[Infowarrior] - The Profile Police

[Richard Forno]

The Profile Police
Campus Officers Cruise Facebook, MySpace for Clues To School-Related  
Crimes, to Some Students' Chagrin

By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 6, 2009; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501880_pf.html

As high school students flock to social networking sites, campus  
police are scanning their Facebook and MySpace pages for tips to help  
break up fights, monitor gangs and thwart crime in what amounts to a  
new cyberbeat.

Some students object to police looking over their shoulders. But  
officers responsible for school safety say routine checks of the  
online forums often add to the knowledge they glean from hallways or  
schoolyards.

"I can't tell you how many fights we've been able to prevent," said  
Officer Freddie Rappina, who is based at Robinson Secondary School in  
Fairfax County.

He and another officer watch over more than 4,000 students at the  
largest school in Virginia. In Rappina's small office at the end of a  
series of long hallways, a flat-panel computer screen offers him a  
portal into student life.

"Let's say two kids are having a spat online," he said. "I can take  
them in here and talk to them."

Students who have run away from home occasionally check in with their  
friends on the sites, providing him with information he can use to  
help get the kids to safety, Rappina added. But he said the computer  
is no substitute for face-to-face contact with students.

In recent years, school administrators have blamed some campus fights  
on Internet taunts and urged parents to keep watch on their children's  
computer activity. But students who use the Web to let their 500  
closest friends know what they are doing at all times are sometimes  
surprised that police are watching, too.

Police don't have special privileges on Facebook or MySpace. Students  
who want to go unobserved can change privacy settings so that their  
profiles are displayed only to a list of approved people. But the  
default settings leave those profiles open to many Internet users (in  
the case of Facebook) or all of them (in the case of MySpace).

Employers and college admissions counselors have vetted online  
profiles of student applicants for some time. Police across the  
country have been doing the same for the past two or three years, said  
Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for the Minnesota-based National Association  
of School Resource Officers.

"If you're already familiar with the technology, it doesn't take you  
but a couple of minutes to hook into the student population and keep  
an eye on things," Quinn said.

An expedition into a thicket of blinking MySpace profiles found high  
school students discussing drugs, sex and fights. It was all publicly  
available (although in language that caused a reporter to blush).

"It's crazy, the things they put on there," Loudoun County Sheriff  
Stephen O. Simpson said. "They seem to think they're invisible."

Simpson said some of his deputies, like authorities elsewhere,  
proactively track student profiles. That disturbs some of those being  
monitored.

"I think it's an invasion of the student's privacy," said Sarah  
Steinberg, 18, a senior at Robinson Secondary. She said her mother had  
access to her Facebook account and kept an eye on her online  
interactions. But she said there was a difference between the  
forgiving glance of a parent and the potentially more consequential  
surveillance of a police officer. "It's outside of school, and I just  
don't think it should be part of the school's job to do that," she said.

Her mother agreed: "I believe it's a parent's job," Judy Ottosen said.

But police say it is impossible to ignore an important school social  
sphere.

"Three or four years ago, 20 percent of kids" had Facebook or MySpace  
profiles, said Officer Joe Lowery, who is based at James Hubert Blake  
High School in Silver Spring. "Now if you ask, they almost all raise  
their hand."

Lowery said he and other Montgomery County officers who work in  
schools do not peruse the sites systematically. Even if they were  
inclined to do so, he said, they wouldn't have time. But Lowery said  
officers will log on, or ask students to log on to their own accounts,  
when students or parents approach them with concerns.

"You get some kids who are gang-involved," Lowery said. "A lot of  
these kids put it right on their Facebook or their MySpace. And you go  
to their site and they've got their colors up, they've got their  
pledges on there, sometimes they're even holding weapons. It can be  
very disturbing."

Lowery said parents often have little idea what their children are up  
to online. On occasion, he said, parents have brought printouts of  
profile pages for him to review. Last year, Lowery said, he solved an  
armed robbery of two Blake students when he turned up a picture on a  
MySpace profile of a man whose clothing exactly matched the students'  
description.

Late last month, Fairfax County police announced the arrests of seven  
Chantilly area teenagers for allegedly trying to recruit Franklin  
Middle School students to a gang. That investigation was aided when a  
student showed the school resource officer gang symbols littering one  
of the suspect's MySpace profiles.

Fairfax police say they pride themselves on addressing issues in  
schools before they flare into major problems. Keeping an eye on  
Facebook and MySpace has become an extra tool in that effort, they  
said. But some students were surprised that their profiles were  
subject to search.

"It's not really [their] business to be looking at students'  
profiles," said Eleni Gibson, 15, a freshman at Robinson. "Because  
they might see something that students didn't want them to see." But  
she acknowledged that the practice might be worthwhile for safety.

Others said they are aware that authorities might be cruising online  
student profiles.

"I think that we all know that [they] can look at our Facebooks, and  
they do," said LeighAnne Baxter, 17, a senior at Robinson. "If you do  
put up incriminating pictures, you have to be prepared for the  
consequences."