Stalkerware can turn phones into all-seeing surveillance tools.
Brett Pearce/CNET
"This article discusses domestic violence. CNET would like to remind readers that browsing histories, including this story, can be monitored and are impossible to completely clear. If you need help, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Things got weird at the end of Allie's relationship with her boyfriend. One night, he seemed to know where she'd been when she was out without him, and another night he started talking about something she'd recently read on her personal computer at home, where she lived alone.
At the beginning of their relationship, he said he had cyberstalked a past girlfriend, but he assured her that those days were behind him. Now Allie, who asked to use a pseudonym out of concern for her safety, wondered if her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend was spying on her.
"I thought I was going nuts because I was pretty sure I hadn't shared that information," said Allie, who ditched her laptop and phone rather than find out what software her ex might have installed on them. "In hindsight, it was subtle intimidation."
The paranoia that Allie felt is becoming a sadly common experience. It's jaw-droppingly easy for someone to buy and install intrusive apps, known as stalkerware, on someone else's device. The apps are plentiful, according to antivirus software firms that track their prevalence. A recent Harris poll conducted with antivirus firm NortonLifeLock found that one in 10 people admit to using stalkerware to track a partner or ex-partner. The apps are so simple that some people on TikTok have posted 60-second tutorials on how to use them.
The software works on computers but has become especially powerful to use on phones, turning the gadgets into all-seeing surveillance devices that reveal location data as well as emails, web browsing histories and more. Stalkerware on smartphones can lead domestic abusers to partners who may be in hiding. The apps give heightened control to abusers whose partners haven't left, making escape harder to manage. Stalkerware apps have been tied to horrible acts of violence.
There can be legitimate reasons to use tracking apps, such as monitoring children's phones, or monitoring employees (with their consent). However, the distinction between these apps and what's often called stalkerware is blurry. Many apps bill themselves as legitimate monitoring apps but can offer staggering amounts of information from targets' phones and can operate completely undetected. The reality is that these apps get abused by people who spy on adults without their consent, according to law enforcement officials and to domestic-violence and legal experts.
You might at some point worry you have stalkerware on your phone or laptop. It isn't easy to decide what to do about it, domestic-violence experts say, because your partner or ex might become more dangerous if you delete the software on your device. But there are steps you can take to learn more about the software and whether it's on your device.
What is stalkerware?
Stalkerware refers to a broad group of apps that someone else can install on your device to intercept texts and phone calls, access your location, log your web browsing activity and turn on your camera or microphone. The information gathered by such an app typically gets sent to a portal or companion app accessed by the person who installed the stalkerware.
The apps can be installed on all kinds of phones, though it's a bit more complex to get stalkerware working on iPhones. The person installing stalkerware typically has to get physical access to the user's phone to install an app. A big exception to this is if the person installing stalkerware has the target's iCloud credentials, allowing them to access backups of the other person's phone.
Is stalkerware illegal?
Surreptitious spying on your devices without your consent is illegal. So is stalking. Additionally, the apps usually violate the policies for apps sold on stores run by Google and Apple, and they're frequently taken down from those stores.
People still install them on other people's phones, though, finding the apps for sale on the app makers' websites instead of an app store, and at times undermining the foundational security of a target's phone by jailbreaking it. The apps are often sold as child or employee monitoring services, but they're ripe for abuse because they can run undetected on a device, say law enforcement officials and domestic-violence experts.
There have been prosecutions of people who used stalkerware, but they're uncommon.
How do I know if my phone has stalkerware?
That can be hard. The software often disguises itself, either by displaying an innocuous icon (like a battery monitor), or by not displaying an icon at all, says Kevin Roundy, technical director at the NortonLifeLock research group.
While researching stalkerware apps, Roundy identified other categories of apps that often work in concert with the intrusive software. One of these is an app-hiding app, which can remove the icon of a stalkerware app from your screen.
Even if an app's icon is hidden on your phone, it should show up in your settings as an item in the list of applications running on your device. The app still probably won't have a label that immediately identifies it as stalkerware, Roundy says, so look for any app you don't recognize. You can look up any unusual looking apps online on another device to see if you can find more information about them."...
"From Park Bench to Lab Bench: What kind of future are we designing? Ruha Benjamin challenges biases inherent to modern scientific research. Ruha is on the faculty at Princeton University. Her work examines the relationship between innovation & equity, science & citizenship, health & justice."
"Teenagers are budding with sexual energy. Mix that with cell phones and it can be a complicated combination. According to a JAMA Pediatrics report from last April that analyzed 39 studies of just over 110,000 under 18-year-olds (the mean age was 15.16 years, but ages ranged from 11-17 years)— it was found that roughly 15% of teenagers send sexts and 28% receive them.
It is so important to have an open line of communication with preteens and teens about the issues around revealing photos and videos (yes, videos—some teens send short sexually explicit videos to one another). Today’s TTT is all about just the facts. In a pragmatic way, try sharing with your teens and preteens what the laws are in your state—and, starting with this example case can also be helpful.
In 2015, two 16-year-olds from North Carolina were arrested and charged with multiple felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under the state’s child pornography laws. Their crime? The boyfriend and girlfriend sent nude photos to each other via text. They were charged as adults, faced four to ten years in prison and would have to register as sex offenders if convicted. The kids agreed to plea bargains that reduced their charges to misdemeanors. Still, a very scary situation. The teens were doing what some sexually curious boyfriends and girlfriends do—the last thing they wanted was to get in trouble and to break a law.
North Carolina does not have any sexting laws—in fact, half of states do not have sexting laws. If the couple had been in a state with sexting laws, such as Arizona, Florida or Arkansas, they would have most likely been charged with something such as a misdemeanor and given the chance to prove their intent was not criminal. Sexting legislation is designed to deter teens from sexting with consequences including education and less severe sentences.
Below the TTT weekly questions, I’ve included part of the Cyberbullying Research Center’s chart that shows sexting laws for each state across the country. Here are some questions to get you started:
Are you aware that it is against the law to send and receive nude pictures, even if they are from your significant other?
If you were creating laws on this topic, how would you do it?
If you were to write a letter to a younger student, what advice would you give them about issues surrounding the taking and dissemination of revealing and suggestive photos and videos?
The chart below is from Cyberbully.org and was created, and is regularly updated, by Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D., & Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D. co-directors of the Cyberbullying Research Center. To see more detail and description of laws go to https://cyberbullying.org/sexting-laws."...
Professor Rios' 2011 book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (NYU Press), analyzes how juvenile crime policies and criminalization affect the everyday lives of urban youth. He has published on juvenile justice, masculinity, and race and crime in scholarly journals such as The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Latino Studies, and Critical Criminology. In 2011 Professor Rios received the Harold J. Plous award at UCSB and In 2010 he received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research."...
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein announced that the state has filed a lawsuit against e-cigarette manufacturer Juul, claiming that it marketed its products to children and misled the public about the risks associated with those products. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports.
By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan "In January, a group of teachers knelt against a wall at Meadowlawn Elementary School in Indiana while police posing as armed gunmen shot plastic pellets into their backs, causing angry, red welts. Waiting outside, the teachers’ colleagues could hear screaming, the Indiana State Teachers’ Association said, before they were “brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.”
After the incident, a group of the teachers considered a lawsuit. The sheriff whose team led the exercise told news media his officers had stopped using airsoft guns in trainings after one of the participants complained.
Active shooter training like this has become more popular over the last decade — as the number of school shootings has increased, so too has the desire to prepare teachers and students to face intruders with lethal intentions.
Behind many of the drills is the ALICE Training Institute, the largest for-profit private provider of active shooting training in the United States. ALICE operates through a “train-the-trainer” model — anyone can get ALICE certification after two days of in-person training and online testing. That means its precise influence over a specific drill can be difficult to determine. (ALICE also routinely trains police, like those involved in the Meadowlawn drill, who then go into schools to oversee drills.) The company claims to have trained staff at more than 5,500 K-12 school districts and at 900 institutions of higher education, with more clients signing up each day. ALICE — an acronym for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, and evacuate — promotes the idea that a “proactive” response to a shooting will enable you to save your life. The company insists that simply locking down a classroom and waiting for help — a “passive” response — will increase your chances of dying.
But little is known about the efficacy of the methods promulgated by ALICE and its like-minded competitors. As the school security industry has boomed, ALICE has influenced a lucrative cottage industry of individual trainers and smaller private companies now working with schools. The growing popularity of “proactive” training models has polarized school security experts, many of whom argue that that ALICE’s “counter” method, and scenarios that include mock shootings, go too far.
Drills can also be traumatic for the children involved, and schools considering training options have the difficult task of weighing the need for protection from intruders against the risk of doing further harm. “There is no evidence that lockdown drills with kids learning to barricade or defend themselves enhances security,” said Dr. Nancy Rappaport, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. And the drills “may have unintended consequences of creating terror for students.”
Today, the wider school security industry peddles everything from bullet-proof whiteboards to facial-recognition software to transparent backpacks. Worth some $2.7 billion, the industry largely traces back to a single, tragic event: the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. After each subsequent school shooting — notably Sandy Hook in 2012 and Parkland in 2018 — the demand for active shooter training grew, and lockdown drills became more common.
Last year there were 116 incidents of gun violence at American schools — up from 54 the previous year, according to data collected by the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Part of the response to these tragedies has been a cultural shift in responsibility, said Zachary Levinsky, a Canadian academic who has researched drills. After Columbine, schools and law enforcement agencies were suddenly required to plan for the worst-case scenarios, creating a need to manage risk and blame. “Showing that you were trying to mitigate the disaster was the impetus I think for these lockdown drills, and sort of allowing entities like ALICE to crop up,” Levinsky said.
And at least 42 states now have laws requiring emergency drills in schools. Eight of them specify that these must be “active shooter drills.” Schools are rarely equipped to conduct this kind of training on their own, so they look to law enforcement agencies and private companies like ALICE for answers.
Training is big business in the for-profit market, and ALICE options can be pricey. A 2018 contract for the Alisal Union School District in California showed a total cost of $32,100 over three years for services including online ALICE training for all employees and a two-day “train-the-trainer program” for district officials. Becoming a certified ALICE instructor, meanwhile, costs between $600 and $700.
The official term for this type of training is “options based,” referring to the many ways to respond to a shooting, as opposed to strictly locking down an area. In worst-case scenarios, ALICE advises students and teachers to consider “countering,” or confronting an intruder. ALICE also encourages students to throw objects at intruders to interrupt and distract them. “Some [teachers] tell students to use their books, binders, staplers,” said Corey Mosher, the principal of Athens Area High School in Pennsylvania, whose district adopted ALICE this year. “Others brought items such as golf balls.”
Because the company offers training and drills both directly, to students and staff, and indirectly, by training teachers and police to become certified instructors, there can be inconsistencies in how the program is taught."...
To download, click on title or arrow above. The slides presented here are from a presentation on the need for more intentional bridging of research to practice online in the areas of school safety and violence prevention. For more current perspectives with concerns regarding SEL-related recommendations and student privacy issues given the vast shifts to tech based approaches to school safety efforts, please visit: http://bit.ly/edpsychtech.
"Facebook's collection of data makes it one of the most influential organizations in the world. Share Lab wanted to look "under the bonnet" at the tech giant's algorithms and connections to better understand the social structure and power relations within the company.
A couple of years ago, Vladan Joler and his brainy friends in Belgrade began investigating the inner workings of one of the world's most powerful corporations.
The team, which includes experts in cyber-forensic analysis and data visualization, had already looked into what he calls "different forms of invisible infrastructures" behind Serbia's internet service providers.
But Mr Joler and his friends, now working under a project called Share Lab, had their sights set on a bigger target.
"If Facebook were a country, it would be bigger than China," says Mr Joler, whose day job is as a professor at Serbia's Novi Sad University.
He reels off the familiar, but still staggering, numbers: the barely teenage Silicon Valley firm stores some 300 petabytes of data, boasts almost two billion users, and raked in almost $28bn (£22bn) in revenues in 2016 alone.
And yet, Mr Joler argues, we know next to nothing about what goes on under the bonnet - despite the fact that we, as users, are providing most of the fuel - for free.
"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," he says."...
The Department of Education warned school districts last month of cybercriminals threatening violence and to release sensitive student records.
Education data are becoming significant and valuable targets for hackers, says Rachael Stickland, co-founder and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a nonprofit advocacy group that is working to educate parents on this issue.
High schools collect all sorts of data, including transcript information, disciplinary reports, health records and special education plans, Stickland says. The data could include student's social security numbers.
And schools no longer store records in a file cabinet. Usually, they keep electronic records – often through third-party organizations that schools trust will keep the information secure, she says.
For instance, to help with college and career planning, many school districts use a software program called Naviance, which logs information students use to apply to college.
But schools aren't held to the same data security standards as other industries because, historically, education data didn't include information that hackers valued, Stickland says.
That has now changed.
Here are four steps families can take to ensure their student's data are protected.
Step 1. Ask how the school is securing data: School districts are responsible for ensuring student data are protected, Stickland says. But parents should talk to school officials to ensure they are taking appropriate steps.
Parents could ask how third-party organizations are using and securing the data they are storing. They can also ask for copies of the contracts for these agreements, among other things, Stickland says.
She notes that just asking for these documents and information can help school officials think more critically about student privacy.
Step 2. Provide less data: Parents should advise teens to minimize the amount of data they give out, advises Stickland.
The Parent Coalition for Student Privacy created atoolkit for parents that includes guidance on student privacy laws and information on how parents can opt out of allowing schools to provide directory information to third parties.
In year's past, directory information may have included names, photos and addresses and was mostly used for yearbooks or school directories. Today, one way companies can use this information is to advertise to students.
If parents don't opt out of allowing schools to share this information, Stickland says the schools "can give it to anybody at any time for any purpose; there are no limitations whatsoever." Some schools might tell families that if they opt out, their child can't be included in the yearbook, she says.
Families with teens at one-to-one schools, which use electronic devices for educational purposes, may want to consider using their own tools, rather than those the school issues.
Step 3. Monitor student's credit history: Students typically have clean credit histories, so their social security numbers are very vulnerable to hackers who want to take advantage, Stickland says.
Parents can go to the Federal Trade Commission's website for instructions on how to monitor their child's credit.
"It could be years before they try to take out a loan or try to access credit and find out that their identity has been stolen," Stickland says.
Step 4. Consider graduation: Families may not be able to get school districts to expunge old data, Stickland says, but they can ask to see records and fix incorrect information.
They should also consider what happens to old electronic accounts. Many districts use Google's education products, she says. As teens prepare to leave, they can transfer data from their school Google account to a private version.
However, teens can also download all their data – something families may want to consider doing before teens graduate if they don't want Google to have an account with the student's childhood information, she says.
Stickland notes that students – with their parents' help – should become their own best advocates when it comes to data security.
"They are living in a surveillance culture right now, so it’s really important for them to understand that the data they are generating could potentially affect them and their future."...
"Bullying presents one of the greatest health risks to children, youth, and young adults in U.S. society today. School safety, including the prevention is bullying, is a top national priority and a key area of academic research.
AERA has a longstanding commitment to raising awareness of research around this issue. Since 2010, AERA has produced information and resources necessary in combatting bullying throughout the nation. The AERA report Prevention of Bullying in Schools, Colleges, and Universities: Research Report and Recommendations presents practical short-term and long-term recommendations to address bullying of children and youth. Released in April 2013, the report stems from the work of a blue-ribbon AERA task force.
Through advocating for our students and conducting further education research, AERA remains steadfast in advancing solutions and examining ways to prevent bullying, promote safety, and encourage inclusion throughout the country."
By Emily Birnbaum "A long-awaited GOP proposal to combat mass shootings has been receiving pushback from education groups and children's privacy advocates over language they say could result in the “over-surveillance” of minors.
After months of deliberations, including meetings with victims and law enforcement officials in communities wracked by deadly shootings, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced a Republican-backed “bill to help prevent mass shootings" on Wednesday.
The Restoring, Enhancing, Strengthening, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts (Response) Act, which has several Republican co-sponsors, bundles some of the top GOP proposals to combat mass shootings into one bill. It would expand resources for mental health treatment, facilitate the creation of “behavioral intervention teams” to monitor students exhibiting disturbing behavior and offer new tools for law enforcement.
The bill’s school safety proposals are a response to years of school shootings perpetrated by young people described as isolated and troubled.
But advocates have raised red flags over the Response Act’s requirement that schools begin monitoring their computer networks to “detect [the] online activities of minors who are at risk of committing self-harm or extreme violence against others.”
Under Cornyn’s legislation, nearly all federally funded schools in the U.S. would be required to install software to surveil students’ online activities, potentially including their emails and searches, in order to flag “violent” or alarming content.
The proposal would significantly expand the Children’s Internet Protection Act, a 2000 law that is mostly interpreted today as blocking children from looking up pornography on school computers.
Privacy experts and education groups, many of which have resisted similar efforts at the state level, say that level of social media and network surveillance can discourage children from speaking their minds online and could disproportionately result in punishment against children of color, who already face higher rates of punishment in school."...
"The FBI is encouraging public awareness of cyber threat concerns related to K-12 students. The US school systems’ rapid growth of education technologies (EdTech) and widespread collection of student data could have privacy and safety implications if compromised or exploited.
EdTech can provide services for adaptive, personalized learning experiences, and unique opportunities for student collaboration. Additionally, administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs, are commonly served through EdTech services.
As a result, types of data that are collected can include, but are not limited to:
personally identifiable information (PII);
biometric data;
academic progress;
behavioral, disciplinary, and medical information;
Web browsing history;
students’ geolocation;
IP addresses used by students; and
classroom activities.
Malicious use of this sensitive data could result in social engineering, bullying, tracking, identity theft, or other means for targeting children. Therefore, the FBI is providing awareness to schools and parents of the important role cybersecurity plays in the securing of student information and devices.
Sensitive Student Data
The widespread collection of sensitive information by EdTech could present unique exploitation opportunities for criminals. For example, in late 2017, cyber actors exploited school information technology (IT) systems by hacking into multiple school district servers across the United States. They accessed student contact information, education plans, homework assignments, medical records, and counselor reports, and then used that information to contact, extort, and threaten students with physical violence and release of their personal information. The actors sent text messages to parents and local law enforcement, publicized students’ private information, posted student PII on social media, and stated how the release of such information could help child predators identify new targets. In response to the incidents, the Department of Education released a Cyber Advisory alert in October 2017 stating cyber criminals were targeting school districts with weak data security or well-known vulnerabilities to access sensitive data from student records to shame, bully, and threaten children.
Cybersecurity issues were discovered in 2017 for two large EdTech companies, resulting in public access to millions of students’ data. According to security researchers, one company exposed internal data by storing it on a public-facing server. The other company suffered a breach and student data was posted for sale on the Dark Web.
Inter-connected Networks and Devices
EdTech connected to networked devices or directly to the Internet could increase opportunities for cyber actors to access devices collecting data and monitoring children within educational or home environments. Improperly secured take-home devices (e.g. tablets, laptops) or monitoring devices (e.g. in-school surveillance cameras or microphones), particularly those with remote-access capabilities, could be exploitable through cyber intrusions or other unauthorized means and present vulnerabilities for students.
Recommendations
The increased use of connected digital tools in the learning environment and widespread data collection introduces cybersecurity risks of which parents should be aware.
The FBI recognizes there are districts across the United States who are working hard to address cybersecurity matters in their schools to protect students and their data. For districts seeking assistance, there are numerous online resources, consortiums, and organizations available that can provide support on data protection matters and cybersecurity best practices.
The FBI encourages parents and families to:
Research existing student and child privacy protections of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and state laws as they apply to EdTech services.
Discuss with their local districts about what and how EdTech technologies and programs are used in their schools.
Conduct research on parent coalition and information-sharing organizations which are available online for those looking for support and additional resources.
Research school-related cyber breaches which can further inform families of student data vulnerabilities.
Consider credit or identity theft monitoring to check for any fraudulent use of their children’s identity.
Conduct regular Internet searches of children’s information to help identify the exposure and spread of their information on the Internet.
If you have evidence your child’s data may have been compromised, or if you have experienced any of the Internet crimes described in this PSA, please file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov."
Questions regarding this PSA should be directed to your local FBI Field Office. Local Field Office Locations: www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field
"Last month the W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice, Fairness and Equity (BI) conducted a webinar for the Healing Violence Alliance, highlighting the causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system and how these disparities relate to community-based efforts to address violence. If you missed it, you can download the webinar.
The BI offers a historical perspective on racism in the youth and adult justice systems, detailing how current policies exacerbate disparities created by the racist practices of our not-so-distant past. Systemic barriers, such as the zero tolerance policies, the criminalization of age-appropriate behavior, and the disparate use of law enforcement resources make it more likely that people of color are disproportionately affected by the collateral consequences of incarceration.
These consequences include disruptions in education, reduced income, loss of employment opportunities, separated families, housing evictions and other barriers that affect individuals, harm families and negatively impact community well-being. The individual, social and cultural trauma caused by mass incarceration and its collateral consequences are significant issues that system and community leaders must consider to effectively address the complex origins of community violence.
BI staff also outline their community-driven, data-informed approach to reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system. The BI believes that successfully reducing disparities requires collaboration between system and community stakeholders. This collaboration must include substantial community involvement throughout the decision-making processes, full utilization of available community resources, and the development of new community-based interventions. Additionally, by emphasizing the ongoing use of quantitative and qualitative data during the decision-making process, advocates can make targeted improvements to policies that perpetuate existing disparities while avoiding many of the pitfalls associated with racial equity reform.
In addition to the BI webinar cited above, here are links to informational resources on working collaboratively with communities of color to reduce racial and ethnic disparities:
What Happens When the Bargain of Civil Society is Breached? — In many communities across this nation, children are expected to exhibit all of the characteristics of childhood—good and bad—as part of their normal adolescent development. However, in far too many communities of color, we have eliminated the space for children to exhibit age appropriate behavior by criminalizing their conduct through fear-based policies and practices. In this piece, BI founder, James Bell, discusses why we must apply a child well-being framework to young men of color.
A Shared Sentence: The devastating toll of parental incarceration on kids, families and communities — “More than 5 million U.S. children have had a parent in jail or prison at some point in their lives. The incarceration of a parent can have as much impact on a child’s well-being as abuse or domestic violence. But while states spend heavily on corrections, few resources exist to support those left behind. A Shared Sentence offers commonsense proposals to address the increased poverty and stress that children of incarcerated parents experience.”
Racial Equity Tools — “Racial Equity Tools is designed to support individuals and groups working to achieve racial equity. This site offers tools, research, tips, curricula and ideas for people who want to increase their own understanding and to help those working toward justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.”
Racial Equity Toolkit — “Racial equity tools are designed to integrate explicit consideration of racial equity in decisions, including policies, practices, programs, and budgets. It is both a product and a process. Use of a racial equity tool can help to develop strategies and actions that reduce racial inequities and improve success for all groups.”
To download, please click on title or arrow above.
Below is also a related message from the Department of Public Health:
The County of Santa Clara’s Public Health Department has asked us to share the following information with you and ask you to help spread this message. In particular, they are hoping to reach youth with this message.
There have been multiple opioid deaths in our county since early August, including those of a 15 and 16 year old. Several of these deaths have been linked to fake pills containing the chemical fentanyl, made to look like a 30 mg oxycodone prescription pill (Percocet®). People who took these pills thinking they were taking oxycodone were unaware that they were taking lethal doses of fentanyl. Experimenting with these fake pills can lead to death even the first time.
Key messages for youth: Do not take a pill that you did not obtain directly from a pharmacy. Do not borrow medications from your friends. Do not buy medications from your friends. FAKE pills look like real pills, but they can be deadly.
These resources focused on racial equity include journal entries, books, magazines, videos and more. Using the filters below, you can view the resources based on areas of focus, related issues and/or types.
Safe Schools Planning Information intended to help schools identify elements and resources important in improving school climate and safety.
School Safety Plan Compliance Checklist (PDF) All California public schools kindergarten and grades one through twelve must develop a comprehensive school safety plan, per California Education Code sections 32280-32289 . This tool provides a list of required contents to assist schools in creating a compliant plan.
School Safety Elements and Resources Information intended to help schools identify elements and resources important in improving school climate and safety.
"No app is more integral to teens’ social lives than Instagram. While Millennials relied on Facebook to navigate high school and college, connect with friends, and express themselves online, Gen Z’s networks exist almost entirely on Instagram. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of teens use the platform, which now has more than 1 billion monthly users. Instagram allows teens to chat with people they know, meet new people, stay in touch with friends from camp or sports, and bond by sharing photos or having discussions.
But when those friendships go south, the app can become a portal of pain. According to a recent Pew survey, 59 percent of teens have been bullied online, and according to a 2017 survey conducted by Ditch the Label, a nonprofit anti-bullying group, more than one in five 12-to-20-year-olds experience bullying specifically on Instagram. “Instagram is a good place sometimes,” said Riley, a 14-year-old who, like most kids in this story, asked to be referred to by her first name only, “but there’s a lot of drama, bullying, and gossip to go along with it.”
Teenagers have always been cruel to one another. But Instagram provides a uniquely powerful set of tools to do so. The velocity and size of the distribution mechanism allow rude comments or harassing images to go viral within hours. Like Twitter, Instagram makes it easy to set up new, anonymous profiles, which can be used specifically for trolling. Most importantly, many interactions on the app are hidden from the watchful eyes of parents and teachers, many of whom don’t understand the platform’s intricacies."...
By Stephen Balkam [Family Online Safety Institute] "Sexting continues to bedevil us. Recent studies show that 39% of teens have sent a sext and 20% of teens have posted nude or semi-nude photos or videos online. Among young adults (20 – 29 years old), the prevalence for sexting jumps to 59%.
Some commentators make the case that sexting is fast becoming a new norm among consenting adults and not something to be too concerned about. While there may be some truth in that argument, the curse of revenge porn – when an ex partner posts or shares intimate images of his former partner – suggests that even for adults, sexting has the potential to ruin someone’s reputation or worse.
It becomes much more problematic when teens sext. Not only is there the same danger of photos and videos being broadly circulated – against the person’s wishes – but often minors engaged in sexting fall foul of child pornography laws specifically created to protect them.
A new controversial bill, with considerable ramifications, passed the US House of Representatives recently with very little attention. Entitled, “Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017,” the legislation was championed by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and gained bi-partisan support, though Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) called it, “deadly and counter productive.”
On the surface, it is a laudable attempt to deal with one of the most heinous crimes in our society: child sexual exploitation. The bill would penalize those sending or attempting or conspiring to produce and send sexually explicit images of minors. While it is absolutely right that adults producing and or sending sexual images of children should be prosecuted under the law, this bill is overly broad, and includes consenting teens sharing images of themselves.
What’s more, those prosecuted would receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and be placed on the sex offender registry for life. The proposed bill also criminalizes parents or guardians who knowingly allow their kids to sext.
While this well-intentioned law is written to protect minors from predatory adults, it may have profound negative consequences for teens who consensually share explicit photos and videos with their friends, should they be prosecuted.
In response to the legislation, the ACLU tweeted:
“The purpose of child pornography laws is to prevent minors from being abused, not criminalize young people for sexual experimentation.”
Rather than legislation in response to teen sexting, FOSI has consistently called for greater awareness raising and educational efforts to inform parents and their teens of the potential risks and harms of sexting. Leaving aside the contentious issue of mandatory minimum sentences, this bill is problematic on numerous fronts.
Sexting can lead to a damaging loss of reputation when photos or videos are distributed. Some teens are particularly prone to being cajoled or harassed into taking and sending photos of themselves to their love interests only to see these used against them leading to devastating emotional distress. There are a number of excellent guides to help remove intimate images from all of the major social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google. And the UK’s South West Grid for Learning has, perhaps, the best guide for dealing with the emotional and reputational fall out that can come from teen sexting in their aptly titled booklet, “So You Got Naked Online”.
Psychologist Elizabeth Englander promotes the idea of “sexting-ed” to be taught in schools to discuss the common risks that sexting poses, but to do so realistically. She points out that, “Students may view the risk of having others see your nude picture as existent but, realistically, pretty low. Hearing adults harp on the possibility as though forwarding were routine can therefore come across as a categorical overreaction.”
Rather than criminalizing impulsive or not-thought-through behavior of our teens, we need to warn, persuade and convince our young people that sexting is a risky behavior with the potential for considerable personal consequences. We also need to stress the responsibility of teens not to pass on or share these images. But to lock up the very minors that the law was crafted to protect – and for a minimum of 15 years – is unconscionable.
The bill moves on to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where, hopefully, there will be considered debate to fully discuss the implications of this overly broad bill and some discussion on additional education for teens.
In the meantime, we need a national dialogue about teen sexual behavior in the digital age. This conversation should do so in the context of young people’s actual experiences and not be a fear-based monologue that unrealistically portrays sexting as criminal – unless coercion is involved.
And we need research into young people’s attitudes and experiences online that can inform future educational efforts and, if needed, legislation that actually protects minors – not sweep them up and imprison them in its provisions."
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