Online Privacy
From Facebook To a Yearbook, Teens Get a Jolt

Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 2:00 PM

Students on the yearbook staff at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda misused dozens of photographs from student pages on Facebook, the Internet site, to fill pages of the yearbook. The episode upset some students, who felt their online privacy had been breached, and illustrated how private life that's posted online can easily become public.

From Facebook To a Yearbook, Teens Get a Jolt ( Post, June 26)

Washington Post staff writer Daniel de Vise was online Wednesday, June 27, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the issues of privacy and document copyright on the Internet.

A transcript follows.

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Daniel de Vise: Hi -- This is Dan deVise -- I'm an education writer at the Post, responsible for Montgomery County schools and for a share of broader education coverage about the region and the nation. I'm here to converse about the misuse of Facebook pictures in a high school yearbook at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, and about the broader notion of high school kids uploading their pictures and life stories onto Facebook and MySpace and such.

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San Mateo, Calif.: Why should people who get in trouble for pictures of themselves put up by others get in trouble when it was neither their choice for these pictures to be posted?

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the question. What happened at Walter Johnson, an affluent suburban high school outside the District, was that students working on the school yearbook got in trouble for taking pictures from student Facebook pages without the permission of those students. I'm told that some Facebook images were used properly, with permission from the students who "owned" (i.e. posted) the photos. But many were taken without permission -- yearbook staffers simply downloaded pictures from the Facebook pages of friends and classmates, touched them up in Photoshop and put them in the yearbook. To answer your question more directly, the kids pictured IN the photos didn't get in trouble, at least not for the misuse of those photos, although a few of them may have had to face questions from their parents about whatever they were doing in the photos.

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Davis, Calif.: If someone posts pictures on Facebook, can they really be considered private? They're there for public viewing.

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the question. I am no expert, and I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that Facebook allows users to adjust their personal settings such that all of their content is visible only to their friends, or only to members of the network(s) they've joined. I guess that if a Facebook user employs the most restrictive settings, then that person should be able to post content to the page with an expectation that only a handful of people will see it. I myself, being an older person and not of the Facebook generation, could not imagine posting a picture to Facebook unless it was something I wanted the whole world to see, but that speaks to my own discomfort with the format.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Do you see a generational split? Are young people more conditioned to the experience of their lives being an open book?

Daniel de Vise: Students I interviewed told me that sending images by e-mail and posting material online is second nature to them; it's something with which they have grown up. Now, their parents, too, are accustomed to trading e-mail and maybe even to posting things online, but perhaps not with the same ease and comfort. Again, I don't think some older folks would accept the notion of putting a picture -- any picture -- on the Internet, and I also think some in the older generation mistrust any promise of privacy when it's coming from an Internet site. Do Facebook and MySpace make young people's lives much more public? I don't know. The students I interviewed left me with the impression that they feel the same way about posting their pictures on Facebook as I would have felt taping them on the door of my locker.

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They didn't take a basic journalism class?: From the story: Walter Johnson Principal Christopher. Garran said future yearbooks will credit every photo. He is also considering asking that yearbook staffers henceforth take a class in basic journalism. Students who work on the school newspaper are quick to point out that they must take the class, which covers ethics and plagiarism.

WHOA! If that's not a statement about poor curriculum development and even worse student oversight I don't know what is. The anti-first amendment Supremes may try, but you sure can't blame the students on this one.

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the comment. I think Dr. Garran, the principal, felt that he himself was ultimately to blame. I think he and faculty at the school felt the students bore some responsibility for exercising poor common sense (and bear in mind, the yearbook advisor apparently did tell them specifically not to misuse Facebook content). But I did not get the impression anyone was placing blame entirely on the students. The journalism class apparently was required in the past for participation on yearbook, and I'm not sure that's such a bad idea. But, again, I don't think Dr. Garran meant it as a punishment, just as an educational opportunity.

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Washington, D.C.: Should employers be able to use Facebook as part of their hiring process?

Daniel de Vise: I have read in our paper and elsewhere that employers do, in fact, use Facebook in the hiring process, and that job candidates have suffered as a result. A prospective employer could, for example, see a picture of a prospective employee holding a bottle of vodka and could draw all sorts of negative conclusions about bad judgment, potential lifestyle issues and so forth. Whether they SHOULD use it, I don't know. I guess a potential employee always has the option to restrict access to the page.

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washingtonpost.com: There have been articles about police using Facebook to crack down on parties and such. Thoughts?

Daniel de Vise: I want to revisit an earlier question: What if someone puts something on Facebook for only friends to see, and then one of those friends publishes it more widely? Well, common sense suggests that is wrong -- invasive of that person's privacy and a clear violation of Facebook's terms of use. That's basically what the students at this school did, at least in some cases: to take friends' images, meant just for a few, and publish them for many to see. Facebook executives were asked this question, and their answer was to reiterate that this practice violates their terms of use and is strongly discouraged.

Regarding this question about police using Facebook: I have read about police investigators using Facebook content as part of their investigation. I will have to return to the idea that I think anything posted on the Internet without restriction is up for grabs, basically, and if a police investigator finds it, it seems like it ought to be actionable. But let me restate that I am not a lawyer and I have no idea whether that argument would hold up in court!

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Chicago, Ill.: I'm in my 20s, and I use Facebook frequently, often posting photos, but I am more of the mindset that nothing I put on there is private, especially as businesses are beginning to cross check Facebook and MySpace pages before interviews, which I personally think is unorthodox and somewhat unfair. What do you think will change in the next 5-10 years in the way we address this tricky question of privacy and ethics?

Daniel de Vise: Should employers be allowed to screen applicants online? I guess that if I were a newspaper editor and I was thinking of hiring someone as a reporter, I would use any means at my disposal to screen that person for ability, and I would try my best to separate the person's personal and professional identities if I found something that spoke to one and not the other. If there's anything that is going to change over time, I think it is the MO among young people with Facebook pages. Colleges are counseling them not to post anything on line that they wouldn't brag about in their resume. And that is what I think more and more people will start to do. I think we will start to see fewer and fewer young people uploading material they wouldn't want seen by their parents or their boss. I think some young people have enjoyed a brief window of time in which older folks simply didn't know where or how to find such content or that it even existed, but now that window may have shut.

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Washington, D.C.: I am a rising sophomore in college and I use Facebook to talk with friends and to do some basic networking. If my pictures were posted in a yearbook without my permission -- I'd be a little mad, but it would depend on what picture they had put up. I think our/my generation is not aware that getting other people's pictures without their permission is simply bad. Do you know whether the students will be reprimanded for procrastinating and ultimately for posting up pics that they weren't allowed to post?

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for your question. You asked whether these students at the Bethesda high school will be reprimanded. I don't believe that any specific punishment is planned. As the principal said, there's specific changes planned for future editions of the yearbook. I didn't get the sense any actions were being taken against the kids on this particular yearbook staff. I think what happened resulted from several factors -- a sub replacing the yearbook advisor is the main one, coupled with poor time management on the part of the students and bad judgment about taking pictures that belong to other people and putting them in a hard-cover book. As one student said, the yearbook basically exists forever.

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Los Angeles, Calif.: To what extent should people have control over pictures taken of them that someone else has uploaded?

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the question. Common sense suggests that you might want to ask you friend before you post a picture of you AND him drinking at a kegger on your Facebook page. I would doubt most people do that, however. Maybe they should. Come to think of it, I can't recall anything on Facebook's terms of use that addresses this question in particular -- if someone out there knows otherwise, please alert me! I guess it would be up to the sites to decide on boilerplate language that speaks to this question.

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Re: Punishment: Were the students punished? They should receive the same punishment as anyone cheating on a test or copying an essay from someone else. They used other people's pictures without permission. Regardless of privacy issues this is an intellectual property and ethics issue. The students are dumb if they didn't know this wasn't allowed.

I'm 26 so I don't think it's too large of a generational gap. I'm just stunned that they thought taking other people's pictures without permission and without crediting the person who took them was acceptable.

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the comments. I can't say for sure what percentage of students at the high school feel as you do. I know some on the school newspaper felt a truly egregious error had been committed. I know some on the yearbook and on faculty felt that, hey, they're just kids, kids make mistakes, it's a learning opportunity. I did think the idea of asking future yearbook staffs to take a journalism course seemed prudent.

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Davis, Calif.: Have you heard of instances where police officers or employers check Facebook to "check up" on students? Do you have any way to monitor or prevent that?

Daniel de Vise: Yes. See previous posts. I bet more will be written on this topic with, what, 20-plus million people now owning Facebook accounts.

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Chicago, Ill.: It seems that as technology allows us a convenience in exchange for our privacy (instant access to photos of friends, coupons at the grocery store for tracking your purchases) our concerns about privacy infringement become less and less severe. Where do you think the line is drawn right now, and how far back will that be pushed in the future?

Daniel de Vise: Thank you for the question. Again, I personally would feel like anything I posted online to a site with no access restrictions is fair game, and I would have no expectation of privacy. If I posted something to Facebook and had restricted access to that page, I would expect some measure of privacy. A colleague mentioned that we all e-mail each other at work and send messages, and we know those are limited within the company. I guess I'd expect LESS privacy on Facebook than within my company. I would expect privacy lines to be drawn more sharply in future, as this sort of issue comes up again and again. Where to draw the line, I don't know.

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Graduated in 1990: It must be so weird to be young today. I don't feel sorry for any kid, though, that posts a picture of 10 underage kids partying or two girls kissing. When we were partying underage we did not take pictures (with a camera full of film) because that would have been bizarre and unneeded. I get that things have changed and that cell phones take pictures now, but when I take cell phones pictures, the shots are of our dogs or our new sofa. The kids need to stop with the compromising pictures and the yearbook clan needs to stop getting the photos off the Internet.

Daniel de Vise: I graduated in the same era as you, and I understand your point very well. In my day, everyone did not have a telephone and a camera at the ready. I have no picture of myself at a high school party.

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Davis, Calif.: Due to the fact that Facebook allows you to check up on many people (and even secretly on those you do not know), is it safe to say that it may be included in the laws regarding stalking? How does someone trace said "Facebook stalking" after the fact?

Daniel de Vise: You may recall that colleagues of mine wrote a front page story in the Post about a protest that blew up at Facebook when the site started broadcasting "news" from fellow users who made changes to their accounts (i.e., so and so just made a new friend). So that proved young people do, in fact, have some sensitivity to privacy. Their very point was that it seemed "stalker-y".

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washingtonpost.com: Are you on Facebook or MySpace? If so, do you have any hard and fast rules you keep to yourself?

Daniel de Vise: I have been on Facebook for about a week. I've had a MySpace account for a year or more. I have had a hard time navigating MySpace and am just figuring out Facebook. I make clear to everyone that I'm a reporter, as I've only used the sites for work purposes.

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San Jose, Calif.: Why is Facebook so important?

Daniel de Vise: I'll make this the last one. Thank you for the questions.

Why is Facebook so important? I guess I'm still wrestling with how huge it is, and how quickly it has grown. I don't entirely understand the Facebook phenomenon. I am told it's regarded as more navigable than MySpace and perhaps more exclusive as well, because of its collegiate/Ivy League origins and the fact that everyone affiliates with a group or network of folks with common interests. And then, too, I'm told it's a very efficient way to meet people, make friends and so on. And it's free. :)

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Daniel de Vise: So long. Thank you.

ddv

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