The USMC has banned Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networking sites citing a potential security risk. The ban is effective on these sites while Marines are at work, using the Corps’ equipment.  It does not effect Marines’ private use on personal computers outside of their jobs.

“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday.

“The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

The ban will last a year as of right now, coming after a warning in July that all web 2.0 sites could  cause network security issues. All types of viruses pass from user to user on these sites.

“The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users,” a Stratcom source told Wired.com.

“Yet many within the Pentagon’s highest ranks find value in the Web 2.0 tools. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The Department of Defense is getting ready to unveil a new home page, packed with social media tools. The Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook. Top generals now blog from the battlefield.”

It should be interesting to see how this pans out. The Pentagon even has a newly-appointed social media czar, Price Floyd.

“What we can’t do is let security concerns trump doing business. We have to do business… We need to be everywhere men and women in uniform are and the public is. If that’s MySpace and YouTube, that’s where we need to be, too,” Floyd said.

Check out the original article: Marines ban Twitter, Facebook, other sites

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A couple months ago I posted the cyber-bullying case involving Lori Drew. Drew, her then-13-year-old daughter, and a business associate created a MySpace profile of a fictitious boy and sent flirtatious messages to Megan Meier in the boy’s name to find out if Megan was spreading rumors about Drew’s daughter…

“The fake boy then dumped Megan in a message saying the world would be better without her.”

Megan Meier hung herself shortly after.

“Prosecutors charged Drew with four felony counts, but jurors rejected these for the lesser misdemeanor convictions and deadlocked on a fourth felony charge for conspiracy.”

They also rejected a recommendation from probation officers that Drew be given only probation and a $5,000 fine.

“The defendant has become the face of cyber-bullying. A probationary sentence might embolden others to use the Internet to torment and exploit children,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krause said in court documents.

“Prosecutors argued that Drew sought to humiliate Megan, who she knew suffered from depression and was suicidal. They also said Drew tried to conceal the scheme after Megan died and avoided taking responsibility.”

All in all the prosecutors want Lori Drew to serve over at least 3 years in prison and $300,000 in fines.

Drew was not directly charged with causing Megan’s death, but,  prosecutors did indict her under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,  in what is believed to be the nation’s first case of using this law related to cyber-bullying. In the past, the law has been used in hacking and trademark theft cases.

To view the original article, click here and here.

RealDealDocs.com is a division of Practice Technologies, Inc. the creators of SmartRules.com.
SmartRules provides step by step guides to local rules and civil procedure for state courts & federal courts throughout the country.

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In March 2007, a student referred to as J.S. and fellow classmante, K.L. posted a fake profile on MySpace depicting their principle in a negative light, putting it mildly. Showing Principle James S. McGonigle and using a photo that had been taken from the district’s Web site, the profile stated that he was a 40-year-old bisexual man whose interests included “being a tight ass,” “fucking in my office,” and “hitting on students and their parents.”

After the incident, both J.S. and K.L. were suspended from school for 10 days but this caused a parental outrage and J.S’s family filed suit. In court papers, the plaintiff’s team argued that the suspension ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, which claimed that a student’s speech may not be punished unless it caused a “substantial and material disruption at the school.”

However, U.S. District Judge James M. Munley disagreed, stating, “a school can validly restrict speech that is vulgar and lewd and also it can restrict speech that promotes unlawful behavior.”

As written on Law.com, “In the suit, attorneys Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Mary E. Kohart and Meredith W. Nissen of Drinker Biddle & Reath argued that the suspension was unconstitutional because the speech took place outside of school and because it violated the parental rights of the student’s parents to determine how best to raise, nurture, discipline and educate their child.”

Not so said Munley who rejected her civil rights suit. According to the judge, Tinker v. Des Moines “is not a good fit for every school speech situation.”

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There is a fine line between pulling a Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers and/or Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me versus a 40-something-year-old gym professor with teeny shorts, high socks, a wife-beater, glasses, perfectly parted hair, fifteen dollar cologne, and a little office where he often calls in the cutest middle school-aged girls for “advice on their dribble,” if you know what I mean.

We hear about these perv teachers, read about them, even find ourselves watching a bad Lifetime flick about them but what we see on the news or Lifetime TV is only a quarter of it. With technology at its prime, teachers have discovered new ways of reaching out to students. However, the debate is on full blast regarding MySpace and Facebook accounts. Basically, is social networking sites “socially acceptable” when it comes to a teacher-student relationship?

Randy Turner, a 52-year-old English teacher at South Middle School in Joplin, Missouri, signed up for MySpace, stating that it has improved his ability to reach the kids and help them to better achieve academic success.

“Just the very fact that I have MySpace makes them think, ‘Well, maybe we can talk to this guy and open the lines of communication,” said Turner. “I realized this is a major way of communication for them.”

Turner also claimed that students are beginning to add him as a friend and send him questions about assignments and that is when he realized he was onto something. And naturally, Turner makes us visualize Hilary Swank’s character, a free-spirited and highly passionate teacher who did everything in her power to reach out to her inner city students. Still…while some teachers have all the right intentions, what about the ones who deviate from the “teacher-student” boundaries, if there really are black and white boundaries anymore?

In Missouri, numerous student-teacher sexual relationships (that clearly deviate from even the most liberal state’s grayest of boundaries) have caused state legislator Jane Cunningham to sponsor a bill in the Missouri House of Representatives that would ban elementary school teachers from having social networking friendships with their students.

“I see where they are coming from,” Turner commented. “You can’t argue with people whose intentions are trying to protect children. But, the simple fact is, you take these people who prey on children and they are going to find a way to do it, whether it’s over Facebook or not. Those teachers are ruining it for the ones legitimately trying to help children.”

“There are so many kids who are stubborn against anything teachers say, who are struggling in the classroom and refuse to ask for help,” Turner continued. “When it’s so hard to reach these kids, why would you remove any of the weapons at your disposal to make a difference.”

While those teachers who have impacted their students (later resulting in movies reflecting their great and much applauded effort) was mainly due to their desire to go above and beyond what could be done in a classroom, like everything, there is always a flipside. Where there’s good, there’s bad. And the creepy gym teacher is often times the least of parent’s worries. On a site called badbadteacher.com, long lists of teachers who preyed on their students are displayed in every state and what’s even creepier than Mr. Short-shorts-wearing gym teacher is the fact that the majority of these teachers look normal, conservative, and…well, like the kind of people you’d expect to find at a Republican convention.

That being said, teachers using technology as a form of education is a tough one. Should it be allowed or shouldn’t it? That is the main question here.

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