It has been months since the last school shooting, but the fervor to “do something” still hasn’t quite died down. All sorts of ideas have been tossed around as possible solutions: Everything from banning gun sales to mandatory mental health evaluations for gun owners. And now, Senate Republicans want to monitor your children online.
Sen. John Cornyn recently proposed the “Response Act,” a bill aimed at pushing public schools to monitor the online activity of their students. The idea behind the Texas Republican’s bill is to prevent violence by identifying potential safety risks in the form of threats or suicidal behavior. But Cornyn’s plan won’t work, and it will inevitably violate and trample over civil liberties.
The Response Act doesn’t just propose surveillance of students from elementary school through college, it also encourages internet service providers to share information with law enforcement “concerning acts of mass violence, hate crimes, or domestic terrorism,” giving government, as bill co-sponsor Sen. Martha McSally put it, “additional resources to identify potentially dangerous people.”
Of course, when it comes to opportunity for government abuse, “potentially dangerous people” is a horrifically broad term. And, when applied to school-age children, it’s even more menacing.
Generational gaps between adults and teens make for hefty communication barriers, and a private Facebook message that might read as “dangerous” to a grown law enforcement officer could easily just be two children goofing off. Yet if these Republicans have their way, goofing off could land children in hot water with the police.
Even if students don’t find themselves in an encounter with law enforcement over online behavior, the threat of surveillance will inevitably stifle their speech. That’s a terrible idea because those vulnerable years of youth need to allow students room to grow, think, and speak freely. But whenever they go online, students would be forced to think about what the government or their school would like and dislike, driving what Republicans so often claim to be against — mental conformity to institutional, government-driven norms.
Students’ fears of being watched (and reported) would also inevitably widen the gap between government schools and their students. Surveillance accompanied by the threat of penalty would result in mass distrust from students toward the education system: a reinforced “us versus them” mentality between students and the adults in charge.
Why introduce that kind of unnecessary friction between minors and those who are supposed to be their allies?
Placing students under the scrutiny of law enforcement should only be considered when all other options have been exhausted. There’s a reason why schools rely on social workers and counselors to help work through problems: The criminal system was meant for adults, not minors.
Too, this proposal is primarily punitive, not rehabilitative. If a kid is arrested or disciplined for saying an irresponsible thing to a friend online, they could suffer for years from a tarnished record, and that’s a serious abuse of students’ civil liberties.
Yes, school shootings are gut-wrenching tragedies, and we want to eradicate them from society — but that’s not what the Response Act is going to do. In fact, its policies could just end up with more children getting hurt.
Molly Davis is a policy analyst at Libertas Institute, a Utah based think tank, and a senior contributor at Young Voices. Follow her on Twitter @_molly_davis_.
