ACLU wins case against school for forcing sixth-grader to give up Facebook password

The district did not admit to any liability in the settlement, but agreed to pay damages of $70,000 and re-write polices limiting the school’s ability to examine the email and social media accounts of students created off school grounds.

ACLU wins case against school for forcing sixth-grader to give up Facebook password

By Giusseppe Macri at The Daily Caller  03/27/14

The American Civil Liberties Union won a $70,000 settlement from a Minnesota school district this week after school officials forced a sixth-grade student to give up her Facebook password and let them search her account.

“I was in tears,” Riley Stratton of Glenwood Minnesota told the StarTribune. “I was embarrassed when they made me give over my password.”

The Minnewaska Area School district suspended Stratton for a Facebook post — published outside of school — in which she said she hated a school hall monitor for “being mean.” Stratton then went back on the social media site and asked which of her connections ratted her out.

After the parent of one of Stratton’s friends complained to the school about the “sexual nature” of a Facebook chat, school officials brought the then-13-year-old girl into a room with a local sheriff and forced her to give up her Facebook password. Officials then searched her page in front her, all the while without consulting a parent.

“A lot of schools, like the folks at Minnewaska, think that just because it’s easier to know what kids are saying off campus through social media somehow means the rules have changed, and you can punish them for what they say off campus,” Minnesota ACLU attorney Wallace Hilke said.

The district did not admit to any liability in the settlement, but agreed to pay damages of $70,000 and re-write polices limiting the school’s ability to examine the email and social media accounts of students created off school grounds.

“They punished her for doing exactly what kids have done for 100 years — complaining to her friends about teachers and administrators,” Hilke said. “She wasn’t spreading lies or inciting them to engage in bad behavior, she was just expressing her personal feelings.”

According to Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt, the school wants to make sure kids understand that actions outside of school can be “detrimental.”
“The school’s intent wasn’t to be mean or bully this student, but to really remedy someone getting off track a little,” Schmidt said.

The student’s mother Sandra Stratton said the school made no effort to reach out to her for permission before “interrogating” her daughter.

“They never once told me they were going to bring her into the room and demand her Facebook password,” Sandra Stratton said. “I’m hoping schools kind of leave these things alone so parents can punish their own kids for things that happen off school grounds.”

The school’s new rules state student accounts created off school grounds can only be searched under “reasonable suspicion” of school rule violations.

“Kids’ use of social media is the family’s business,” Hilke said. “Not the school’s business unless it’s a case of cyberbullying or poses a substantial threat to school activities.”

7 Money Moves To Make In Your 30s

Save when you can

Create solid habits


Plan out your goals and priorities


7 Money Moves To Make In Your 30s

By Kimberly Palmer, U.S. News & World Report  03/20/14

Your 30s can be a pretty significant decade.

You might be transitioning from the more carefree days of a post-collegiate lifestyle and hitting major life milestones, such as buying a home, getting married or having kids. Or you might be planning major life adventures, climbing up the career ladder or all of the above.

Whatever your path, you likely face some significant money decisions, and the choices you make can end up impacting your finances for years to come.

A report released from the Pew Research Center earlier this month shows that millennials, the oldest of whom are just entering their 30s now, face higher student debt and unemployment levels along with lower income and wealth levels compared to previous generations at the same age. At the same time, they are optimistic about their economic futures, with most (80 percent) saying they have enough money now or will one day to “lead the lives they want.”

To increase the chances that such an optimistic outlook comes true, here are seven money moves that financial experts say you should consider in your third decade:

Girl saves fellow student from harm suspended from middle school

Adrionna Harris of Virginia Beach says she saw a boy harming himself, so she took away the blade and threw it away last week

When she went to administrators, she was suspended for 10 days for handling the blade

Her school has a zero tolerance policy and Adrionna has been recommended for expulsion

Girl-suspended-middle-school-SAVES-fellow-student-harming-razor-blade

By Daily Mail Reporter  The Daily Mail  03/20/14

A Virginia Beach mother is furious and her community perplexed after her daughter is suspended from middle school for taking a razor blade from a fellow student who was harming himself and throwing it away.

Adrionna Harris took the tiny X-ACTO blade from a boy last week and immediately threw it away and on Friday she reported the incident to administrators.

Instead of applauding her heroics, administrators suspended the sixth grader and are even threatening expulsion.

'I was shocked and surprised. I was very shocked that a student would get suspended for saving another child,' Adrionna's mother Rachael Harris told WAVY. 'The school system over-reached absolutely.'

The Price of Failed Leadership

"Able leaders anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. My career in business and politics has exposed me to scores of people in leadership positions, only a few of whom actually have these qualities. Some simply cannot envision the future and are thus unpleasantly surprised when it arrives. Some simply hope for the best. Others succumb to analysis paralysis, weighing trends and forecasts and choices beyond the time of opportunity."

Romney: The Price of Failed Leadership

By Mitt Romney  The Wall Street Journal  03/17/14

Why are there no good choices? From Crimea to North Korea, from Syria to Egypt, and from Iraq to Afghanistan, America apparently has no good options. If possession is nine-tenths of the law, Russia owns Crimea and all we can do is sanction and disinvite—and wring our hands.

Iran is following North Korea's nuclear path, but it seems that we can only entreat Iran to sign the same kind of agreement North Korea once signed, undoubtedly with the same result.

Our tough talk about a red line in Syria prompted Vladimir Putin's sleight of hand, leaving the chemicals and killings much as they were. We say Bashar Assad must go, but aligning with his al Qaeda-backed opposition is an unacceptable option.

And how can it be that Iraq and Afghanistan each refused to sign the status-of-forces agreement with us—with the very nation that shed the blood of thousands of our bravest for them?

Why, across the world, are America's hands so tied?

The Pentagon Spent $2.7 Billion on an Intelligence System That Doesn't Work

The title says it all

The Pentagon Spent $2.7 Billion on an Intelligence System That Doesn't Work

By Abby Ohlheiser at The Wire 03/19/14

Here's another item for the (long) list of spectacular waste in the Pentagon's budget: a $2.7-billion intelligence program that's supposed to help Army troops on the ground collect and use intelligence on enemy fighters. It sounds like a good idea, but the thing is, the Army's Distributed Common Ground System doesn't actually do that, according to report from Foreign Policy. The article cites an internal assessment of the DCGS's effectiveness, long requested by Congress but kept under wraps by the Pentagon for eight months. Probably because they didn't feel like talking about such a spectacular failure.

The existence of DCGS is hardly a secret. Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics — all the major defense contractors — were all involved in creating it, and it's featured on the Army's website as "an enterprise system that will replace the Army’s multiple intelligence ground processing systems currently in the field." The Army even has promotional videos showing DCGS in action. But according to some troops, the DCGS is very difficult to use and too slow to be practical for the on-the-ground situations for which it was designed.

Homeland Security is seeking a national license plate tracking system

“I know the data is really valuable,” Bernstein said, “and I know the potential for abuse is significant.” 

Homeland Security is seeking a national license plate tracking system

By Ellen Nakashima and Josh Hicks Washington Post 02/18/14

The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

The national license-plate recognition database, which would draw data from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, would help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, according to a DHS solicitation. But the database could easily contain more than 1 billion records and could be shared with other law enforcement agencies, raising concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens who are under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

A spokeswoman for DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stressed that the database “could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals.”
The database would enhance agents’ and officers’ ability to locate suspects who could pose a threat to public safety and would reduce the time required to conduct surveillance, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said.

America Surrender's the Internet

The Department of Commerce announced that next year it would relinquish its last bit of control over domain names. The system will be replaced by a model of global Internet governance as yet to be determined by Icann. 

The U.S. Gives Up Its Control of the Free-Speech Internet 

By Brendan Greely at BloombergBusinessWeek 03/17/14

Type the domain name Businessweek.com into a browser, and  you reach servers run by Bloomberg Businessweek. This happens whether you’re sitting in Chennai, India, or Kittery, Maine—your computer has consulted a nearby copy of a single, universal list of which names get you to which servers. This largely invisible process is called the Internet’s domain name system, or DNS. It is so important that the guy who first controlled it, Jon Postel of the University of California at Los Angeles, earned the nickname “God.”

God died in 1998, and now the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers manages the domain name system. Icann is a nonprofit with a complex, international governance structure of what it calls “stakeholders,” a group that includes governments, corporations, and civil society activists. But it has operated, ultimately, under a contract from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Although it never exercised this right or even threatened to do so, the U.S. could always still render a website nameless, making it hard to find—essentially kicking it off the Internet.

On Friday, the Department of Commerce announced that next year it would relinquish its last bit of control over domain names. The system will be replaced by a model of global Internet governance as yet to be determined by Icann. All those stakeholders are on their own now. “The Internet technical community is strong enough to continue its role,” said Icann, “while assuming the stewardship function as it transitions from the US Government.” In protesting that it is strong enough, Icann is revealing that it may not be.

Several times in the last decade, a group of countries has urged that control of domain names be transferred to the United Nations. All you need to know about this movement is that it is led by China and Russia. In the very dull, very important meetings of the International Telecommunications Union, speeches by these countries feature the word “sovereignty.”

The only stakeholders that matter, they are saying, are countries. Right now, China can prevent users inside its borders from viewing a website that promotes Tibetan separatism. But it can’t prevent that website from registering a domain name. It would very much like to, under the argument that the site threatens China’s domestic sovereignty.

This is the advantage of the current, Jon Postel, God-like, single-domain-name system. No country (other than the U.S.) gets to decide what idea deserves a Web address, and while U.S. policies and practices in other cyber realms have been less than stellar, it has been an outstanding protector of free speech on the Internet. Power can exist even when it isn’t exercised or even visible. The Commerce Department has ensured the growth of a lively, commercial, obstreperous Internet in the same way the European Union thrived, in part, under the protective umbrella of all those American tanks waiting to roll into the Fulda Gap.

It’s a bad sign that the U.S. has chosen to give up this power. It means that the administration doesn’t feel that it can get away with holding on to it, diplomatically, which means that on this issue, we no longer enjoy the support of countries such as Germany. Perhaps it was that time we tapped Angela Merkel’s cell phone.

There will be no immediate consequences after the handover next year. Over the short-term, Web addresses will continue to go where they already go. China and Russia have too much invested in the international, commercial Internet to just go their own sovereign ways. But they have already shown their ability to shape the stakeholder process: Even with U.S. control, Icann has had to bow to some of stakeholder demands of sovereign countries. If you want a domain name in Cyrillic, for example, you have to go through one of several countries that use the Cyrillic script. Not too hard for Russia to exercise either sovereignty or diplomatic muscle to prevent Russian speakers from easily finding undesired domains.

But broadly, Icann under its Commerce Department contract did an admirable job of managing a tough, dreary task. It had to work to keep everyone using the same domain name system, which meant it could never be too aggressive with any single country in public. It was always nice to have the U.S. standing in the background as silent muscle. Now that muscle has packed up and gone home. The Internet won’t end next year. But it will start to change.

Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accuses the CIA of spying on their computers

Senator Dianne Feinstein blasted the CIA for allegedly tracking Congressional computer network searches 

The searches happened in 2009 when they were looking into reports about how often the CIA used torture to interrogate terror suspects 

CIA Director John Brennan has denied the allegations

Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accuses the CIA of spying on their computers when they were looking into how the agency used torture during Bush-era terror investigations

By Associated Press and Daily Mail Reporter 03/11/14

The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has accused the CIA of spying on their internal computer network during their searches about how the agency used torture during Bush-era terror investigations.

The shocking allegations were made by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who publicly aired her grievances on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

CIA director John Brennan has since denied the claims during an interview later that day, but he didn’t shy away from complaining about Senator Feinstein’s behavior.

Brennan said the agency was not trying to stop the committee's report and that it had not hacked into Senate computers.

He said the appropriate authorities would look at the matter further and ‘I defer to them to determine whether or not there was any violation of law or principle.’

Feinstein said the matter has been referred to the Justice Department for further investigation. She said she had ‘grave concerns that the CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution.’

The 10 golden rules of retiring rich

The 10 golden rules of retiring rich

By Maryalene LaPonsie at MoneyTalksNews 03/07/14

The median worker’s retirement fund contained a meager $79,300 in 2010. That fun fact comes courtesy of professional services firm Towers Watson and might make you think retiring rich is out of reach for most people.

Think again.

Don’t let the statistics scare you. With a little advance planning and self-discipline, you might not ever be famous but you could be rich.

Rule 1: Spend less than you earn

The formula for retiring rich starts with you actually putting money in the bank. Social Security alone isn’t enough to have you living the good life during your golden years.

Stacy recommends you spend only 90 percent of the money you make and sock the remaining 10 percent away.

If you have zero savings right now, concentrate on building up an emergency fund in a savings account first. Once your rainy-day fund is full, put that 10 percent you’re not spending into a dedicated retirement fund.
If you’re currently spending more than 90 percent of your income each month, you may want to read about how to save $1,000 by summer.

Rule 2: Start saving early
Thanks to the power of compounding interest, a little money saved now can go a long way at retirement time. But to get the most benefit, you’ll want to start saving as early as possible.

Let’s say you’re 20 years old and can manage to put away only $100 a month into your retirement fund. Assuming you average 8 percent returns, you’ll be closing in on having half a million dollars – $463,806 to be exact – by age 65. Even better, over that 45-year period, you’ll only have invested $54,000 of your money to get all that cash in return.

If you wait until you’re 40 to start saving $100 a month, you’ll put in $30,000 of your money and get $87,727 in return by age 65. Not bad, but wouldn’t you rather have half a million?

Obama threatens to veto bill that would require administration to enforce laws

Faithful Execution of the Law Act

Enforce the Law Act

Obama threatens to veto bill that would require administration to enforce laws

By Neil Munro at The Daily Caller 03/12/14

President Barack Obama would veto a GOP-drafted bill that would allow legislators to take agency officials to court if they don’t enforce laws, according to a White House statement.

The GOP is pushing the bill through the House because Obama has repeatedly declined to enforce laws he doesn’t like, say GOP legislators.

“President Obama has refused to enforce those parts of our nation’s immigration laws that are not to his political liking, has waived portions of our welfare laws, has stretched our environmental laws to accommodate his policy objectives, and has waived testing accountability provisions required under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ education law,” according to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House judiciary committee.

For example, in June 2012, Obama created a temporary mini-amnesty for at least 500,000 younger illegal immigrants. The act boosted his election-day support among Hispanics, but made it more difficult for young Americans to find jobs.

“Political appointees at the Justice Department have announced that rather than work with Congress to amend the federal criminal code, they will simply stop prosecuting low-level drug offenders under mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” said Goodlatte in a Fox News op-ed.

“And now that his signature health care law has not been working and revealed his empty promises, President Obama has changed that law unilaterally over 20 times,” Goodlatte added.
The House bill is titled “the Faithful Execution of the Law Act.”

The House is expected to pass the bill Wednesday, along with a companion bill, titled “ENFORCE the Law Act.”