New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2009.
Mike Sullivan Online Predators: A Parent's Guide for the Virtual Playground. Longwood, FL: Xulon Books,
2008.
32
Emily Vander Veer Facebook: The Missing Manual. 2nd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2010.
Periodicals
Bruce Bower "Growing Up Online: Young People Jump Headfirst into the Internet's World," Science News,
June 17, 2006.
Bruce Bower "Internet Seduction: Online Sex Offenders Prey on At-Risk Teens," Science News, February 23,
2008.
Curriculum Review "Teens Share Sexually Explicit Messages: Simple Rebellion or Dangerous Behavior?"
May 2009.
Economist "Primates on Facebook: Even Online, the Neocortex Is the Limit," February 26, 2009.
Martin Fackler "In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession," New York Times, November 18, 2007.
Florida Parishes Bureau "Loranger Teen Booked in Threats to Harm Other Teen, Cyberstalking," The
Advocate, July 12, 2007.
Adam Geller "VA Gunman Had 2 Past Stalking Cases," Associated Press, April 18, 2007.
Lev Grossman "The Hyperconnected," Time, April 5, 2007.
Ann Doss Helms "5 Teachers Disciplined for Facebook Postings," Charlotte Observer, November 12, 2008.
Arik Hesseldahl "Social Networking Sites a 'Hotbed' for Spyware," BusinessWeek, August 18, 2006.
Yvonne Jewkes and Carol Andrews "Policing the Filth: The Problems of Investigating Online Child
Pornography in England and Wales," Policing and Society, March 2005.
Monica Jones "Your Child and the Internet: Tips to Keep Them Safe on the Information Superhighway,"
Ebony, March 2006.
Rick Kirschner "Why the Need for Human Connection?" Persuasive Communication and Life Skills, July 29,
2008.
Karen Klein "How to Start a Social Networking Site," Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2009.
Maureen Macfarlane "Misbehavior in Cyberspace: The Rise in Social Networking Sites and Chat Rooms
Intermingles Free Expression and Student Safety in Cyberspace," School Administrator, October 2007.
Claire Cain Miller "Venture Capitalists Look for a Return to the A B C's," New York Times, July 6, 2009.
Justin Pope "Colleges Warn About Networking Sites," Associated Press, August 2, 2006.
Benjamin Radford "Predator Panic: A Closer Look," Skeptical Inquirer, September 2006.
James Randerson "Social Networking Sites Don't Deepen Friendships," Guardian, September 10, 2007.
Paul M. Rodriguez "Virtual Child Porn's Very Real Consequences," Insight on the News, May 27, 2002.
Christine Rosen "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism," New Atlantis, Summer 2007.
Brad Stone "Social Networking's Next Phase," New York Times, March 3, 2007.
Jon Swarz "Social Networking Sites Boost Productivity," USA Today, October 8, 2008.
Clive Thompson "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy," New York Times, September 7, 2008.
James Tozer "Husband Dumps His Wife with Online Message in 'World's First Divorce by Facebook.'" Daily
Mail (UK), February 9, 2009.
33
Sarah Jane Tribble "The Social Network as a Career Safety Net," New York Times, August 13, 2008.
Internet Sources
Denise Caruso "Why Is Facebook So Addictive?" Salon, August 7, 2008. www.salon.com.
Center for the Digital Future "Annual Internet Survey by the Center for the Digital Future Finds Shifting Trends
Among Adults About the Benefits and Consequences of Children Going Online," Center for the Digital Future
at USC Annenberg School for Communication, 2008. www.digitalcenter.org.
Paul Glazowski "Bebo Founders Talk History of Network and Past Web Efforts," Mashable, March 16, 2008.
http://mashable.com.
Source Citation:
"Schoolchildren Are Not Ready for Social Networking." Are Social Networking Sites
Harmful? Ed. Stefan Kiesbye. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2011. At Issue. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=cfe2be7ab298f0cdb77ad50bf9b8e1e3
34
Social Networking Sites Harm Children's Brains
Are Social Networking Sites Harmful?, 2011
David Derbyshire, "Social Websites Harm Children's Brains: Chilling Warning to Parents from Top
Neuroscientist," Daily Mail, February 24, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Solo Syndication Limited. Reproduced by
permission.
David Derbyshire is the Daily Mail's environment editor. He has worked as a journalist for various British
newspapers since 1996.
Social networking sites shorten teenagers' attention span, and lead to egotistical and antisocial
behaviors. The more time children spend in front of the computer, the more their natural brain
development is damaged. Their brains are rewired, causing them to look for instant gratification and
leading them away from healthy real-life social interactions.
Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has
warned.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification
and make young people more self-centered.
The claims from neuroscientist Susan Greenfield will make disturbing reading for the millions whose social lives
depend on logging on to their favourite websites each day.
But they will strike a chord with parents and teachers who complain that many youngsters lack the ability to
communicate or concentrate away from their screens.
More than 150 million use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, share photographs and videos and post
regular updates of their movements and thoughts.
A further six million have signed up to Twitter, the 'micro-blogging' service that lets users circulate text messages
about themselves.
Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant
gratification and make young people more self-centred.
But while the sites are popular—and extremely profitable—a growing number of psychologists and
neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.
Rewiring the Brain
Baroness Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated
exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain.
35
Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said.
'We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,' she told the Mail yesterday.
'My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by
buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'
Her comments echoed those she made during a House of Lords debate earlier this month [February 2009]. Then
she argued that exposure to computer games, instant messaging, chat rooms and social networking sites could
leave a generation with poor attention spans.
'I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier
screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced
by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,' she said.
Lady Greenfield told the Lords a teacher of 30 years had told her she had noticed a sharp decline in the ability of
her pupils to understand others.
'It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those
of previous generations,' she said.
She pointed out that autistic people, who usually find it hard to communicate, were particularly comfortable using
computers.
'Of course, we do not know whether the current increase in autism is due more to increased awareness and
diagnosis of autism or whether it can—if there is a true increase—be in any way linked to an increased
prevalence among people of spending time in screen relationships. Surely it is a point worth considering,' she
added.
Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for
reasoning.
Changing the Mind
Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students
no longer need to plan essays before starting to write—thanks to word processors they can edit as they go
along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.
A study by the Broadcaster Audience Research Board found teenagers now spend seven-and-a-half hours a day
in front of a screen.
Educational psychologist Jane Healy believes children should be kept away from computer games until they are
seven.
Most games only trigger the 'flight or fight' region of the brain, rather than the vital areas responsible for
36
reasoning.
Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: 'We are seeing children's brain development damaged because
they don't engage in the activity they have engaged in for millennia.
'I'm not against technology and computers. But before they start social networking, they need to learn to make
real relationships with people.'
Further Readings
Books
Jason Alba I'm on LinkedIn—Now What???: A Guide to Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn. 2nd ed. Cupertino,
CA: Happy About, 2009.
Julia Angwin Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. New York:
Random House, 2009.
Patti Anklam Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World .
Boston: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007.
Dave Awl Facebook Me! A Guide to Having Fun with Your Friends and Promoting Your Projects on Facebook
. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2009.
Jack Balkin et al, eds. Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment. New York: New York University
Press, 2007.
John Bush, ed. Child Safety: From Sexual Predators. CreateSpace, 2008.
Christina Garsten and Helena Wulff New Technologies at Work: People, Screens, and Social Virtuality.
Oxford, UK: Berg, 2003.
Jay Goldman Facebook Cookbook: Building Applications to Grow Your Facebook Empire. Sebastopol, CA:
O'Reilly Media, 2009.
Steve Holzner Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business. Indianapolis, IN: Que
Publishing, 2009.
Dennis Howitt and Kerry Sheldon Sex Offenders and the Internet. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
John Maver and Cappy Popp Essential Facebook Development: Build Successful Applications for the
Facebook Platform. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2010.
Samuel McQuade III, James Colt, and Nancy Meyer Cyber Bullying: Protecting Kids and Adults from Online
Bullies. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.
Ben Mezrich The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and
Betrayal. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Mike O'Neil and Lori Ruff Rock the World with Your Online Presence: Your Ticket to a Multi-Platinum
LinkedIn Profile. Chicago: Networlding, 2010.
John Pospisil Hacking MySpace: Customizations and Mods to Make MySpace Your Space. Indianapolis, IN:
Wiley, 2006.
Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey Digital Citizenship in Schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for
Technology in Education, 2007.
37
Jean Marie Rusin Poison Pen Pal: Secrets, Lies, and Online Predators. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.
Diana Saco Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2002.
Neal Schaffer Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn; An Unofficial,
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating & Implementing Your LinkedIn Brand. Charleston, SC: BookSurge
Publishing, 2009.
Clara Chung-wai Shih The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach
New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2009.
Mike Sullivan Online Predators: A Parent's Guide for the Virtual Playground. Longwood, FL: Xulon Books,
2008.
Emily Vander Veer Facebook: The Missing Manual. 2nd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2010.
Periodicals
Bruce Bower "Growing Up Online: Young People Jump Headfirst into the Internet's World," Science News,
June 17, 2006.
Bruce Bower "Internet Seduction: Online Sex Offenders Prey on At-Risk Teens," Science News, February 23,
2008.
Curriculum Review "Teens Share Sexually Explicit Messages: Simple Rebellion or Dangerous Behavior?"
May 2009.
Economist "Primates on Facebook: Even Online, the Neocortex Is the Limit," February 26, 2009.
Martin Fackler "In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession," New York Times, November 18, 2007.
Florida Parishes Bureau "Loranger Teen Booked in Threats to Harm Other Teen, Cyberstalking," The
Advocate, July 12, 2007.
Adam Geller "VA Gunman Had 2 Past Stalking Cases," Associated Press, April 18, 2007.
Lev Grossman "The Hyperconnected," Time, April 5, 2007.
Ann Doss Helms "5 Teachers Disciplined for Facebook Postings," Charlotte Observer, November 12, 2008.
Arik Hesseldahl "Social Networking Sites a 'Hotbed' for Spyware," BusinessWeek, August 18, 2006.
Yvonne Jewkes and Carol Andrews "Policing the Filth: The Problems of Investigating Online Child
Pornography in England and Wales," Policing and Society, March 2005.
Monica Jones "Your Child and the Internet: Tips to Keep Them Safe on the Information Superhighway,"
Ebony, March 2006.
Rick Kirschner "Why the Need for Human Connection?" Persuasive Communication and Life Skills, July 29,
2008.
Karen Klein "How to Start a Social Networking Site," Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2009.
Maureen Macfarlane "Misbehavior in Cyberspace: The Rise in Social Networking Sites and Chat Rooms
Intermingles Free Expression and Student Safety in Cyberspace," School Administrator, October 2007.
Claire Cain Miller "Venture Capitalists Look for a Return to the A B C's," New York Times, July 6, 2009.
Justin Pope "Colleges Warn About Networking Sites," Associated Press, August 2, 2006.
Benjamin Radford "Predator Panic: A Closer Look," Skeptical Inquirer, September 2006.
38
James Randerson "Social Networking Sites Don't Deepen Friendships," Guardian, September 10, 2007.
Paul M. Rodriguez "Virtual Child Porn's Very Real Consequences," Insight on the News, May 27, 2002.
Christine Rosen "Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism," New Atlantis, Summer 2007.
Brad Stone "Social Networking's Next Phase," New York Times, March 3, 2007.
Jon Swarz "Social Networking Sites Boost Productivity," USA Today, October 8, 2008.
Clive Thompson "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy," New York Times, September 7, 2008.
James Tozer "Husband Dumps His Wife with Online Message in 'World's First Divorce by Facebook.'" Daily
Mail (UK), February 9, 2009.
Sarah Jane Tribble "The Social Network as a Career Safety Net," New York Times, August 13, 2008.
Internet Sources
Denise Caruso "Why Is Facebook So Addictive?" Salon, August 7, 2008. www.salon.com.
Center for the Digital Future "Annual Internet Survey by the Center for the Digital Future Finds Shifting Trends
Among Adults About the Benefits and Consequences of Children Going Online," Center for the Digital Future
at USC Annenberg School for Communication, 2008. www.digitalcenter.org.
Paul Glazowski "Bebo Founders Talk History of Network and Past Web Efforts," Mashable, March 16, 2008.
http://mashable.com.
Source Citation:
"Social Networking Sites Harm Children's Brains." Are Social Networking Sites Harmful?
Ed. Stefan Kiesbye. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2011. At Issue. Gale Opposing
Viewpoints In Context. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.
Document URL
_075_0870&jsid=613edd5542cdf625be8ceee87234b0d0
39
Page 1 of 2
Buffalo News
(Buffalo, NY)
Mar 12, 2011, p. D.10
Copyright © Mar 12, 2011 Buffalo News. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Amherst Student Pushes for Rules on Facebook Among Teachers, Staff
By Paul Lane
An Amherst High School senior wants his school district to catch up to his generation's embrace and understanding of
social media.
Nathan Danziger raised the issue with the School Board last month when there were concerns about an administrator
possibly setting up a fake Facebook account to spy on students. Although that allegation turned out to be wrong, he
nonetheless is using the opportunity to push for regulation of Facebook among Amherst teachers and administrators.
He wants the high school and possibly the district to establish a formal policy banning employees from setting up fake
Facebook accounts, which he called dangerous for students and personnel alike.
"It's something that, historically, at our school and at other schools has happened," said Danziger, who wrote a letter to
district leaders in the days following his board address. "Internet vigilantes exist, and they love victimizing perceived
'big brother' figures. This could compromise the safety of a teacher or administrator who creates a fake account, and
could even compromise the safety of the school's computer network, if the account was accessed from there."
Leaders at the school and district level agreed that the time has come to look at regulating social networking sites.
"We're aware that the social networking technology has evolved very rapidly," said Mark Whyle, the district's assistant
superintendent for administrative services. "We have to be aware not only of activity in general but that it has a great
influence on the following day."
High School Principal Gregory Pigeon cited bullying as one area of primary concern among administrators when it
comes to social networkers.
"We technically have no jurisdiction unless behavior on social networking sites disrupts the educational environment,"
he said. "When kids come to school scared, that disrupts the educational environment."
Nearly every action the school has taken to date following comments made on social networking sites has been the
result of a student or parent bringing a comment to his attention, Pigeon said. School administrators lack the right,
desire or spare time to set up fake accounts, he said, and administrators using their personal accounts for student
interaction would be acting unethically.
Still, despite these concerns as well as privacy rights of students, Pigeon said the time has come for leaders to ask
questions on how to step up safety in the social networking realm. Whyle likened the situation to about a decade ago,
when e-mail use began to surge and the district had to establish e-mail etiquette policies.
40
http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-clean-copy?id=SVA36225-0-4519&type=ART&artno=00003... 4/5/2011
Page 2 of 2
District leaders pledged to work to establish policies to ensure the safety of all students, including making Danziger's
proposal a reality. Although he probably won't be in the district to see the results, Danziger said such moves are
welcome.
"As a community, we are, consciously or not, setting precedent for a forthcoming Internet age," he said. "I'm feeling
pretty confident that we're going to make rules banning this sort of behavior."
Credit: NORTHTOWNS CORRESPONDENT
Citation:
You can copy and paste this information into your own documents.
Lane, Paul. "Amherst Student Pushes for Rules on Facebook Among Teachers, Staff." Buffalo
News. 12 Mar 2011: D.10. SIRS Researcher. Web. 05 Apr 2011.
Accessed on 04/05/2011 from SIRS Researcher via SIRS Knowledge Source <http://www.sirs.com>
Educators' Resources | RSS Feeds | Privacy | Accessibility | License | Contact
Copyright © 2011 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.
41
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42
43
44
45
The Record
(Hackensack, NJ)
Jan 2, 2012, p. A.1
Copyright © 2012 North Jersey Media Group Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Cellphone Spying Getting Easier for Abusers, Stalkers
By Hannan Adely
"You could now listen in 100% completely undetected"--that's the promise one company
makes on its website to anyone who wants to eavesdrop on someone else's cellphone.
Spy technology is now available to the average person who wants to glean cellphone
information, read private emails, and track someone's location using global positioning
systems. And increasingly, experts say, the technologies are being used by spouses
and partners to track, harass and stalk.
"Technology has just exploded. It's so sophisticated now and it's very easy to utilize
these different technologies to keep tabs on a person and find out where they're going,"
said Gina Pfund, chief assistant prosecutor of the Domestic Violence Unit in Passaic
County.
The person watching or listening is often a family member and frequently a suspicious
or controlling partner. They have scanned Facebook pages, viewed online webbrowsing histories, and examined cellphone records for proof. But some take it a step
further, planting spyware on smart phones and computers.
Easy-to-use spyware is heavily marketed online to find out if a spouse is cheating. It can
be installed on computers to monitor keystrokes, emails and passwords and to take
screen snapshots.
And within minutes, software can be loaded on a smart phone to allow a third party to
monitor calls, view text messages and photos, and track a person's location and
movement via GPS. The built-in microphone can also be activated remotely to use as a
listening device, even when a phone is turned off. And the phone user will have no idea
that he or she is being spied on, say technology experts.
For people who fear a partner is cheating, technology may be used as a way to put that
suspicion to rest or to gain proof. Richard Drobnick, director of the Teaneck-based Mars
46
& Venus Counseling Center, said some forms of prying can be justified because "people
need to know the truth."
"Try to talk about it, but if you still have very strong doubts and you find one of these
other methods, I don't think there's anything wrong with that," Drobnick said.
He added: "It's a very sad case if it gets to the point where you need to do something
like that, but let's face it: In the real world, it happens."
For spouses who are able to glean information and prove a husband or wife is cheating,
divorce lawyers caution that the information is useless in court. Adultery can be grounds
for divorce, but it means nothing when divvying up assets, unless the spouse can prove
family money was spent on the other woman or man. It also has no relevance in child
custody decisions.
Jeffrey Bloom, a divorce lawyer with offices in Ridgefield and West New York, cautions
people about disclosing that kind of information in court. The inclusion of details about
affairs can affect the whole family, even young children who may want to read divorce
papers when they are older.
"I tell them to try to look at what's the bigger picture," Bloom said.
But proof of cheating isn't the only motive for people to investigate a spouse or partner.
Some people may be driven by deep-seated fears of abandonment or a need to control,
said Mitchell Milch, a psychotherapist and marriage counselor in Ridgewood.
Technology, he said, can serve as a tool to feed those needs and fears.
"It also contributes to a lot of problems because it can become somewhat addictive and
boundaries get violated more easily," he said.
Increasingly, spy technology like GPS tracking and cellphone interception is being used
like a weapon by perpetrators in abusive relationships, say domestic violence
counselors.
Tool to Terrorize
One Bergen County woman, interviewed on the condition of anonymity, said she was
the victim of harassment, hacking and cyber spying following a separation from her
husband.
He hacked into her cellphone and erased her voicemail messages, she said. He used a
program that made it appear as though he was calling from the phone of someone she
knew. He emailed "stealth messages" that would self destruct after opening. On one
occasion, he got angry over something she had written in a private email, and she
wondered how he could have known.
47
"He did stuff I didn't even know you could do," the woman said.
He harassed her despite restraining orders, she said, and it was even more terrifying
because it was nearly impossible to prove. "This was his way of still trying to screw me
and still not get in trouble for it," she said.
Patricia Hart, a victim's advocate who runs workshops on technology and violence for
police departments and shelters in New Jersey, said most people don't realize how
technology can be used to harm them.
Technology "has provided for perpetrators an enormous tool to be able to stalk, terrorize
and harass," she said. "Your lifeline, which may be your cellphone, can so easily be
compromised."
She advises victims to change cellphone carriers if they have a family plan, because
some phone companies will reveal a phone location and phone passwords to family
members without the knowledge of the user. She also cautions them to closely guard
their phone passwords.
Lil Corcoran, associate executive director of Shelter Our Sisters in Hackensack, recalled
one situation where a woman was contacted by an ex-partner and had her own words-recorded in another conversation without her knowledge--played back to her. She
cautions people to use throwaway phones and "safe" computers that can't be tracked by
an abuser.
"Even when they are reaching out to us for help, we tell them make sure you use a safe
computer," Corcoran said. "We tell them to go to the library."
Even with those protections, there is still a wealth of personal information available
online, such as Facebook updates that might let a stalker know what party or work
event a person is at, experts said.
"All of us live in a world where everything is accessible," Hart said. "For some people it
can be extremely frightening."
Loss of Privacy
The stories recounted by domestic violence victims are a reminder that 21st-century
conveniences like smart phones and Wi-Fi come at a very real cost--the loss of privacy.
Ordinary citizens transmit private data on computer and phone lines that can be tapped
by retail companies, law enforcement and prying eyes.
"Any time you have technological advancements, you also have the downside that
comes along with it as far as privacy is concerned," said Kevin Murray, a consultant on
eavesdropping detection and counterespionage services, based in Oldwick.
48
Murray, who advises business and government, said people who are concerned about
privacy or who transmit sensitive information should know that smart phones are
vulnerable. Someone with access to a smart phone can load spyware on it within
minutes.
He urges wary individuals to restrict access to their phones by using a strong and
unique password and by always keeping their phone in sight. Another form of
protection, he said, is to use an old-fashioned phone without Internet capabilities.
Phone companies, he said, aren't likely to improve security because it's not in their
financial interest, since they make money from transmissions.
Many of the companies that sell spyware are based outside the country, making them
tough to prosecute, Murray said.
The company that runs cellspynow.com--which promised "100% completely
undetected" spying--lists a Franklin Lakes post office box number and cites locations in
New York and in England on its website. But the company had no listed number other
than a customer service line, where calls went unreturned. The Better Business Bureau
also could not reach the company to follow up on 17 customer complaints over three
years.
There are legal protections for victims of spying, such as New Jersey's wiretap statute,
which makes it illegal to intercept electronic or oral communication. The Bergen County
woman who was harassed and spied upon said she hoped law enforcement would go
further and take the technology off the market.
"It should be like guns," she said. "People should not be able to buy that technology
unless it's their business. This is stalking and it makes people feel unsafe."
Protection Tips
Here are some recommendations to protect a smart phone from spyware:
• Use passwords for access to the phone and its SIM card
• Restrict access to the phone by others
• Never download suspicious software
• Know how to remotely erase all stored information should the phone be lost or stolen
• Shop around for a phone that can support a full range of security options
For victims of stalking and domestic violence:
49
• Use a "safe" computer, such as one at a library or a friend's house. Also, change
phone passwords often and use new or disposable cellphones not within a family plan.
• For more safety tips on Internet and phone security, visit the Network for Surviving
Stalking at nssadvice.org or the National Network to End Domestic Violence at
nnedv.org
Source: "Is My Cell Phone Bugged? Everything you need to know to keep your mobile conversations
private," by security consultant Kevin Murray of Murray Associates (spybusters.com)
Email: adely@northjersey.com
Citation:
Adely, Hannan. "Cellphone Spying Getting Easier for Abusers, Stalkers." The Record. 02
Jan 2012: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
50
Wall Street Journal
Feb 11, 2012,A.3
Copyright © 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further
reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. All rights reserved.
Deaths Pose Test for Facebook
By Steve Eder
Before Anthony "TJ" Cannata killed himself in mid-December, the 20-year-old uploaded
a photograph to his Facebook page that showed him holding a gun to his mouth, an
image that haunted the friends and family who flocked to his page to pay their respects
after his death.
After Mr. Cannata's death, his mother wanted the photo removed, but it was a month
before Facebook took it down. "I was horrified," said his mother, Robin Cannata, of
Winchester, Calif.
As people's online personas become an increasingly important part of their lives,
families and friends are encountering confusion and frustration in trying to manage the
Facebook, Twitter and email accounts of their deceased loved ones.
State probate laws, which govern how a deceased's next of kin or estate executor can
access things like property and bank accounts, generally weren't designed with today's
online lives in mind. So, lawmakers in several states -- including Nebraska and
Oklahoma -- have tried in recent years to tackle the complex question of who can
manage the online presence of the deceased, and what legal authority they should
have.
Nebraska state Sen. Burke Harr, who serves on a committee considering a bill making
its way through the legislature, said dealing with someone's digital affairs after death
should differ little from handling other end-of-life matters.
But legal experts say that the terms of service users must agree to when they sign up
with social-media sites, which typically dictate what happens to an account after the
user dies, could take precedent over the state laws. An Oklahoma lawmaker involved in
legislation on the topic says the risk is creating laws that are "toothless."
Facebook, for example, has extensive user agreements and privacy policies that cite
various state and federal laws, including the federal Electronic Communications Privacy
51
Act, which generally forbids it from "providing access to any person who is not an
account owner."
When Facebook learns of a user's death, the company's policy is to put a user's
account in a memorialized state -- essentially freezing in place the user's content but
still allowing friends to leave comments on the user's page. Immediate family members
or next of kin can request an account be terminated, or deleted, which requires
documentation such as a death certificate.
It is also common, though, for friends or family to use deceased loved ones' passwords
to continue actively managing their accounts after their deaths, without the company's
knowledge.
Another social-media company, Twitter, says on its website that it can work with an
authorized person to "have an account deactivated." The policies of email providers
often very, but in rare cases, some will provide account data to representatives of a
deceased user.
On Dec. 18, after Mr. Cannata killed himself earlier that day, his mother's boyfriend
contacted Facebook to "report suicidal content" on his page, according to an email
reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Cannata's mother emailed the company in
mid-January with a link to an article in a local newspaper about the photo. Facebook
removed the image Jan. 18.
"When the request was received from the user, the appropriate action was taken," a
Facebook spokesman said. "Out of respect for the privacy of the people who use our
service, we can't comment further."
As lawmakers look to weigh in, Facebook spokesman Tucker Bounds said the company
was "communicating directly with" them so they "better understand our site and why our
current set of policies exist."
The Nebraska bill is modeled after recently passed laws in Oklahoma and Idaho, which
give the executor of an estate, "when authorized," the power "to take control of,
conduct, or terminate" the online accounts of a deceased person, including socialnetworking, blogs and email sites. Connecticut, Indiana, and Rhode Island have
previously passed laws giving the estate executors some authority to access electronic
documents, such as emails, of the deceased.
In late January, the issue was taken up by the Uniform Law Commission, a national
group of lawyers appointed by state governments that researches and drafts uniform
state laws that can be adopted widely by state legislatures to address hot-button legal
issues. The commission decided to form a committee to study the "digital assets"
successor issue, which is complicated by privacy concerns and the lack of uniformity in
policies among social-media companies.
52
When Tara Murphy, a 32-year-old from Eagan, Minn. died unexpectedly last August,
she left behind a Facebook account with hundreds of friends and photographs, a site
her parents hoped to actively manage after her death instead of keeping it as just a
memorial.
But her mother, Pam Murphy, said Facebook was notified of her daughter's death and
converted her page into a memorial, leaving her parents unable to steward her online
presence in cyberspace.
Other complications arise when the deceased user is a minor. When 15-year-old Eric
Rash, of Crewe, Va., committed suicide a year ago, his parents, Diane and Ricky Rash,
didn't know his password, leaving them unable to access his account.
Looking for clues about their son's death, Eric's parents began lobbying Facebook to
get his password. After roughly 10 months of wrangling, Facebook gave the parents a
download of his account on compact disc, but wouldn't divulge his password, citing its
privacy policies and federal privacy laws.
"We were outraged because he was a minor," Ms. Rash said. "As parents, you think
you have control of them."
The family is continuing to lobby lawmakers to weigh in, especially as it relates to
minors. "Social media has evolved faster than the law," Ms. Rash said.
Citation:
Eder, Steve. "Deaths Pose Test for Facebook." Wall Street Journal. 11 Feb 2012: A.3.
SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
53
Washington Post
(Washington, DC)
Mar 15, 2011, p. E.1
Copyright © The Washington Post Company Mar 15, 2011. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Doctors Wary of Switch to Digital Records
By Lena H. Sun
With funding and technical support from his employer, Washington internist Brad Moore
made a swift transition to electronic records seven years ago. He now pulls up a
patient's chart with a few clicks of his mouse.
Lab tests show the man, a diabetic, has his blood sugar under control. A surgeon's note
describes progress after a shoulder operation. Before heading to the exam room,
Moore, 47, clicks on a yellow "FYI" button, the electronic equivalent of a sticky note. It
reminds him to ask how his patient is doing after his wife's recent death.
About 20 miles away in suburban Maryland, internist Jonathan Plotsky hunts for the
same kind of information in charts, some of them six inches thick, others taking up three
volumes. He is well aware of the benefits of electronic records, but like most U.S.
doctors, Plotsky, 56, is hesitant to switch. At up to $50,000 per clinician, the systems
cost too much for him and the part-time doctor with whom he practices, he says. He
doesn't know what to buy, how to install it or how he would transition to paperless.
"I'm waiting to see what will work for people," he says. "The cost is prohibitive. It won't
be any more revenue, and it will change the way I do things."
This spring, the federal government will ramp up cash incentives to encourage doctors
such as Plotsky to take the step Moore barely thought about in 2004 when George
Washington University Medical Faculty Associates introduced its practice-wide
electronic system. Under an ambitious plan to modernize health care in much the same
way paperless technologies have revolutionized banking and retail, federal officials plan
to provide up to $27 billion over 10 years to encourage doctors and hospitals to go
electronic.
More than 500,000 doctors, dentists and nurse practitioners could qualify for the federal
incentives, which are part of the 2009 economic stimulus program. But at least two
deficit-reduction bills have been introduced in the House that target the payments as
part of unspent stimulus funds. Those efforts are unlikely to succeed, said health-care
54
IT analysts, because Democrats control the Senate and President Obama is almost
certain to veto any move to strip money from the project.
All this leaves doctors such as Plotsky confused about the federal government's carrots
and sticks.
Many are aware that beginning this year, health-care professionals who effectively use
electronic records can each receive up to $44,000 over five years through Medicare or
up to $63,750 over six years through Medicaid.
But to qualify, doctors must meet a host of strict criteria, including regularly using
computerized records to log diagnoses and visits, ordering prescriptions and monitoring
for drug interactions.
And starting in 2015, those who aren't digital risk having their Medicare reimbursements
cut.
Nonethless, Jay Bernstein, a Rockville pediatrician, remains more adamant than
Plotsky. Going digital should not be a mandate with penalties, he believes. And the
benefits, such as more accurate documentation, are outweighed by costs--both in
dollars and in the changes that making the switch would bring to his work.
"These ivory-tower types try to boil down the art and practice of medicine into something
that can't be boiled down," said Bernstein.
About 20 percent of U.S. hospitals and and 30 percent of office-based primary-care
doctors--about 46,000 practitioners--had adopted a basic electronic record in 2010,
according to government statistics. But most doctors would need to upgrade those
systems to qualify for federal incentives. Recent surveys show that more than 45,000
doctors and hospitals have sought information or registration assistance from the
federally funded help centers set up around the country to give free hands-on support;
an additional 21,000 have begun signing up for the payments.
Advocates say the benefits of computerized systems are numerous. When a doctor or
nurse is about to decide on a prescription or lab test or whether to hospitalize a patient,
"there is nothing as powerful as giving them information that is relevant to them just at
that point," said David Blumenthal, the government's national coordinator for health
information technology. In addition to gathering each patient's medical history in a single
database, the systems use reminders and alerts that register allergies and unsafe
interactions when a new drug is prescribed. They also allow doctors to check for
previous labs and X-rays to prevent duplicative tests.
Blumenthal, who recently announced his return to his Harvard University teaching
position, said he benefited from such an alert when he ordered a CT scan of a patient's
kidney. An electronic reminder told him a previous CT scan had imaged the patient's
kidney. He canceled the order.
55
"If every doctor had that kind of experience once a month, think of all the money and
incovenience to the patients that could be saved," he said.
Critics worry about privacy concerns and medical errors. Doctors seeking cash
incentives for going digital must use systems capable of being encrypted. But no federal
regulations clearly require that doctors turn the data encryption on or prevent those who
don't do so from getting paid, said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project
at the Center for Democracy & Technology, an advocacy group.
"This is a point of frustration," said McGraw, who sits on an advisory group that sought
unsuccessfully to prevent those who violate privacy regulations of the federal Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, from getting incentive money.
Joseph Kuchler, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
acknowledged that providers can operate an electronic system with its encryption
turned off. But any that do so are violating HIPAA and face stiff penalties, he said. (As a
condition of receiving payments, providers are also required, generally, to protect health
information privacy.)
Those potential penalties "will serve as strong incentives to ensure that the encryption
technology is not permanently turned off," Kuchler said.
As a practical matter, doctors say, they keep encryption functions turned on to comply
with HIPAA patient privacy rules.
Some studies have also highlighted computer errors and design flaws that can affect
prescriptions; others have questioned whether electronic records result in better
outcomes. However, a study in the March issue of the journal Health Affairs surveyed
the recent literature on electronic health records and found that 92 percent reached
positive conclusions.
Still, new systems "will give rise to other problems we may not be able to anticipate,"
Blumenthal said. To address those issues, his office gave a grant last December to the
Institute of Medicine for a year-long study on ways to improve the safety of electronic
health records.
Many doctors point out that they bear the biggest costs, while patients and insurance
companies benefit most.
Nafeesa Owens, 34, a Springfield mother of twins, loves the convenience. She fills out
forms and sends questions to doctors and nurses at her pediatrician's special online
patient portal.
56
"I'm a big fan. Everything is at your fingertips," she said, juggling 9-month-old Austin and
Zavier during a recent checkup at the Lorton office of All-Pediatrics, a Northern Virginia
practice that went digital two years ago.
Tom Sullivan, 72, said all six pediatricians in his practice use laptops perched on tables
that they wheel from exam room to office. He calls them "cows,'' computers on wheels.
During a recent weekday, he is checking 3-year-old Marin Blaya, who has yet another
ear infection.
Her exasperated grandmother, Cynthia Blaya, thinks it's time for ear tubes.
Not yet, Sullivan replies, after checking the girl's medical history. He prescribes
amoxycillin, an antibiotic. Immediately, a notification alerts him to Marin's asthma and
eczema--conditions that may increase the likelihood of allergic reactions. He
acknowledges the reminder, then finishes filling the prescription.
"It says you go to the CVS on Franconia Road. Is that still the one you want?" he asks,
turning to the grandmother.
She nods. He taps with his stylus. The order is instantly sent.
Doctors say the biggest benefit for patients is having their entire medical record in one
place.
"In the old paper days, the chart frequently wasn't with me when the patient called, and
even if it was, perhaps the lab results were in there, but I would have to wade through
and find it," said Moore, the GWU doctor.
All 550 physicians in Moore's practice, the area's largest independent physician group,
use the same system. Executives won't say how much it cost, but annual hardware and
software maintenance alone runs about $2.5 million, and salary for dedicated IT staff is
an additional $3.2 million.
Eugene Sussman, who works with 11 other pediatricians in Montgomery County, is on
the fence.
He figures it would cost his practice at least $250,000 to go paperless. To help defray
the cost, Sussman is considering affiliating with Children's National Medical Center.
Children's and Rockville-based Adventist Healthcare offer subsidies to doctors if they
affiliate with the hospital and use designated vendors.
Even so, Sussman figures that subsidy would cover only about 15 percent of the total
cost. The new Medicaid incentives could pay the practice more than $500,000. But
there's a catch: To qualify, 20 percent of a pediatrician's patients must be Medicaid
57
beneficiaries. At the moment, only 16 percent of the patients in Sussman's practice are
in that category.
The costs "are the biggest holdback nationwide," said Sussman, 64. "Doctors who are
my age, in their early 60s, maybe will retire out. They may think, 'I don't need this
bother; it's going to cost more money and cost more time.'"
Citation:
Sun, Lena H. "Doctors Wary of Switch to Digital Records." Washington Post. 15 Mar 2011:
E.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
58
Tennessean
(Nashville, TN)
Jan 28, 2010, n.p.
Copyright © 2010 The Tennessean. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Facebook Post Gets Teen Expelled
By Jaime Sarrio
Taylor Cummings was a popular basketball star on the verge of graduating from one of
Nashville's most prestigious high schools until a post on the social networking site
Facebook got him expelled.
After weeks butting heads with his coaches, Taylor, 17, logged on to the site from home
Jan. 3. He typed his frustrations for the online world to see: "I'ma kill em all. I'ma bust
this (expletive) up from the inside like nobody's ever done before."
Taylor said the threat wasn't real. School officials said they can't take any chances.
But the case highlights the boundaries between socializing in person at school and
online at home. It also calls into question the latitude school officials have in disciplining
students for their conduct online.
Since the suicide of a Missouri teenager who was harassed online in 2006, news
reports show school officials have become sensitive to cyber-threats.
This month at a middle school outside of Syracuse, N.Y., a seventh-grader was
suspended for setting up a Facebook page that hosted inappropriate and "libelous"
material against a teacher.
In Seattle, a middle school principal suspended 28 students for bullying one classmate
on the Internet.
Last fall, two Dallas-area students were suspended for posting hateful comments about
a specific teacher on a Facebook page, including "Join now and maybe we can all kill
her together."
Taylor's father said the language his son used was inappropriate and banned him from
posting on Facebook. But Harrison Cummings said Taylor shouldn't have been expelled
from Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet, where he was just one semester away from
graduating.
59
"It seemed surreal. We've been at MLK for so many years, and nothing like this has
ever happened," said Harrison Cummings, who has another son at the school and one
who graduated from there.
Taylor said he regrets the posts and has since written a letter of apology to his coach.
He says the posts were taken out of context and that he never intended to hurt anyone.
He has no history of school violence and has never been in a fight or suspended before
this incident, documents related to his expulsion show.
"I was disgusted by the whole situation, knowing the things that I put that day that were
unrepresentative of myself were getting out to people," he said. "I didn't want the people
who knew me to read it, and I didn't want the people who didn't know me to read it and
prejudge me."
Taylor's profile was public, so there were no restrictions on who could view it. In
documents, school officials said they were contacted about the posting by parents.
The Cummings family also argues that students and parents aren't properly educated or
warned that what they write online can have consequences in the classroom.
Metro school officials could not talk specifically about the case but said other students
have been disciplined for making similar comments on social networking sites.
"We have to take any threat as a potential for being a real threat," said Olivia Brown,
spokeswoman from Metro Schools. "It's very difficult to say this child didn't mean it and
this child did."
When asked whether Taylor's threat was credible, MLK head basketball Coach James
Shelton directed reporters to talk to the administration. Principal Shunn Turner referred
questions to district officials.
The district's "Code of Acceptable Student Behavior and Discipline" does not directly
address social media outlets such as Facebook but gives principals the right to suspend
or expel students for threats or for using threatening language. Cyber bullying and
harassment is addressed briefly in a different district policy.
Family Loses Appeal
The Cummings family appealed Turner's decision to expel their son to a group of
principals from other schools, but it was upheld this week. There are more options for
appeal, but the family said they do not plan to pursue the matter any further. His parents
plan to home school him for the remainder of the semester. He plans to go to college
and then to law school.
60
David Hudson, a scholar at the First Amendment Center, said online speech for
students is hazy because the Supreme Court has yet to decide a case on the matter.
He said school officials must consider whether the threats are true, or whether the
speech would cause a substantial disruption to school activities.
"True threats are not protected by the First Amendment, so you have to determine
whether it is a true threat or whether there was another meaning," he said.
The consequences of Taylor's post reverberated on Facebook, where more than 300
people joined a group called "Free TC," dedicated to the case of the basketball star.
Former and current MLK students posted comments in support of Taylor. One young
woman wrote in support of the school's decision--if Taylor's message was indeed a
threat.
The Facebook expulsion sent shock waves through the student body. As news spread,
students began yanking compromising photos off the Internet and toning down their
status updates.
"They really are afraid. They know the administration is watching them now," said John
Dozier, who graduated from MLK last year and now attends college with Taylor's
brother at University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Social networking sites like Facebook are banned on high school grounds, so many
students considered their online lives completely separate from the school's code of
conduct--no more public than a phone conversation with friends, he said.
"I've been trying to tell the younger generation, if it's on the Internet, (school
administrators have) probably seen it already," Dozier said. "It's nothing to joke about,
really."
Tennessean staff writers Jennifer Brooks and Nicole Young contributed to this report.
Citation:
Sarrio, Jaime. "Facebook Post Gets Teen Expelled." Tennessean (Nashville, TN). 28 Jan
2010: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
61
Wall Street Journal
Jun 23, 2010, p. B.5
Copyright © Jun 23, 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner.
Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Hackers Aren't Only Threat to Privacy
By Ben Worthen
Sophisticated hackers aren't the only ones who can gain access to sensitive data on the
Internet. A large amount of personal information is being left exposed or poorly
protected by companies and governments.
The number of identity-theft victims in the U.S. jumped 12% to 11.1 million in 2009,
according to research company Javelin Strategy & Research. Fraud cases reported to
the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is partly run by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, climbed 23% to 336,655 last year.
Information that people inadvertently make public on sites like Facebook plays a role.
So too do the sort of technical exploits demonstrated by the group that recently exposed
a flaw in AT&T Inc.'s website.
But in many cases, finding social-security and credit-card numbers or medical records
on the Internet doesn't require computer expertise. Instead, such information is
accessible to anyone who knows where to look.
A file containing names, social-security numbers and home phone numbers of about
1,000 current and former Atlanta Fire Rescue employees was discovered online in April
by city officials.
Until May, social-security and driver's-license numbers of hundreds of people
associated with Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Fla., were on the Internet and
indexed by search engines.
The city of Atlanta said it has notified affected workers and is investigating the incident.
A spokesman for Edward Waters blamed "human error" for its data exposure and said
the college was trying to determine how many people's information was compromised.
Eric Johnson, a professor at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, has found
files containing names, social-security and health-insurance numbers belonging to
thousands of individuals exposed by so-called peer-to-peer software.
62
The software, such as LimeWire, which allows computers to connect directly to one
another, is most often used to trade music and video files, but is capable of transmitting
any data, including workplace documents and spreadsheets.
By entering basic search terms like hospital names into the software, Mr. Johnson said
he turned up a 1,718 page document containing insurance details and diagnoses
leaked by a medical-testing lab. He said he also found spreadsheets from a hospital
system that contained contact information and social-security numbers for more than
20,000 patients.
"There's no hacking or anything like that going on," he said. "We were just searching."
Mr. Johnson said he contacts the organizations, but even if they remove the peer-topeer software from employee computers, copies of the shared files may still be
available online.
In many cases files containing sensitive personal information are downloaded by known
cyber criminals, said Rick Wallace, a researcher at Tiversa Inc., a security company that
looks for leaked files on behalf of corporate clients. Tiversa found more than 13 million
leaked files that contained information about its customers in one 12-month period.
So far this year, U.S. organizations have reported 317 data breaches, on pace to
exceed 2009's total of 498, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit
organization. These days the center receives between 700 and 1,000 calls a month
from identity-theft victims looking for help, said Linda Foley, the organization's founder.
Cyber criminals often sell the credit-card numbers and other personal information they
find in hacker chat rooms that aren't secret but can only be found by people in the know
-- although anyone who types "fullz" and "cvv2" into Google's search engine can see a
sampling.
Often data come from breaches where hackers have bypassed weak security systems,
said Steven Peisner, president of Sellitsafe Inc., which helps merchants avoid
processing fraudulent purchases. He estimates he sees about 15,000 or so stolen
accounts being published each month in these dark corners of the Internet.
Sometimes, employees who have made illegal copies of information are the thieves. A
Bank of America Corp. employee this month pleaded guilty to charges that he stole and
tried to sell account information of high-worth customers.
A Seattle Municipal Courts employee is similarly alleged to have printed out names and
credit-card numbers and turned them over to fraudsters who spend more than $300,000
at Wal-Mart and other stores.
In some instances employees just don't understand the value of the information they
63
handle, security experts said.
In April an employee at J.M. Smucker Co. seeking computer help emailed socialsecurity numbers and other information about nearly 6,000 Smucker employees and
dependents to a relative.
A Smucker's spokeswoman said it was an unfortunate incident, but there was no
malicious intent.
Citation:
Worthen, Ben. "Hackers Aren't Only Threat to Privacy." Wall Street Journal. 23 Jun 2010:
B.5. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
64
USA TODAY
Aug 26, 2010, p. B.1
Copyright © Aug 26, 2010 USA Today Information Network. All rights reserved. Reprinted with
permission.
Hackers Invade iTunes Accounts
By Byron Acohido
Cybercriminals are stepping up the hijacking of Apple iTunes accounts, often leaving
consumers distraught.
Hijackers buy iTunes logons from e-mail phishers expert at tricking you into typing your
credentials at spoofed websites. iTunes logons also get stolen and sold off by hackers
who spread computer infections containing keystroke loggers that capture logons as
you type them.
Hijackers often begin by testing a few $1 purchases before moving on to larger
transactions. They typically buy iTunes gift card codes, usually in $50 to $200 amounts.
They then sell the codes -- which can be used like cash to buy music and videos -- at a
steep discount, openly on the Internet. "Any online account that allows the transfer of
funds can be a cash cow," says Randy Eset, education director for anti-virus firm ESET.
Apple says there is little it can do about iTunes account hijacking. The company advises
victims to change their passwords and contact their financial institution about being
made whole.
ITunes hijacking has been happening for at least a year. It heated up after CEO Steve
Jobs boasted at a June conference that Apple supports 150 million iTunes users, says
Kurt Baumgartner, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab. Cybercriminals are
opportunistic, he says. They know Apple stores credit and debit card, checking account
and PayPal information to enable online transactions.
Jeremy Schwartz, a 24-year-old tech contractor from Maumee, Ohio, recently had to
scramble to get his bank to reimburse $87. An intruder logged into his iTunes account
and used his debit card account number to buy an iTunes gift card and other items.
Schwartz launched a Facebook discussion page for angry iTunes victims, and shut
down his iTunes account. "I refuse to buy from a company that can't even admit there's
a problem when the problem is pretty big," he says.
Schwartz got his $87 back from Huntington Bank. Many others haven't been as lucky. A
65
common complaint: Financial institutions and Apple often both deny responsibility,
leaving the consumer to eat the loss, says LaToya Irby, a credit management blogger at
About.com.
Consumers should keep anti-virus protection and all software updates current, change
passwords often, avoid disclosing personal information and surf the Web judiciously.
"Ultimately, it is up to the users to safeguard themselves," says Sean-Paul Correll,
threat researcher at PandaLabs. Apple, he says, should consider advancing to better
fraud-detection technology, more like what banks use.
Citation:
Acohido, Byron. "Hackers Invade iTunes Accounts." USA TODAY. 26 Aug 2010: B.1. SIRS
Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar
66
Los Angeles Times
(Los Angeles, CA)
Feb 5, 2012, p. B.1
Copyright © 2012 Los Angeles Times. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Hyping Tech Will Not Help Students
By Michael Hiltzik
Something sounded familiar last week when I heard U.S. Education Secretary Arne
Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski make a huge pitch for infusing digital
technology into America's classrooms.
Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks
will be a thing of the past.
Where had I heard that before? So I did a bit of research, and found it. The quote I
recalled was, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools….Our school system will be
completely changed in 10 years."
The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the
laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison,
was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving
image.
He was talking through his hat then, every bit as much as Duncan and Genachowski
are talking through theirs now.
Here's another similarity: The push for advanced technology in the schoolroom then and
now was driven by commercial, not pedagogical, considerations. As an inventor of
motion picture technology, Edison stood to profit from its widespread application. And
the leading promoter of the replacement of paper textbooks by e-books and electronic
devices today is Apple, which announced at a media event last month that it dreams of
a world in which every pupil reads textbooks on an iPad or a Mac.
That should tell you that the nirvana sketched out by Duncan and Genachowski at last
week's Digital Learning Day town hall was erected upon a sizable foundation of
commercially processed claptrap. Not only did Genachowski in his prepared remarks
give a special shout out to Apple and the iPad, but the event's roster of co-sponsors
67
included Google, Comcast, AT&T, Intel and other companies hoping to see their
investments in Internet or educational technologies pay off.
How much genuine value is there in fancy educational electronics? Listen to what the
experts say.
"The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark,
director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the
evidence has been around for more than 50 years."
Almost every generation has been subjected in its formative years to some
"groundbreaking" pedagogical technology. In the '60s and '70s, "instructional TV was
going to revolutionize everything," recalls Thomas C. Reeves, an instructional
technology expert at the University of Georgia. "But the notion that a good teacher
would be just as effective on videotape is not the case."
Many would-be educational innovators treat technology as an end-all and be-all, making
no effort to figure out how to integrate it into the classroom. "Computers, in and of
themselves, do very little to aid learning," Gavriel Salomon of the University of Haifa and
David Perkins of Harvard observed in 1996. Placing them in the classroom "does not
automatically inspire teachers to rethink their teaching or students to adopt new modes
of learning."
At last week's dog-and-pony show, Duncan bemoaned how the U.S. is being outpaced
in educational technology by countries such as South Korea and even Uruguay. ("We
have to move from being a laggard to a leader" was his sound bite.)
Does Duncan ever read his own agency's material? In 2009, the Education Department
released a study of whether math and reading software helped student achievement in
first, fourth and sixth grades, based on testing in hundreds of classrooms. The study
found that the difference in test scores between the software-using classes and the
control group was "not statistically different from zero." In sixth-grade math, students
who used software got lower test scores--and the effect got significantly worse in the
second year of use.
The aspect of all this innovative change that got the least attention from Duncan and
Genachowski was how school districts are supposed to pay for it.
It's great to suggest that every student should be equipped with a laptop or given 24/7
access to Wi-Fi, but shouldn't our federal bureaucrats figure out how to stem the tidal
wave of layoffs in the teaching ranks and unrelenting cutbacks in school programs and
maintenance budgets first? School districts can't afford to buy enough textbooks for
their pupils, but they're supposed to equip every one of them with a $500 iPad?
68
"There are two big lies the educational technology industry tells," says Reeves. "One,
you can replace the teacher. Two, you'll save money in the process. Neither is borne
out."
Apple has become a major purveyor of the mythology of the high-tech classroom.
"Education is deep in our DNA," declared Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief, at its
Jan. 19 education event. "We're finding that as students are starting to be introduced to
iPad and learning, some really remarkable things are happening."
If you say so, Phil. But it's proper to point out the downside to one great innovation
Schiller touted, a desktop publishing app called iBooks Author. The app is free, and
plainly can help users create visually striking textbooks. But buried in the user license is
a rule that if you sell a product created with iBooks Author, you can sell it only through
Apple's iBookstore, and Apple will keep 30% of the purchase price. (Also, your fullfeatured iBook will be readable only on an Apple device such as an iPad.)
Among tech pundits, the reaction to this unusual restriction has ranged from citing its
"unprecedented audacity" to calling it "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil." Apple won't
comment for the record on the uproar. Whatever you think of it, the rule makes clear
that Apple's interest in educational innovation is distinctly mercantile. But that didn't
keep Genachowski from praising Apple's education initiative as an "important step."
(Perhaps he meant a step toward enhanced profitability.)
Of course Apple draped its new business initiative in all sorts of Steve Jobsian pixie
dust, as if it's all about revolutionizing education. The company's most amusing claim is
that iPads are somehow more "durable" than textbooks and therefore more affordable,
over time. Its website weeps copious crocodile tears over the sad fate of textbooks--"as
books are passed along from one student to the next, they get more highlighted, dogeared, tattered and worn."
Yet as James Kendrick of ZDNet reports, school administrators who have handed
laptops out to students to take home say the devices get beaten nearly to death in no
time. The reality is obvious: Drop a biology textbook on a floor, you pick it up. Drop an
iPad, you'll be sweeping it up.
Some digital textbooks may have advantages over their paper cousins. Well-produced
multimedia features can improve students' understanding of difficult or recondite
concepts. But there's a fine line between an enhancement and a distraction, and if
textbook producers are using movies and 3-D animations to paper over the absence of
serious research in their work, that's not progress.
Nor is it a given that e-books will be cheaper than bound books, especially when the
cost of the reading devices is factored in. Apple tries to entice schools to buy iPads in
blocks of 10 by offering a lavish discount of, well, $20 per unit. They still cost $479
each. The company also provides a bulk discount on extended warranties for the
device, but--surprise!--it doesn't cover accidental damage from drops or spills.
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Apple and its government mouthpieces speak highly of the ability to feed constant
updates to digital textbooks so they never go out of date. But that's relevant to a rather
small subset of schoolbooks such as those dealing with the leading edge of certain
sciences--though I'm not sure how many K-12 pupils are immersed in advanced
subjects such as quantum mechanics or string theory. The standard text of "Romeo and
Juliet," on the other hand, has been pretty well locked down since 1599.
There's certainly an important role for technology in the classroom. And the U.S. won't
benefit if students in poor neighborhoods fall further behind their middle-class or affluent
peers in access to broadband Internet connectivity or computers. But mindless servility
to technology for its own sake, which is what Duncan and Genachowski are promoting
on behalf of self-interested companies like Apple, will make things worse, not better.
That's because it distracts from and sucks money away from the most important goal,
which is maintaining good teaching practices and employing good teachers in the
classroom.
What's scary about the recent presentation by Duncan and Genachowski is that it
shows that for all their supposed experience and expertise, they've bought snake oil.
They're simply trying to rebottle it for us as the elixir of the gods.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read
past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
Citation:
Hiltzik, Michael. "Hyping Tech Will Not Help Students." Los Angeles Times. 05 Feb 2012:
B.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
70
Wall Street Journal
Jan 23, 2012, p. A.1
Copyright © 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further
reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. All rights reserved.
Hackers-for-Hire Are Easy to Find
By Cassell Bryan-Low
Sitting in his Los Angeles home, Kuwaiti billionaire Bassam Alghanim received an
alarming call from a business associate: Hundreds of his personal emails were posted
online for anyone to see.
Mr. Alghanim checked and found it to be true, according to a person familiar with the
matter. The emails included information on his personal finances, legal affairs, even his
pharmacy bills, this person said.
That led to another surprise. Mr. Alghanim discovered the person who had allegedly
commissioned the hackers was own brother, with whom he is fighting over how to divide
up billions of dollars of joint assets. Mr. Alghanim's lawyers allege in court filings that the
brother hired investigators to illegally access his email with the help of Chinese hackers.
Cost to hire the hackers: about $400.
Although the brothers' feud involves big money, documents filed in two civil cases in
September 2009 suggests just how simple and affordable online espionage has
become. Computer forensic specialists say some hackers-for-hire openly market
themselves online. "It's not hard to find hackers," says Mikko Hypponen of computersecurity firm F-Secure Corp.
One such site, hiretohack.net, advertises online services including being able to "crack"
passwords for major email services in less than 48 hours. It says it charges a minimum
of $150, depending on the email provider, the password's complexity and the urgency of
the job. The site describes itself as a group of technology students based in Europe,
U.S. and Asia.
Hiretohack.net's claims couldn't immediately be verified, and the group didn't respond to
a request for comment.
Mischel Kwon, who runs a security-consulting firm and is the former director of the U.S.
Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a government organization known as US-
71
CERT, says the hacker-for-hire industry is well established. Some are one- or twoperson outfits, but there are also larger "organized crime" groups," she said. She and
other specialists note that it is also easy to find tools online that assist in hacking into
someone's email.
The issue of hacking and online espionage has gained prominence recently. In
December, The Wall Street Journal reported that hackers in China breached the
computer defenses of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A month earlier, a Paris court
fined French energy giant Electricite de France SA 1.5 million euros, or about $1.9
million, for directing an investigator to hack into the computers of environmental group
Greenpeace in 2006. In the U.K., authorities are investigating allegations of hacking by
News Corp.'s recently closed tabloid, News of the World. News Corp., which has said it
is cooperating with police, also owns The Wall Street Journal.
China appears to be a source of a significant proportion of attacks. In an October 2011
report to Congress, the U.S. Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive said
that U.S. economic information and technology are targeted by industry and
government from dozens of countries but that attackers based in China "are the world's
most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage."
A U.K. government report took a shot at putting numbers to the problem last year: It
estimated that computer-related industrial espionage cost U.K. businesses about GBP
7.6 billion, or about $11.8 billion, annually in loss of information that could hurt a
company's chances of winning open tenders, and loss of merger-related information.
Cyber intellectual-property theft cost business an additional GBP 9.2 billion annually, it
estimated.
The problem is under-measured because many victims are reluctant to report attacks to
protect their reputation. The Alghanims' dispute, however, provides a rare look at
detailed hacking allegations.
The spat between the two brothers involves the divvying up of a sprawling business
empire originally founded by their father. The brothers, Kutayba and Bassam, 66 years
old and 60, respectively, are both U.S.-educated Kuwaiti citizens.
The allegations of email hacking are detailed in litigation filed by Bassam in the U.K.
and the U.S. According to his court filings, his older brother, Kutayba Alghanim, along
with the brother's son and the company's chief legal officer, allegedly stole thousands of
pages of emails over more than a year.
Bassam's lawyer said his client "was horrified to discover the privacy of his email
accounts had been compromised."
A lawyer representing Kutayba and his son declined to comment on the hacking
allegations or make the men available for comment. A lawyer representing the son's
chief legal officer declined to comment. In the U.S. lawsuit -- the one in which the three
72
men are named as defendants -- none has addressed the hacking allegations. The
three men aren't named as defendants in the U.K. action.
Bassam is based in Los Angeles, while Kutayba and his son primarily live in Kuwait but
maintain residences in the U.S., including a 16,000-square-foot Manhattan mansion and
a 48-acre Long Island estate, according to Bassam's legal filings. Their fight has
included a U.K. High Court civil case and a separate civil case in U.S. Federal Court in
New York.
In the U.K., a judge recently concluded that the two defendants in that case, both British
investigators, arranged the hacking. In that October decision, Justice Peter Smith also
said the evidence showed that the hacking was carried out at the direction of Kutayba,
his son and the chief legal officer, although they weren't defendants in that case.
"It is clear, on the evidence I have," that the trio orchestrated the computer hacking, Mr.
Smith said in his ruling.
In the U.S. civil case, Kutayba, his son and the legal officer are named as defendants.
Documents filed in federal court in New York allege the three directed the hacking and
violated federal and state laws including computer misuse.
One of the two private investigators admitted to the U.K. court that he had hacked
Bassam's email and said he did it at the orders of the second investigator. After the first
investigator began cooperating with Bassam's lawyers, the legal action against him was
stayed. The second investigator denied hacking; the judge found him in breach of civil
laws on privacy and confidence.
Kutayba's legal filings argue that his brother is trying to avoid earlier agreements
requiring their asset-split dispute to be handled by a Kuwaiti arbitrator. "Bassam has
done everything in his power to avoid his obligations, including his obligation to
arbitrate," Kutayba said in U.S. court filings.
In November in New York, the judge stayed the U.S. case pending a ruling by a Kuwait
arbitrator on the dispute.
The two brothers were once close -- they used to share homes in New York, Los
Angeles and Kuwait, according to a person familiar with the matter. But they fell out a
few years ago, according to Bassam's U.S. filings. One source of tension was an effort
by Kutayba to promote his eldest son, Omar Alghanim, as heir to the family business, a
person familiar with the matter said. Omar is a former Morgan Stanley analyst and
founding shareholder of New York merger firm Perella Weinberg Partners LP.
Omar currently is chief executive of the family company, Alghanim Industries, a
conglomerate that distributes electronics, among other things. The company's chief
legal officer is Waleed Moubarak, the man who is alleged, along with Kutayba and his
son, to have commissioned the hacking. Mr. Moubarak didn't respond to a request for
73
comment.
Unable to reconcile, the brothers decided to divide their jointly held assets. Included is
Alghanim Industries and other businesses; a stake in Kuwait's Gulf Bank; residential
properties in New York, London, Los Angeles, Kuwait and elsewhere; a $450 million
portfolio; and $100 million in art, according to Bassam's U.S. and U.K. court filings.
The two continued to feud even after signing a March 2008 memorandum of
understanding, according to U.S. court filings by both. That memorandum, included in
Kutayba's filings, describes a 60:40 ownership split between Kutayba and Bassam,
respectively, of their Kuwait-based assets and an even split of overseas assets.
As the dispute escalated, Kutayba and his associates turned to Steven McIntyre, a
private investigator near London, according to documents filed in the U.K. court by
Bassam and Mr. McIntyre. Mr. McIntyre, in turn, enlisted the help of Timothy Zimmer, a
forensic investigator and then-colleague, and in mid-2008 asked him to gain access to
Bassam's two personal email accounts, according to a witness statement by Mr.
Zimmer in U.K. court.
A lawyer who represented Mr. McIntyre during the U.K. proceedings declined to
comment. Mr. McIntyre didn't respond to requests seeking comment.
In his witness statement, Mr. Zimmer said he contacted an organization called Invisible
Hacking Group, which he had previously used for security-testing of web-based email
accounts.
Little is known about IHG. Mr. Zimmer, in his witness statement, said IHG instructed him
to send payment to Chengdu, a city in China. The legal filings don't indicate how Mr.
Zimmer and IHG first came in contact.
Today, IHG doesn't appear to have an online presence, although there are a few
message-board posts from 2004 under that name offering computer-monitoring services
for a few hundred dollars a month. "Do you want to know what your business
competitors are doing online everyday?" the message reads. An email sent to an
address in the message bounced back.
According to Mr. Zimmer's statement, the IHG service worked like this: It requested the
target person's email address, the names of friends or colleagues, and examples of
topics that interest them. The hackers would then send an email to the target that
sounded as if it came from an acquaintance, but which actually installed malicious
software on the target's computer. The software would let the hackers capture the
target's email password.
Mr. Zimmer forwarded Bassam's email addresses to IHG, according to his witness
statement. IHG then sent him the passwords to Bassam's email accounts, for which he
paid GBP 256 (about $400) to the China address, he said.
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Using the passwords, Mr. Zimmer printed Bassam's emails -- filling eight ring binders -and gave them to Mr. McIntyre, according to Mr. Zimmer's statement. Mr. McIntyre
initially personally delivered them to Omar, Kutayba's son, first on his yacht moored at
the Italian island of Capri and then, via a colleague, on his yacht in Sardinia, according
to Bassam's U.K. and U.S. filings.
To make the process of obtaining the emails more efficient, the investigators set up a
password-protected website, jackshome.info, to which they uploaded copies of the
emails, Bassam's U.K. and U.S. court filings allege.
Bassam alleges that his brother and his associates accessed thousands of pages of
emails, according to the U.K. and U.S. court filings. The private investigators received
more than $200,000 for their alleged hacking services over 13 months, according to
Bassam's U.S. filings.
The operation was tripped up in August 2009 when one of Bassam's advisers found
some of the emails online, according to U.K. filings. Because of a glitch, documents
uploaded to the password-protected website were actually accessible via Google
search, the filings said.
In September 2009, Mr. Zimmer and Mr. McIntyre's colleague flew to New York to
explain what went wrong to Omar and Mr. Moubarak, Mr. Zimmer said in his witness
statement. The men gathered in a suite at the luxury Carlyle Hotel. Omar, who "was
getting very worked up," according to Mr. Zimmer's statement, said in the meeting that
not only did he want to get back into Bassam's email accounts but he also wanted
access to the email of another family member close to Bassam.
In his U.K. witness statement, Mr. Zimmer admitted he hacked Bassam's emails and
said Mr. McIntyre instructed him to do so.
Mr. McIntyre disputed the hacking allegations in a letter to the court, but said he couldn't
afford to attend court. According to the October judgment, Mr. McIntyre said he was "too
ill and too distressed, too oppressed" to attend. The judge hasn't yet ruled on whether
Mr. McIntyre will have to pay damages.
Citation:
Bryan-Low, Cassell. "Hackers-for-Hire Are Easy to Find." Wall Street Journal. 23 Jan 2012:
A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
75
Des Moines Register
(Des Moines, IA)
Jul 31, 2009, n.p.
Copyright © 2009 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP
News report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The
Associated Press.
Law Blocks Iowa School's Call for Jamming Device
Hung Up: Iowa School District's Call for Cell Phone Jamming Device Blocked by
Federal Law
By Michael J. Crumb
Associated Press Writer
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)--A small northern Iowa school district has hung up on a plan
to block students from using their cell phones in class.
The St. Ansgar school board proposed buying a jamming device to keep students in the
combined middle and high school from calling and texting during class, but the idea died
because of a federal law that outlaws use of such equipment.
"As far as we are concerned it's a moot point right now and we're not going to pursue it
at all," Jim Woodward, the superintendent of the St. Ansgar school district, said Friday.
St. Ansgar, which already has banned cell phones, is not the first district to weigh using
a jamming device to keep students from using them in class.
The Penn Hills district in Pittsburgh considered jamming cell phones last spring but
dropped the idea after learning of the Federal Communications Commission law. The
Mead school district near Spokane, Wash., bought a jammer for less than $100 and
conducted a three-day test before learning it was illegal. In Canada, the Port Hardy
Secondary School on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, also conducted a test that
was abandoned because of legal concerns.
Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has suggested jamming wireless signals to
keep students from using their cell phones during class.
But under current law, the FCC can only grant federal agencies--not state or local
authorities--permission to jam cell phone signals. The jamming devices prevent cell
tower transmissions from reaching phones.
76
Correctional leaders from more than two dozen states recently signed a petition asking
permission to jam cell phone signals inside state penitentiaries and thwart inmates'
forbidden phone calls.
In the case of the schools, officials said they were frustrated that students kept using
phones in class despite the ban.
"I don't think they have a place in the educational environment," said Ed Kleinwort, a
member of the St. Ansgar school board. "The educational environment is supposed to
be about students learning and teachers teaching and teachers can't teach over a cell
phone. If a student is busy on the cell phone they aren't learning."
He likened it to a student chewing gum or wearing an offensive T-shirt in class.
"It's a distraction...and we need to minimize the distraction," Kleinwort said.
Donnie Thorson, whose son graduated last spring from St. Ansgar, said school officials
took away his son's cell phone after he was caught using it in class.
"Somehow they have got to keep those kids from texting during class," he said.
James Hendrickson, a physical education teacher at St. Ansgar, said cell phones are a
huge problem, with some classes being interrupted almost every other hour. Even his
class is not immune from interruptions.
"When I have activities and they don't change and have their backpacks with them or
their pants on, once in a while it happens," Hendrickson said.
Woodward, the superintendent, said cell phones will continue to be a problem as long
as students bring them to school.
"It's an addiction for some kids," he said.
He also raised concerns with continuing advancements in technology, suggesting they
could make it easier for students to cheat.
"You never know with the capability that cell phones have today," Woodward said. "That
means the playing field isn't level anymore."
Woodward believes jamming cell phones would be an effective way to deal with the
problem but said the school won't do anything different.
"I guess we'll just go back to the honor system," he said.
Associated Press writer Amy Lorentzen contributed to this report.
77
Citation:
Crumb, Michael J. "Law Blocks Iowa School's Call for Jamming Device." Des Moines
Register (Des Moines, IA). 31 Jul 2009: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar
2012.
78
Columbus Daily Reporter
(Columbus, OH)
Oct 6, 2011, n.p.
Associated Press.
More Youth Seeing Their Facebook, Email Hacked
By Jennifer C. Kerr
WASHINGTON (AP) — Young people are having a harder time keeping their profile
pages and email accounts secure, especially from prankster friends. And although
many treat hacking or spying as a joke, nearly half who have been victims were upset
by it.
An Associated Press-MTV poll finds 3 in 10 teens and young adults have had people
get into their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other Internet accounts and either
impersonate or spy on them. That's nearly double the level seen in 2009.
The poll found solid majorities saying they knew who was behind it: 72 percent for
spying, 65 percent for hacking.
Richard Lindenfelzer, 20, says it's happened to him, but it was more playful than
anything else.
Sometimes when he walks away and leaves his laptop logged into Facebook, a
roommate seizes the opportunity to fiddle with Lindenfelzer's page, writing silly things
about love interests or potty humor.
"It's meant to be funny," said Lindenfelzer, a junior at Ithaca College in New York. "It's
supposed to be obvious that this is something I would never say."
The same thing happened to recent college graduate Emily Feldhake of Pickford, Mich.
The 22-year-old had used a friend's laptop and closed the browser but hadn't logged
out. Her friend took some humorous jabs at her on her Facebook page. Not upset, she
said: "I knew who it was. It was my friend and I was the one who stayed logged on."
But sometimes the hacking can be malicious.
79
Courtney Eisenbraun of Saint Francis, Minn., is among the 46 percent of young people
left upset by a hacking experience.
The 15-year-old says she was at practice for her high school dance team when she got
a text from her sister checking to see if the 10th-grader was on Facebook. The teen's
status had been changed to say something inappropriate about girls in showers.
She says she doesn't share her password with friends but assumes it was someone in
her grade because they knew who her friends were and also posted things on their
Facebook pages, pretending to be her.
"I was really confused about how they got my password," she said. "I felt violated."
Eisenbraun changed her password right away, and changes it often now. She hasn't
had another problem.
In the AP-MTV poll, two-thirds of those who had been hacked said at some point they've
changed their email, instant messaging or social networking password in response to
digital abuse. Forty-six percent have altered their email address, screen name or phone
number, and 25 percent have deleted a social networking profile.
Josie Burris, 16, says she's shared her Facebook password with her best friend as well
as her boyfriend. Once, she spied on her boyfriend's page to peek at his private
messages and see what he was up to. He's also spied on her private messages, she
said.
"I don't care. I've done it to him. He's done it to me," said Burris, a junior in high school
who lives in Ridgeland, S.C.
She says her parents are on Facebook, too, but she doesn't worry about them spying
on her.
"I make sure I don't put anything bad on there," she said, but added: "Old people
shouldn't have Facebook. I firmly believe in that."
Child safety advocates, though, say parents should be on Facebook. They don't
suggest spying, but they do say parents need to know where their kids are going online
and, most importantly, they need to talk with their children about being responsible
online.
Marsali Hancock at the Internet Keep Safe Coalition says children who grow up thinking
they're sending confidential messages are misled.
"It's never private," says Hancock, president of the coalition. "So the parents who
actually check in, even just randomly every now and then, really help their child to
recognize that everything can be viewed and tracked and stored and moved around."
80
Of the young people who said they had been hacked, the AP-MTV poll found that about
7 in 10 said they had considered that their words or pictures could be shared without
permission, compared with just over half of those who had not been hacked.
The Associated Press-MTV poll on digital abuse was conducted online Aug. 18-31 and
is based on 1,355 interviews (631 teens ages 14-17 and 724 young adults ages 18-24).
It was part of an MTV campaign, "A Thin Line," aiming to stop the spread of digital
abuse.
The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks, which used traditional telephone
and mail sampling methods to randomly recruit respondents. People selected who had
no Internet access were given it for free. The margin of sampling error for the poll is plus
or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Associated Press Polling Director Trevor Tompson, Deputy Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta and News
Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
Citation:
Kerr, Jennifer C. "More Youth Seeing Their Facebook, Email Hacked." Columbus Daily
Reporter. 06 Oct 2011: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
81
McClatchy - Tribune Business News
Jun 24, 2011, n.p.
Copyright © 2011, McClatchy - Tribune Business News. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or
write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
New Law Aimed to Prevent Sexting Among Teens
By Naxiely Lopez
The Monitor, McAllen, Texas
June 24--Gov. Rick Perry recently signed a new state law that will give prosecutors the
discretion to prosecute some child pornography and trafficking cases as misdemeanors
rather than felonies.
The new law will only apply to offenders 18 years and younger who are caught sexting-or using a cell phone to send sexually explicit text messages or images, according to a
news release from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.
Sexting can become a problem because senders cannot control their message's
ultimate destination, as recipients can easily forward and spread the content to others.
In schools, students often are bullied or humiliated by offenders who have spread such
messages.
"Studies show that teenage students are increasingly creating, sending and receiving
explicit pictures of themselves on their mobile telephones," Abbott said.
The attorney general referred to a survey released earlier this year by the Cyberbullying
Research Center, which surveyed about 4,400 youths between the ages of 11 and 18
from a large school district in the southern United States.
According to the survey, 5 percent of boys and 3 percent of girls acknowledged
uploading or sharing a humiliating or harassing picture of their romantic partner online
or through their cell phone. Six percent of boys and girls said their romantic partner
posted something publicly online to humiliate, threaten or embarrass them.
Senate Bill 407, which will go into effect Sept. 1, is intended to prevent minors from
sending, creating or redistributing sexually explicit text messages of themselves and
fellow teenagers by creating a mechanism for holding them accountable without
subjecting them to serious criminal penalties with lifelong consequences, Abbot said.
82
Before this law, anyone--including a minor--who sent these types of pictures and texts
could have been prosecuted for felony child pornography possession or trafficking
violations that often carry lifelong consequences, such as having to register as a sex
offender.
But this new piece of legislation gives prosecutors the ability to pursue less draconian
criminal charges against minors because it creates a misdemeanor offense for them,
Abbott said.
Signed by Perry a week ago, the law requires teen offenders to make court
appearances with a parent, and allows courts to require them to complete an education
program addressing the consequences of sexting.
"Texas has a common-sense law that holds wrongdoers accountable--but does not
impose life-altering consequences on young offenders," the attorney general said.
Backfire?
Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra disagrees with the legislation and its
purpose.
"The Legislature wanted to make this a crime, but the consequences are far more
reaching than what they're trying to prevent," he said. "The only ones that are going to
get hurt are the 17- and 18-year-olds because the juveniles won't. Their cases are
sealed."
Records for teens 17 and older are made public, Guerra said. And if they are convicted
of a Class C misdemeanor or higher involving morality, such as theft or sex-related
crimes, they become almost immediately unemployable, he added.
"You can't punish a minor more seriously than by branding him with a crime," Guerra
said. "You cannot take the label of pornography away."
The district attorney instead suggested these offenses be handled at home or through
pre-trial diversion, a system in which an offender is not convicted, but must comply with
court orders--such as having to do community service--before the case is dismissed and
then expunged.
"You're not going to prevent it," Guerra said about sexting. "It's going to happen.
Children are going to be children. If you can't prevent it in adults, you think they're going
to prevent it on children?"
Naxiely Lopez covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at
(956) 683-4434.
Citation:
83
Lopez, Naxiely. "New Law Aimed to Prevent Sexting Among Teens." McClatchy - Tribune
Business News. 24 Jun 2011: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
84
International Herald Tribune
(Paris, France)
Jan 19, 2012, p. 14
Copyright © Jan 19, 2012 International Herald Tribune. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Online Security Breaches Threaten Consumers'
Confidence
By Nicole Perlroth
• In an unsettling new world, even the supposed stalwarts of the Internet -- Amazon,
eBay and the security giants paid to keep hackers at bay -- cannot seem to keep
personal information safe.
Barbara Scott just hit the trifecta of computer security breaches.
Since the new year began, Ms. Scott has been the victim of three separate
cyberattacks. Two weeks ago, eBay, the online auction site, said in an e-mail to her that
there had been suspicious activity in her account. On Monday, she received an e-mail
from Zappos and another from 6PM, two online shoe retailers owned by Amazon. Both
messages alerted her that -- once again -- her information had been compromised.
"It's disturbing," said Ms. Scott, who works in San Diego as a director at Redemtech, a
technology services business. "Companies have to do a better job protecting our
privacy. You would think companies like eBay and Amazon have the financial backing
and wherewithal to take the proper security measures."
The breaches at Zappos and 6PM may have compromised account information for 24
million customers -- the largest breach of an online retailer since a series of
cyberattacks against Sony last year that compromised 100 million customer accounts.
The attacks point to an unsettling new world in which even the supposed stalwarts of
the Internet -- Amazon, eBay and even the security giants paid to keep hackers at bay -cannot seem to keep personal information safe.
And when there is a security breach, the companies and computer security experts
more often than not resort to telling their consumers that it is up to them to protect their
data stored on the company's servers.
Zappos's chief executive, Tony Hsieh, said Sunday that customers' names, encrypted
passwords, phone numbers, e-mail and mailing addresses and the last four digits of
85
credit card numbers might have been stolen in the attack. But he noted that the
company had quickly reset all passwords and that a separate database containing
critical credit card information had not been breached.
Mr. Hsieh -- who wrote the book "Delivering Happiness" and regularly invites customers
to tour Zappos's facilities -- provided no explanation about why the data were
vulnerable. He directed customers to an e-mail address because its customer service
lines "simply aren't capable" of handling the number of expected customer inquiries.
That response angered Eric Seftel, a Zappos customer, who posted a reply to Zappos'
e-mail alert on The New York Times's Bits blog: "That's it? That's how you respond to a
security exposure that may require me to change my password on a large number of
other sites to protect myself? That's how little you think of your customers, just drop this
glib little note and wash your hands of the whole affair? You have a legal and moral
obligation to protect my information."
In an e-mail to The New York Times on Monday, Mr. Hsieh said that the company had
had a security breach response plan in place before the attack but that he could not
discuss the specifics or talk about how it had been breached. "Our plan specifically
includes not disclosing details of our security processes or procedures," Mr. Hsieh said.
"Just like you would not expect a casino to disclose when the security guards change
shifts."
The breaches at Amazon's sites, combined with several recent cyberattacks, could
threaten to shake consumer confidence online. Over the year-end holidays, hackers
who said they were members of the group Anonymous attacked the Web site of
Strategic Forecasting, a research firm that specializes in security and intelligence. They
dumped personal and payment details for thousands of subscribers.
In a separate attack on Indian military and intelligence servers two weeks ago, a
different group of hackers managed to find and post a segment of source code
belonging to Symantec, the largest security software company.
"There are a lot of people that are going to seriously reconsider before they purchase
anything else on the Internet," Jerry Irvine, a member of the National Cyber Security
Task Force, said Monday.
The White House is working on a plan to increase consumers' confidence in the security
of e-commerce sites. Its initiative, called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in
Cyberspace, works with major vendors -- like banks, technology companies and
cellphone service providers -- to adopt higher standards for the way companies verify
user identities and store personal data online.
But the program is less than a year old. And, Mr. Irvine said, it is intended to be only
one step in a larger process to protect customers' identities and personal information on
the Web. "These breaches are going to be an education for people to take a more
86
layered approach to their security," he said.
With companies unable to provide a good solution, many companies and security
experts throw the burden back to consumers.
"It is always a good practice to use different passwords on different Web sites," Mr.
Hsieh advised.
Mr. Irvine recommended that consumers protect their personal data more vigilantly. He
suggested not using e-mail addresses as user names, creating a unique password for
every Web site and refraining from saving personal and payment details online.
"That is the only way you're going to be secure," Mr. Irvine said.
Ms. Scott said she already used complex alphanumeric passwords and updated them
regularly. "Beyond that, I guess I have to be more conscious about who I choose to do
business with online," she said. "How hard can it be to find a safe place online to buy
shoes?"
Citation:
Perlroth, Nicole. "Online Security Breaches Threaten Consumers' Confidence."
International Herald Tribune. 19 Jan 2012: 14. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar
2012.
87
Washington Post
(Washington, DC)
Jun 1, 2009, p. A.1
Copyright © The Washington Post Company Jun 1, 2009. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Students Crave a Break on Cellphone Ban
By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Juan Hendrix, an earth science teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver
Spring, knows that when it comes to cellphone use in schools, looks can deceive.
"A classroom can appear quiet and orderly, but it may be abuzz with chatter," Hendrix
said.
Text messaging has spawned an era of uninterrupted contact among friends, especially
young people. Students often tap out silent conversations beneath their desks, even
though most Washington area public schools forbid them to use cellphones on campus
during school hours.
To defuse the conflict, a Montgomery County student leader has proposed a
compromise: Let students text while they eat.
A resolution before the county school board would allow high school students to use
cellphones on campus at lunchtime. Quratul-Ann Malik, the board's elected student
member and sponsor of the measure, is seeking to define an appropriate place for
iPhones and BlackBerrys at school.
Malik, 18, a senior at Watkins Mill High School in Gaithersburg, said she believes she
speaks for the text-messaging set. A Facebook group to promote her cause attracted
1,200 members in three days.
"They got rid of pay phones a couple years ago in high schools," Malik said. "The
reason they got rid of pay phones is because of cellphones. But students aren't allowed
to use them."
She faces entrenched administrative opposition. Students in Montgomery, Fairfax,
Prince George's, Loudoun, Prince William, Anne Arundel, Howard, Frederick, Arlington
and Calvert counties and the District, among other places, are forbidden to use portable
communication devices during school hours.
88
The rules were written when few students carried cellphones and "text" was not yet a
verb. Today, they are difficult to enforce. The main problem is texting, which has
supplanted talking and note-passing as the distraction of choice in many classrooms.
"Some teachers with good eyes can stop it, but for the most part it's ridiculously easy to
text during class," said David Riva, 18, a senior at Walter Johnson High School in
Bethesda.
At Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, employees confiscate eight to 10
cellphones a week, said Jim Fernandez, the principal. Serious transgressions, such as
using cellphones to cheat during tests or forwarding sexually explicit photos, have not
been reported.
Education leaders responded to the first generation of bulky cellphones by banning
them from schools, regarding the gadgets with the same suspicion as pagers.
"There was a view that only drug dealers and gang members had cellphones," said
Montgomery school board member Patricia O'Neill (Bethesda-Chevy Chase). A student
caught with a cellphone in the 1990s risked expulsion. But a state ban on carrying
pagers or cellphones at school was repealed in 2001.
Montgomery's rules, echoing the practice in other school systems, call for cellphones to
be stowed in pockets or backpacks. Such policies were written when cellphones were
mostly used for placing calls, an activity clearly at odds with instruction.
These days, students are more interested in texting, which generally distracts only the
texter and recipient.
In D.C. public schools, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts provides an exception to
the cellphone-usage ban, allowing cellphones to be used at lunch but not in class.
"Most students follow the rule well," said Rory Pullens, chief executive of Duke
Ellington. "Our students have a long school day, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with rehearsals
and performances that often run until 10 p.m., so they must be able to communicate
with parents."
But Margaret Gushue, 17, a junior at the school, said she has classmates "who text
throughout class, with their cellphones in full view." The scofflaws, she said, are "usually
the students who would otherwise be talking to the person next to them the whole time."
Amy Hemmati, 18, a senior at Walter Johnson, said texters "seem to be following their
own moral code: They'll text during lectures but not during labs or tests, or they'll text in
classes that they don't think are important."
Schools that allow students to leave at lunch have no say in cellphone use off campus.
89
Some parents said they are content with the on-campus prohibition, as long as they can
reconnect with their children at the end of the day.
"If it's a real emergency, I'll call the school and they'll get him, right?" said Marcio
Duffles, father of a senior at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in the District.
But he sometimes forgets the rules. "I know I've inadvertently called my son during [my]
lunchtime," Duffles said, "and he'd be in class, and he'd quickly pick up and say, 'I'm in
class.'"
Maureen Thompson has received text messages from her son, a freshman at Watkins
Mill, at lunchtime, when it is prohibited. She approves of opening lunchtime to
cellphones, but not class time: "Students are obsessed with texting and would do so 247 if permitted."
Malik reasons that cellphones at lunch are a harmless distraction. "If students know that
there is a designated time to use cellphones," she wrote in her resolution, "students
may be less tempted to use them during class hours." The measure has garnered
mixed reviews from educators; board members might choose to narrow the resolution
into a small pilot program.
Some teachers fear that once students are allowed to turn their phones on, they will
never turn them off.
At Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, students have recently been
permitted to listen to portable music devices at lunch. But according to social studies
teacher Marc Grossman, easing iPod limits has led to "increased confrontations
between teachers and students" at other times. Malik's proposal, he wrote the school
board, "will simply embolden students who push the envelope."
Citation:
de Vise, Daniel. "Students Crave a Break on Cellphone Ban." Washington Post
(Washington, DC). 01 Jun 2009: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
90
Washington Post
(Washington, DC)
Jun 19, 2010, p. A.1
Copyright © The Washington Post Company Jun 19, 2010. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Turn Off the Cell and Tune In
By Michael Birnbaum
That silent, studious classroom? Looks can deceive, say Prince George's County
educators, who have fired the latest volley in a technological arms race that pits student
against teacher.
There is an epidemic of under-the-desk text messages during class, a virtual economy
of exam pictures posted to Facebook, a trade in school fight videos on YouTube, they
say. To combat it, the county school board voted Thursday to ban cellphones and other
electronics during the school day, even as many school systems across the country are
loosening their rules.
Nor will students be allowed to post photos and videos shot on school property on the
Web, which would include such sites as Facebook and YouTube.
The ban is the strongest among school systems in the Washington area.
"We know for a fact that the use of cellphones on school property around this country
has led to a number of problems around safety," said Board of Education Chairman
Verjeana M. Jacobs (At Large), citing issues of explicit text messages and videos of
fights posted online--one case of which happened just last week at Bowie High School.
"It's a tough policy," Jacobs said. She added that the board worked with its attorney to
be as strict as legally possible.
School systems across the country have had to balance the demands of students and
parents, many of whom like being able to stay in contact during the day, with concerns
from teachers, who say cellphones' expanding capabilities go hand-in-hand with
expanded opportunities for distraction and trouble.
Montgomery County last year decided to allow students at many high schools to use
cellphones during lunch. New York, by contrast, bars students from even having the
devices at school, and it prevailed in a lawsuit by parents challenging the rule.
91
Prince George's has restricted cellphone use in the past, but the consequences for
violations were unclear and unevenly applied, officials said.
Under the new policy, students may carry cellphones during the day, but the phones
must be turned off and put away, not simply silenced. On rare occasions, officials said,
students may get permission from teachers to use the phones. During after-school
activities, students will need the permission of a teacher or coach to use cellphones.
And photos and videos taken on school property, whether with a cellphone or a camera,
may not be shared electronically, ruling out sites such as Facebook, MySpace and
YouTube.
The policy would not ban parents from posting their students' photographs, Jacobs said.
"The intent is not to prohibit fun activities where you can enjoy families and enjoy
children in their sports events," Jacobs said. "The intent is to know what's happening
and to know what's going on." For example, she said, "at an awards ceremony, I
envision that an administrator would give approval to take pictures, and here's an
appropriate time to come up front and take pictures."
Students will have their phones confiscated for the day on the first offense. Their
parents will have to pick up the phone the second time. After three offenses, students
will be forbidden to bring a phone to school for the rest of the year.
The rule was passed 7 to 2, with the student board member, Edward Burroughs III, and
board member Linda Thornton Thomas (District 4) opposed. Rosalind Johnson (District
1) was not at the meeting.
Burroughs, who just graduated from Crossland High School in Temple Hills, called the
new rules flawed. "My fear is that this is nothing but a feel-good policy that will make the
board feel like it acted on something," he said.
Many teachers cheered the decision, but students weren't as happy. Several spoke
against the ban at Thursday's meeting.
"The policy would not fix any distractions caused by cellphones but rather create new
distractions caused by the inefficiencies of this policy," said Richard Lucas, a student at
Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro.
Another student from Wise said she didn't question the need to crack down during class
time. But she argued that cellphones actually can help learning if they are used during
free time to access news and information.
"At the end of the day, we are in school to learn," Obianuju Okonkwo said. "Why not
also extend that time to lunchtime?"
92
In the District, cellphone use is restricted, but principals have discretion in how to
enforce the rules, said schools spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway.
In Fairfax County, which nominally has a ban, principals also use their discretion, said
schools spokesman Paul Regnier. Phones are off-limits in class, but in a hallway, "a kid
says, 'I'm talking to my mother.' The mother's fine with it, the kid's fine with it, so what's
the problem here?" he said.
Many in Prince George's did see a problem. One teacher said that cellphones and text
messaging were a plague in his classroom and that if students want to phone home,
they are welcome to use the land line on his desk.
"Some of the kids are so hooked on [cellphones] that from the first day of school, they
don't even give their class a chance," said Doug Bishop, a social studies teacher at
Suitland High School. His complaints prompted school board member Donna Hathaway
Beck (At Large) to propose the policy. "Text messaging is going on all the time," he
said. When he talked to his class in advance of the ban, he said, some students were
defiant, saying that nobody would take their phones away.
His top students, however, said their distracted peers distracted them.
The ban on posting images to the Web is likely to be the most controversial and hardest
to enforce, students said.
Officials said they expect enforcement to be done in a measured way. They do not plan
to assign someone to patrol Facebook, Jacobs said. But they will enforce the ban if
alerted that inappropriate photos or videos have been posted.
And there likely won't be disciplinary consequences when a video of a school fight
posted online enables officials to catch the perpetrators, as was the case last week, she
said.
"I think that's where the discretion will come in," she said. "Clearly, in that case, I would
be remiss in saying that was not helpful."
Beck said the school system's next target concerning the technology is teachers, who
can be as guilty as students in their classroom cellphone use. But that will have to come
as part of contract negotiations, she said.
birnbaumm@washpost.com
Citation:
93
Birnbaum, Michael. "Turn Off the Cell and Tune In." Washington Post (Washington, DC). 19
Jun 2010: A.1. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012
94
Chicago Tribune
(Chicago, IL)
Jan 19, 2012, n.p.
Associated Press.
Viral Chicago Video Points to Disturbing Trend
By Jason Keyser and Michael Tarm
CHICAGO (AP) — It seems to defy the logic of committing crimes in a way to avoid
getting caught: Ruffians intentionally recording themselves on video beating and
robbing someone, then posting it on YouTube so anyone anywhere can see it, including
police.
The latest example of this disturbing but increasingly common phenomenon comes from
Chicago, where police Wednesday arrested seven teens who apparently did just that.
Their video had gone viral and led to their arrest within just days of the Sunday
afternoon attack.
The practice, some experts say, is a modern twist on the age-old human penchant for
boasting about one's exploits to impress the community at large and to warn perceived
rivals that their group is more powerful than others.
"Medieval warriors putting the heads of their enemies on sticks, scalping and even
school yard brawls in the '50s — they're all ways of displaying that dominance in public,"
said Pam Rutledge, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based psychologist who heads the Media
Psychology Research Center. "These new tools — the Internet, YouTube — just let you
spread the word much farther."
Throughout the more than three-minute video, the attackers — many with sweat shirt
hoods over their heads and some wearing masks — are seen yelling at the visibly
terrified victim, punching and kicking him in the face with apparent glee as he curled up
on the snow-covered ground. Police believe the lone girl involved lured the victim to the
alley on the city's South Side.
Posting incriminating material online might also reveal a shaky grasp of how cyberspace
works.
95
"These guys are bragging online without understanding they just provided irrefutable
evidence of a crime," she said. "It says something both about their naiveté — and their
stupidity."
Speaking to reporters in Chicago Wednesday, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy
noted that episodes of youth violence ending up in online videos have become more
frequent everywhere.
"This is a national epidemic," he said. "It's not something that's particular to Chicago."
The Chicago teens were charged in the beating and robbery of a 17-year-old high
school student in an incident that stemmed from a previous dispute last October, police
said. Police said the posted video helped to identify the alleged attackers.
One teen was charged as an adult. The rest — a 15-year-old girl, two 16-year-old boys
and three 15-year-old boys — were cited in juvenile delinquency petitions. All face one
count each of robbery and aggravated battery, including the teen who recorded the
video.
A striking aspect of the video is just how at ease the attackers seem about being filmed.
One even pauses from kicking and punching the victim's face to calmly instruct whoever
is holding the camera how to compose the shot. He then walks back and resumes
pummeling the boy.
Viewers who posted comments online identified the alleged attackers by name,
including 17-year-old Raymond Palomino, who appeared in bond court Wednesday, his
head bowed and looking ill-at ease. His bail was set at $100,000. Palomino's face is
visible in the video.
Police said the attackers stole shoes, a wallet and $180 in cash from the victim, who
was treated at a hospital for a laceration to his lip, bruises and abrasions.
Another website provided an outlet to fan the flames leading up to the attack.
Raymond Palomino's father claimed Sunday's beating followed an after-school attack
on Raymond and another boy. Michael Palomino, a Cook County sheriff's deputy, said
incendiary comments posted on Facebook after the alleged beating of his son
contributed to the situation spiraling out of control.
"They're making it sound like he did everything," Palomino said, speaking to reporters
following his son's initial appearance in court Wednesday. "It's just one side of the
story."
The sheriff's deputy, who said he turned his son in after seeing the viral video,
conceded what his son did was wrong. But he also accused prosecutors of
exaggerating his son's role.
96
McCarthy, the city's top cop, shared the bewilderment of many officials and observers
about why the teens saw fit to post the video, thereby incriminating themselves.
But while older Americans may express astonishment that someone behaving badly
would take the added step of displaying that behavior online, it doesn't surprise teens
who have never known a world without the Internet, said Tim Hwang, president of the
750,000-member National Youth Association.
"There's an impulse with youth today to put everything online, so the fact (this beating)
was posted online doesn't itself make it more exceptional," said Hwang, 19.
Since always thinking in terms of cyberspace is second nature to today's youth, it
wouldn't immediately strike them as odd that the alleged attackers thought in those
terms, too, he added.
The video-recorded attack in Chicago isn't the first to attract attention on the Web. In
2009, footage of the fatal beating of a 16-year-old honor student was circulated
worldwide.
In that video, captured by a cellphone camera, Derrion Albert is seen being punched, hit
on the head with large boards and kicked in the head. The fight broke out after classes
were dismissed at a high school on Chicago's South Side.
Four teens were sentenced to lengthy prison terms last year in that case, which sparked
outrage around the country. A fifth suspect tried as a juvenile was ordered to remain
imprisoned until he turns 21.
The most recent incident was different in that the attack was videotaped by someone
apparently affiliated with the attackers. The Albert attack was recorded by a bystander.
That these latest attackers beat the victim and uploaded the video to YouTube not only
illustrated their immaturity, it also suggests they are deeply insecure, somehow
calculating that the stunt would boost their social standing, Rutledge said.
If that was their thinking, they badly miscalculated.
"They are getting the opposite reinforcement that they intended," Rutledge said, citing
the arrests. "They put it up to show how cool and tough they were. Instead, it left people
thinking, 'You guys are complete idiots.'"
Citation:
97
Keyser, Jason, and Michael Tarm. "Viral Chicago Video Points to Disturbing Trend."
Chicago Tribune. 19 Jan 2012: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 16 Mar 2012.
98
Tough call: should all cell phone use by drivers be
banned?
Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication , January 23, 2012
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Hold the phone? Put it away altogether, says the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The federal
agency recently recommended that states ban all cell phone use by drivers, including sending text messages
and making calls with both handheld and hands-free devices. The recommendation is part of an effort to reduce
the number of accidents caused by drivers distracted by mobile devices.
Those who agree with the proposal cite studies showing that talking on the phone impairs a driver's ability to
concentrate on the road. They say no call or text is important enough to put so many people in danger. Others,
however, think that a ban all cell phone use by drivers is too broad. Many opponents of the recommendation
believe that keeping calls short or using a hands-free device makes talking on the phone while driving safer.
Other critics argue that enforcing such bans would be impractical.
Should driving while using a cell phone be banned? Current Events student reporters Jessica Schloskey and
Joseph Maneen each sounded off on the issue.
PLEASE HOLD
Cell phone usage should definitely not be allowed while driving. It seriously distracts the driver, which could
potentially have very dangerous consequences. A 2009 study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found
that a texting driver is at a 25 percent higher risk of being involved in a crash than a nontexting one. "It's a huge
distraction and causes a lot of accidents," says Sarah Ludwig, a ninth grader at Belvidere High School in Illinois.
Additionally, many think that banning hands-free devices would be a bit extreme, but think again. The same
study found that headset use is not much safer than handheld phone use, and the University of Utah reported
that using a phone while driving--whether it requires hands or not--delays a driver's reactions as much as would
a 0.08 percent blood alcohol concentration, the legal limit in most states.
At the end of the day, distracted drivers not only put themselves at risk, they also put everyone else on the road
at risk. Though some people will probably continue to believe that their conversations are more important than
focusing on driving, banning the use of phones while in the driver's seat would make the road a considerably
safer place.
PHONE IT IN
I do not think that a government-enforced ban on cell phone use while driving is a good idea. The NTSB has
reported that it is distracting to talk on the phone while driving. While that may be true, there are options that help
keep a driver's attention on the road, such as hands-free devices. Stacie Buco, a teacher at Nettle Middle School
in Haverhill, Mass., agrees. "As someone that has a hands-free device, I don't think it has a negative effect on
my driving," she says. "I abide by the rules, and I'm sure others will too."
99
While it may be distracting to talk on the phone while driving, it's also distracting to do maw other activities, such
as eating, drinking, applying makeup, and--something we've all done--listening and singing along to the radio. If
the government forbids phone use in the car, it must ban those things too.
These days, almost everybody has a cell phone. Enforcing a ban would be incredibly hard, and many would feel
that their rights were being taken away if they could not use their judgment in their own cars. Restriction of cell
phone use in the car is going too far.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Should drivers be allowed to use cell phones? Tell us at edce@weeklyreader.
Schloskey, Jessica^Maneen, Joseph
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Weekly Reader Corp.
http://www.weeklyreader.com
Source Citation:
Maneen, Joseph, and Jessica Schloskey. "Tough call: should all cell phone use by
drivers be banned?" Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication 23 Jan. 2012: 7.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
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layGroupName=Magazines&disableHighlighting=false&prodId=OVIC&action=
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A278276773
100
Texting, driving and insurance
The New York Times , January 14, 2012
Last month, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a nationwide ban on the use of cellphones and
other ''portable electronic devices'' while driving.
''It is time for all of us to stand up for safety by turning off electronic devices when driving,'' the board's chairman,
Deborah A.P. Hersman, said in a statement.
It's uncertain whether the board's call will be heeded, given the public's addiction to instant electronic
communication, any time and anywhere. But the proposal has generated discussion. One provocative idea was
floated by a man from Boulder, Colo. He suggested, in a letter published in The Wall Street Journal, that
insurance companies could curtail distracted driving if they simply refused to pay claims for accidents caused by
texting. (Many states specifically ban texting while driving, but enforcement varies.)
That sounded like an intriguing proposal to us here at Bucks - one that could be applied to all sorts of bad driving
behavior, including drunken driving.
The idea, though, seems to be a nonstarter. Insurance companies, and even a consumer advocate, make the
point that coverage for injuries to yourself or others as a result of an accident - even one caused by careless or
just plain stupid behavior - is one of the main reasons to buy insurance in the first place.
''An accident is an accident,'' says Mark Romano, an insurance specialist with the Consumer Federation of
America. ''And if you're reckless enough to do things you shouldn't be doing, then your insurance is there to
cover you.''
Dick Luedke, a spokesman for State Farm, said in an e-mail that the insurer typically pays for accidents, even if
the driver is intoxicated. ''Generally speaking, we fulfill our promise even when the person to whom we make the
promise violates the law, and we fulfill our promise to the person who texts while driving, whether or not that
person is violating the law.''
''That's the point of insurance,'' Mr. Luedke said, in a follow-up phone call. He also noted that while the spotlight
currently is on texting and cellphone use, there are all sorts of other ways drivers can become distracted,
whether by disciplining children in the back seat, eating lunch or even fiddling with the radio: ''Where do you draw
the line?''
There's also the problem of innocent parties who are injured. Say you are texting and not paying attention, and
you strike a pedestrian, who incurs big medical bills. Typically, your insurance would pay for the victim's care,
since you caused the accident. Would it be fair to tell the victim, ''Sorry, that's not covered? The driver was
texting so we can't cover you?'' said Loretta Worters, vice president of the Insurance Information Institute, an
industry group, in an e-mail. ''We have an obligation to pay that claim, to protect that innocent bystander, even if
you were stupid.''
Of course, if drivers repeatedly get in accidents, whether due to drunken driving or texting or another reason, the
insurer is likely to jack up their premiums, or cancel their coverage.
101
Ms. Worters noted that the industry is taking steps to educate the public about the dangers of texting while
driving.
What do you think? Is there an argument to be made for not covering accidents caused by texting or other bad
driving behavior?
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO: The aftermath of an accident caused by texting while driving. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT
COHEN/ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS)
By ANN CARRNS
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 The New York Times Company.
http://www.nytimes.com
Source Citation:
Carrns, Ann. "Texting, driving and insurance." New York Times 14 Jan. 2012: B4(L). Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
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Identity Theft Can Lead to Lawsuits Against Victims
Identity Theft , 2012
Mark Sayre is an investigative reporter for a television station in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Even when you are a victim of identity theft, you might be held liable for damages that an identity thief
incurred without your knowledge. Innocent consumers might face trial in court if prosecutors believe that
victims of identity theft did not keep their private data safe and might have encouraged ID theft.
Imagine having your identity stolen—and then someone uses your personal information to commit a crime.
Sound bad enough? Then imagine you get sued for not protecting your own identity.
Those are the allegations in a lawsuit filed in Clark County [Nevada]. This case is taking some of the issues
surrounding identity theft to a new level.
An Innocent Person Being Sued
Your personal information stolen and used to commit a crime. You don't even live in the state where the crime
occurred. One day in the mail arrives a legal summons—saying you are being sued for that crime you didn't even
know about.
It all started in December of 2005—when the driver of a rented jeep hit and killed 18-year-old Sonia Silva on
Flamingo Road just outside of the Rio Hotel. At the wheel—Philip Thomson of Las Vegas—who used a fake
Oregon driver's license for the rental.
According to this lawsuit—that license contained the name of Neerav Shah, and the license number of another
man, Joseph Parker. Now—both Oregon men are being sued.
"Shah and Parker had a duty of care to keep their identities from being used unlawfully and fraudulently and/or
actively participating in the act of creating or allowing others to create the fake driver's license. Shah and Parker
breached that duty when their information was used to rent the Jeep," said Parker, reading from the lawsuit.
Parker says he was stunned to find out he was named in a Nevada lawsuit. "And really I consider myself to be a
victim in this as well—not one of the culprits," he said.
Blaming the Victim
He was being sued essentially for being the victim of a crime. "Right—which this person committed against me
who rented the vehicle," he said.
"Somebody used my name and committed a crime," said Shah. Neerav Shah has credit card receipts for the
dates in question—showing he was at home in Oregon. And while the suit does not accuse him of being the
driver—he feels victimized.
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"Yeah, it is frustrating. It is like you are powerless—anyone can file a lawsuit against you without any merits or
anything. It has taken time away from work for myself, it has caused mental stress, it caused a lot of stress for
myself and my family," said Shah.
Las Vegas attorney Will Kemp represents the victim's family—he declined the I-Team's request to appear on
camera.
In a phone interview—Kemp says the driver, Philip Thomson, told him during a jail deposition that one of the two
Oregon men stole the other's identity and sent it to Thomson to use.
Both men say—that's nonsense.
"Completely random. I mean the person could have opened the phone book and gotten my name out of it," said
Shah.
"No, I don't have any idea how my licenses were stolen. Actually, I have never lost my licenses themselves so
the information itself must have been stolen either from some database or maybe a company where I used my
license, photocopied it and that got stolen or anybody that ever took down my license number for any kind of
rental that I have ever done," said Parker.
A Difficult Defense
Both Parker and Shah have contacted their respective insurance companies to defend themselves from this legal
action. And—they are both placing some measure of confidence in the legal system.
"Well, I can't imagine a judge or a jury would actually reward somebody for this," said Shah.
As for Philip Thomson, he was charged with and pled guilty to driving under the influence with substantial bodily
harm in the death of Sonia Silva. Last September [2007], he was sentenced to between two and 15 years in
state prison.
As for the civil lawsuit involving the alleged identity theft—a jury trial is being requested but, so far, no trial date is
set.
Further Readings
Books
Alessandro Acquisti, et al, eds. Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies, and Practices. New York: Auerbach
Publications, 2008.
Jack Balkin, et al, eds. Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment. New York University Press,
2006.
Marc Benioff Behind the Cloud. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Martin Biegelman Identity Theft Handbook: Detection, Prevention, and Security. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009.
104
Kenneth Brancik Insider Computer Fraud: An In-depth Framework for Detecting and Defending Against
Insider IT Attacks. New York: Auerbach Publications, 2008.
Susan Brenner Law in An Era of Smart Technology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2007.
James Broderick and Darren Miller Consider the Source: A Critical Guide to 100 Prominent News and
Information Sites on the Web. Medford, NJ: CyberAge Books, 2007.
Stefan Fafinski Computer Misuse: Response, Regulation and the Law. Cullompton, United Kingdom: Willan,
2009.
Peter Grabosky Electronic Crime. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Denis Kelly The Official Identity Theft Prevention Handbook: Everyone's Identity Has Already Been
Stolen—Learn What You Can Do About It. New York: Sterling and Ross Publishers, 2011.
William Manz, ed. Federal Identity Theft Law: Major Enactments of the 108th Congress. Buffalo, NY: William
S. Hein & Co., 2005.
John McBrewster, Frederic Miller, and Agnes Vandome Internet Fraud: Phishing, Spoofing Attack, Pharming,
Click Fraud, Spyware, Ticket Resale, Hushmail, Backscatter (e-mail), Romance Scam, Lottery Scam, Make
Money Fast, Caller ID Spoofing. Beau Bassin, Mauritius: Alphascript Publishing, 2009.
Samuel McQuade Understanding and Managing Cybercrime. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2006.
Scott Mitic Stopping Identity Theft: 10 Easy Steps to Security. Berkeley, CA: NOLO, 2009.
David Post In Search of Jefferson's Moose. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Salvatore J. Stolfo, Steven M. Bellovinn, Shlomo Hershkop, Angelos Keromytis, Sara Sinclair, and Sean W.
Smith, eds. Insider Attack and Cyber Security: Beyond the Hacker. New York: Springer, 2008.
Ian Walden Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press,
2007.
David Wall Cybercrimes: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age. Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Polity, 2007.
Michael Wallace and Larry Webber IT Policies & Procedures: Tools & Techniques That Work. New York:
Aspen Publishers, 2008.
Matthew Williams Virtually Criminal: Crime, Deviance and Regulation Online. London, United Kingdom:
Routledge, 2006.
Majid Yar Cybercrime and Society. London, United Kingdom: Sage, 2006.
Periodicals and Internet Sources
John Barnham "Russia's Cybercrime Haven," Security Management, November 2008.
Jacob Barron "An Ideal Setting: the Increased Risk of Fraud and Identity Theft During and After the
Recession," Business Credit, March 2010.
Carolyn Bigda "ID Theft: Are You the Next Victim?" Money, April 18, 2006.
The Economist "If in Doubt, Farm It Out," June 1, 2006.
The Economist "Selling People's Secrets," July 13, 2010.
Lauren Exnicios "Protecting Yourself Against Identity Theft," Soldiers, February 2008.
Richard Gamble "Identity Theft Defenses," Independent Banker, February 2009.
105
Institute of Medicine (IOM) "Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through
Research," February 2009. http://iom.edu.
Janice L. Kephart "Identity and Security: Moving Beyond the 9/11 Staff Report on Identity Document
Security," 9/11 Security Solutions, February 23, 2007.
Marshall Kirkpatrick "Facebook's Zuckerberg Says the Age of Privacy Is Over," ReadWriteWeb.com, January
9, 2010.
Jason Krause "Stolen Lives," ABA Journal, March 21, 2006.
Josh Lowensohn and Caroline McCarthy "Lessons from Twitter's Security Breach," CNet.com, July 15, 2009.
www.cnet.com.
Belinda Luscombe "Tiger Text: An iPhone App for Cheating Spouses?" Time, February 26, 2010.
www.time.com.
William J. Lynn III "Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy," Foreign Affairs,
September-October 2010.
John Markoff "A Code for Chaos," New York Times, October 2, 2010.
Paul Ohm "Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization," UCLA Law
Review, August 14, 2009.
Maya Jackson Randall "UPDATE: ID Theft Ranks No. 1 on FTC Consumer Complaint List," Wall Street
Journal, March 8, 2011.
Jeffrey Rosen "Nude Breach," The New Republic, December 13, 2010.
Jeffrey Rosen "The Web Means the End of Forgetting," New York Times, July 21, 2010.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg "Don't Look Now, But Here Come the New, New Bank Fees," Wall Street Journal,
November 6, 2010.
Vinod Sreeharsha "Google and Yahoo Win Appeal in Argentine Case," New York Times, August 20, 2010.
Adam Thierer "The Media Cornucopia," City Journal, Spring 2007.
Meredith Whitney "The Credit Crunch Continues," Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2009.
Walt Williams "State Lawmakers Challenge REAL ID Act," The State Journal (Charleston, WV), January 24,
2008.
Kim Zetter "Google Hackers Targeted Source Code of More Than 20 Companies," Wired Threat Level,
January 13, 2010.
Source Citation:
Sayre, Mark. "Identity Theft Can Lead to Lawsuits Against Victims." Identity Theft. Ed.
Stefan Kiesbye. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. from "I-Team:
Strange Case Takes Identity Theft to New Level." 8NewsNow.com. 2007. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.
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