Huntsville Ala. schools say call from NSA led to monitoring students online

[Ichingcarpenter]

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - A secret program to monitor students' online activities began quietly in Huntsville schools, following a phone call from the NSA, school officials say.

Huntsville schools Superintendent Casey Wardynski says the system began monitoring social media sites 18 months ago, after the National Security Agency tipped the school district to a student making violent threats on Facebook.

The NSA, a U.S. agency responsible for foreign intelligence, this week said it has no record of a call to Huntsville and does not make calls to school systems.

Regardless of how the program started, Huntsville City Schools began scanning Facebook and other sites for signs of gang activity, watching for photos of guns, photos of gang signs and threats of violence.

The Huntsville monitoring program is called SAFe, or Students Against Fear. School board members said they did not know about the program when contacted last week.

Snip

Here's the school district's explanation of how the program got started:

About a year and half ago, Wardynski said, the NSA called Huntsville and reported a high school student had threatened on Facebook to injure a teacher.

Al Lankford, the city's longtime school security officer, told AL.com that he took the NSA phone call. He said security officers went to the high school and eventually searched the boy's car.

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/09/after_warning_from_nsa_huntsvi.html

[whistler162]

1. Sounds like a

excuse using one of the current boogie men. The NSA told me to do it. It isn't my fault.