Monday morning to be called into the principal’s office. He’s even more sur- prised when the principal tells him he’s being suspended because of photos that were posted online.
It all started at a party that weekend. Someone took a picture (with a camera phone) of Jared drinking a can of some-
thing – it’s impossible to read the label – and posted it on a photo-sharing site, captioned with “Jared gets his drunk on.” Other people in the party photos are clearly drinking beer, so when the principal saw the photos he decided to suspend everyone in them that he recognized. He also decided to take Jared off the Student Council for setting a bad example.
Jared objects to this: there’s no proof that he was drinking in the photo, and he didn’t write the caption. Besides, what he does outside of school shouldn’t affect his school life. The principal points out that teachers are expected to behave themselves outside of school – the school board recommends that teachers not even have Facebook profiles, and some teachers in other cities have lost their jobs because of things they’ve posted – so it’s fair to hold students to the same standard.
When he gets home, Jared looks for the photo online. He finds it, but can’t remove it; because it was posted anony- mously he can’t even ask the person who posted it to remove it. He also finds out that the photo was tagged with his full name: it’s the first thing that comes up when he does a Google search for himself. He wonders if it will still be online when he starts applying for universities or looking for a job.
Jared’s mother is furious when she hears about the suspension. She’s angry at Jared for going to the party, but also angry at the school and at whoever posted the photo. She contacts the company that runs the photo-sharing site and asks them to remove it, but they say they don’t have any legal reason to interfere with one of their users’ accounts. She makes Jared phone everyone who was at the party and ask if they were the ones who posted the photo. Finally, his friend Mark – who wasn’t suspended, because he wasn’t in any of the photos – admits that he did it and agrees to take down the photos. Jared’s mother then does another Google search for Jared’s name, and the picture is gone. When she does an image search, though, the photo and caption still appear in the search results.
Questions
- Briefly summarize the events in this case study and list the issues it raises around privacy. (You should be able to identify at least three issues.)
- How serious do you think the issues raised here are? Why? Which is the most serious and why?
- Does this case study seem relevant to your own life? Why or why not?