I failed at blogging yesterday 'cause I was busy with Real Life Things. O_o I know. It happens sometimes.
However, today I come to you with A Story. :D Apparently some kid brought a gun to my old high school and shot the security officer dude, and then I think made a bomb threat or something. The officer is fine, and the kid was taken away, but several schools had to be locked down because of the bomb threat. This whole story has circulated around Facebook today, and now people are passing links to his Twitter around, too. And this kid... let me tell you, he's a real winner.
I'm not going to post a name or a Twitter account, or quote him directly, but there were at least 15 tweets involving guns, bombs, and death of some sort. I just glanced over the first page, all the tweets before the shooting occurred, and as one of my friends put it: this probably could have been prevented. But that's where I find issues.
On the one hand, if the authorities had access to this kid's tweets, they might have been able to keep the shooting from happening. They would have had to have access to his location, full name, and school information, but they could have prevented it theoretically.
On the other hand, would it have been an invasion of his privacy? It's a public place, his tweets aren't protected, so anyone can see them. But his information, unless he makes it public, should be protected by Twitter, right? And he should be allowed to say whatever he wants on his own Twitter, right?
So what should be done about these kinds of situations? Everyone's always saying that the world has become obsessed with social media and the internet and instant everything, and it's true. I'm part of it, of course, and I love Facebook and Twitter, but even though they're on the internet I still consider it sort of private and personal. It's my own corner of the internet. And no one can tell me what to post, or not to post, and if I don't want you to have access, I don't think you should be able to see it, police, government, or not.
In a case where monitoring social media could potentially save lives, is it better to protect our freedom of speech, or to violate those rights but keep more situations like this from happening?
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Social media's already been used in court cases, mainly just photos and as an alibi, and many employees have been fired for FB statuses and the like. As long as a warrant is issued or the company gives up the information, it's free for everyone to see.
ReplyDeletePublicity nullifies "invasion of privacy".
But you said that last part, so I just repeated you. Hah.
ReplyDeleteTwitter accounts like any other social networking account can be made private or friends only. My Twitter account happens to be private, so only my approved friends can read it. He posted publicly to everyone that comes across his page can read it.
ReplyDeleteTake another example, Lindsay Lohan. Her Twitter is not private and everyone in the world can read it, she publicly posted about her failing a drug test. She can easily make her tweets private, but since she has fans, what is the point. Her life happening are really nobody's business but hers, but because she posted about her drug tests and current events online publicly, it becomes everyone's business.
The cops or whatever may not be able to lurk his posts and do anything about it, they may not have been able to prevent it, but maybe one of his followers, his real life friends could have spoken directly to him and lent out a helping hand or someone to talk to.
@Jacci - that is a really good point, that one of his friends could have done something about it. It didn't even occur to me. *facepalm* Apparently it didn't occur to them, either. But that is an excellent point, that people reading your posts and tweets should report it to someone if you, I don't know, TALK ABOUT MAKING BOMBS AND BRINGING A GUN TO SCHOOL. -_- People.
ReplyDelete@Carmen - I'm not saying that things posted on the internet are private, but like Jacci said, you can make it MORE private, and in those cases I think anyone who doesn't have permission to see it is violating your privacy. This kid didn't make anything private, so in his case, monitoring or whatever wouldn't have been an invasion of privacy. Monitoring ALL tweets from EVERYONE, regardless of privacy settings, would be a problem. =/
But you're right, ultimately, that it's not really private, and it's unfortunately true that social media is being used to solve crimes/fire people/keep people from getting jobs/etc. I have enough to say about that for another entire post, though. XD
Also these posts always seem so epically long to me when I write them, and then when I post them they look all itty bitty and short. =/
His tweets the past week have all been pointed cries for help. I'm sure that one of his friends who follows his Twitter tipped of the police about his posts. The fact is that someone should have taken it seriously sooner. I know hindsight is 20/20 but they are all so PAINFULLY obvious. Any person in their right mind should have realized that this kid was planning something terrible, and it wasn't just teenage angst. Luckily for us all, it didn't go the way C.H. planned. He was clearly not planning to live through the ordeal. I'm sure he expected the SRO to kill him if he wasn't able to kill the SRO first--suicide by cop, basically. It's a particularly disturbing method of suicide, and combined with the fact that he planted pipe bombs, which he references in his tweets, and it's obvious his intent was to hurt a whole lot of people. I think he should have the book thrown at him as an adult when he is charged and sentenced.
ReplyDeleteI think your question was more concerning the social media aspect of the situation and the degree of perceived privacy, though. As you've said, he could have chosen to leave his Tweets private, but it seems plain that he intended to leave this as his sort of manifesto. It's not farfetched and it's happened many times before.
I think that the authorities have more than a right to monitor public postings on social media websites if they threaten or insinuate attacks on the public, it's an obligation. I'm glad that no one was seriously hurt, but this should be a lesson to anyone who sees things like that posted online. It's not a joke, it's very real and potentially deadly.
The procedure for locking down the school in the event of a shooter roaming the halls is for every classroom to lock their doors and turn on the lights.
ReplyDeleteIn this case they believed they apprehended the only suspect and that bombs may be in the building, so they had everybody sit in the bleachers.
If the suspect had an accomplice anywhere (worst case scenario would be sitting in the bleachers with other students), then having everybody in the bleachers would be a potentially lethal megafail.
If safety were higher up in their priorities they would evacuate into dispersed groups around the school.
[removed several lines of cynical and bitter speculation about what is higher priority than safety]
off* the lights obviously
ReplyDeletekekeke
@Amy - Thank you for reading and commenting. That is all very true, and it's very sad to think that no one took his tweets seriously, but honestly I don't think anyone did. Someone mentioned that he didn't have that many followers (before he became "famous," that is), and the sad truth is that most of the time kids are too afraid to mention these things to authorities. They're either scared they won't be taken seriously or don't want to "rat out" a friend or something. Also, I feel (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that things get taken a lot less seriously when they come from social media websites. Whenever I say I heard something on Facebook, I feel like that somehow makes it less believable, just because it came from Fecebook. It's silly, but since they're such public sites, I guess people view everything as sort of a show. Like you're not going to put anything REAL on Facebook or Twitter, because so many people can see it, etc. So maybe the kids reading his Twitter were afraid to tell the principal "_____'s Twitter is talking about bombs and killing himself and stuff," because they thought it would be viewed as JUST a cry for attention. I know you probably know all of this, and it's not really an argument or anything, I'm just saying I don't think it's likely that anyone tipped off the police or school authorities based on his Twitter. Most of this assumption is because I think if they had, there would have been no opportunity for him to shoot the officer - either they would have shut the school down or used the metal detectors or something, had they had a tip.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I was mostly questioning whether or not monitoring social media should be used as a means of preventing crimes like this. Specifically the ones that are made private, because as we've mentioned, the public ones are fair game.
As an aside, I'm very sad that a kid this young (the news said he was a 9th grader) felt so badly and went to such extremes, and no one (I'm just assuming, again) noticed or cared enough to help him out. It's a tragic story all around, although as you said, it could have been a heck of a lot more tragic. I'm very glad it didn't go the way he'd planned.
@Saikron - I kind of agree with that, but I think they probably did the best they could. It's hard to come up with an absolutely 100% safe situation with something like that. There are far too many variables, things that could go wrong or just randomly happen... but I think they did their best under the pressure of the situation. Not to say that the school people handled this well in any way - they have metal detectors that they're not even using? What is the point of that? Why did we pay for those if you're not going to use them? Seriously. =/
Okay, so it turns out I know someone who is related to this kid. Now I kinda feel bad. He was teased A LOT and his parents were barely in his life (the only times they were, it was unpleasant).
ReplyDeleteHey, about internet privacy...Well, as I see it, our "rights" disappear when we involve intention of violence (to yourself or others) or something illegal in general. In that respect, there is no privacy. Even on a closed site (privacy settings and all), if the police catch you with child porn, for example, then you are just plain implicated. When the law is directly involved, you have no privacy rights. That's when we realize that we never had any.
ReplyDelete@Carmen - that is really sad. =/ I guess it makes more sense now, but it still sucks. Poor kid.
ReplyDelete@olabimpe - I would agree with all of that, but does it violate our rights for the authorities to be SEARCHING for anything illegal? I mean, your rights go away when you're violating someone else's, but does that mean it's okay for the police or whoever to invade our privacy just waiting for that to happen? =/ It's a tricky subject.
yeah, but then people get in a huff about foresight, how we have to be protected and how the police need to be in control. It's these same people that want to be left alone. The potential for illegality is what drives the police. They have to work on "prevention" to be able to legitimize their existence. Otherwise, what is their job? Stop things after the fact? In this world of increasing pace, that's just not good enough.
ReplyDeleteIt may or may not be fair, but the police have access to everything. There is no internet privacy. It's far too accessible to leave it alone. The privacy you have lies in your head. Sucks? Maybe. But our society kinda demands it.