School Staff Now Allowed To Probe Social Media for Online Threats
The security coordinator for the Howard County Public School System said each school will have the capacity to look into Facebook, Twitter situations.
As school starts in Howard County, so does a new program to investigate online threats to students. Kevin Burnett, coordinator of security for the Howard County Public School System (HCPSS), said that a staff member at each school has been authorized to look into potential situations arising out of social media. Previously, all staff at HCPSS institutions were firewalled from using social media sites, said Burnett. “If there’s a rumor that something is on Facebook or Twitter, that security officer is going to have bypass access to pull that information up and conduct an investigation,” said Burnett in a phone interview with Patch. “That’s relatively new based on a meeting last year at Howard [High]," said Burnett. He was referencing an …
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Christine McComas
9:27 am on Thursday, September 20, 2012
This is Grace McComas' mother.... Jack, that's a fair question...as I understand it (via a friend, very un-official), the principal and SRO (on-site HCPD officer) could look. They are not just going to troll for information.... But in our case, the bully was literally ending tweets with death threats, and I told the counselor and SRO and asked if he could look just to verify it was there, but he … more ›