SWAT team called to house as prank

People are using the Internet to send the police, including SWAT teams, to residences across the country. For more details of how this crime is being perpetrated and how it has affected people across the country, according to the Associated Press, click here.

An update to: Charlotte, NC teachers reprimanded for web content...

...from the Charlotte Observer "Teachers and Facebook: Privacy vs. standards." What should we think? Are teachers held to a higher standard? Should they be? Are the sexual poses okay? What about the comments about the students?

Charlotte, NC teachers reprimanded for web content

Again - Social Networkers: Beware. Some Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) teachers reportedly (News 14 Carolina article here) had some images and content on their Facebook pages that some parents and school board members thought was inappropriate - stuff like "I hate my students" and "I work in the ghetto," and images of drinking or partying. Of course your opinion of what's appropriate and what's not is subjective, but some people are working the images and comments into a clause that allows teachers to be punished and/or terminated for unethical conduct. I'd be upset as a parent, but should these teachers' pages be irrelevant and untouchable by the school board? Do the teachers have an obligation to not post these things.... or just to make sure no parent, student or administrator sees them? Or should we just not care - it's just personal? Does the fact that because they work with children mean that we are not allowed to know that they party... or like some of the rest of us, don't like their jobs or the people they work with?

This isn't the first time we've talked about this kind of thing here - Social networkers, beware.

Technology advancements - a blessing or means to a curse?

To follow up on "Social networkers, beware", here's a tale of teenagers in separate incidences who are in trouble at school, and some with the law, for sending inappropriate images of themselves, by email and cell phone. The charges for one girl could include her having to register as a sexual offender - that's a lifetime stigma. And once you are on the a sex offender list, the reason why you had to initially register becomes lost. You are just a sex offender with the restrictions and discriminations associated with it. But, more in line with my earlier Beware post, you just don't know where these images may end up... once you send those things to other folks, you lose control of the images of yourself. The ABC news article discusses a boy who posted nude or nearly nude pictures of his ex-girlfriend online. I bet that wasn't what she had planned when she sent them to him - but that was before she broke up with him of course.

But I may be wrong, it may not be that these young people don't understand the possible repercussions, it might be that they just don't care. Should they care?

Means to a curse? Check out this article about how false and/or expunged convictions are making their way into background checks and spoiling people's chances at housing and employment. Database sharing and mining is causing information that has once been removed to pop up again, and it's ruining some people's lives.