The other day, school librarian and author Jennifer Iacopelli tweeted about her experience helping a student whose English paper had been vandalized by some boys. After she had left the Google Doc open in the library computer lab when she went home, they had inserted some “inappropriate” stuff. When she and her mom went to work on it later that evening, mom saw the insertions, was appalled, and grounded the student. Iacopelli, using security camera footage from the library’s computer lab, was able to demonstrate that the boys were responsible, with the result that the grounding was lifted and the boys suspended.
This story has gotten retweeted 1,300 times as of this writing and earned Iacopelli a mention as a “badass librarian” in HuffPo.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that there isn’t much to complain about regarding the outcome: justice was served, and mayhap the boys in question will think thrice before attacking the reputation of another or vandalizing their work.
Nonetheless, I do not count this as an unqualified feel-good story.
I have questions.
Was there no session management software running on the lab computers that would have closed off access to the document when she left at the end of the class period? If not, the school should consider installing some. On the other hand, I don’t want to hang too much on this pin; it’s possible that some was running but that a timeout hadn’t been reached before the boys got to the computer.
How long is security camera footage from the library computer lab retained? Based on the story, it sounds like it is kept at least 24 hours. Who, besides Iacopelli, can access it? Are there procedures in place to control access to it?
More fundamentally: is there a limit to how far student use of computers in that lab is monitored? Again, I do not fault the outcome in this case—but neither am I comfortable with Iacopelli’s embrace of surveillance.
Let’s consider some of the lessons learned. The victim learned that adults in a position of authority can go to bat for her and seek and acquire justice; maybe she will be inspired to help others in a similar position in the future. She may have learned a bit about version control.
She also learned that surveillance can protect her.
And well, yes. It can.
But I hope that the teaching continues—and not the hard way. Because there are other lessons to learn.
Surveillance can harm her. It can cause injustice, against her and others. Security camera footage sometimes doesn’t catch the truth. Logs can be falsified. Innocent actions can be misconstrued.
Her thoughts are her own.
And truly badass librarians will protect that.
Continuing the lesson by Galen Charlton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.