Spying on students to keep them safe. When the new school year begins in two weeks, a Maryland district will be one of only four in the nation to use special software to track students’ social media posts.
Washington County public schools
plan to use the software program, Social Sentinel to track keywords that could indicate a threat.
If it catches keywords like “kill” or “bomb”, the school will report it to police.
As for the questions of legality, district officials say the system uses geofencing which they say doesn’t violate privacy because it only works when students are on school property.
The district will pay about $20,000 a year for the Social Sentinel program.
