Mobile Phones And How Schools Are Breaking The Law

5:43 Jun 15th, 2009 | 2 notes

By now you all know about the sweeping changes to the school’s mobile phone policy. If you have a phone, it can be confiscated and searched without question. Besides being a huge invasion of privacy it raises some interesting questions as to the place of schools within the law.

Are schools above the law? Can school ignore widely known laws for their own reasons? Should schools be as accountable to public laws as the rest of society?

The new cell phone policy have massive privacy implications for students and the school. We are all protective of our personal data and privacy. This comes in the form of making sure people don’t look through you SMS messages, emails, contacts, family photos etc. Many students would be reluctant to just hand their phone over to someone, fearing the consequences, for example, if that person starts sending rude SMS messages around to your contacts. It’s a natural human reaction to protect what is ours.

So what does the law say about privacy? It says that no one else has legal access to anything you own, hence the idea of private ownership and privacy. It protects your belongings. However, your possessions can be taken away from you by the police if their is sufficient reason that you are suspected of hiding illegal activity. To do this, police have to attain a warrant to take your possessions and they can only do so through the proper legal channels. You know all of this of course, but think of it in this way. What right do the school have to take your possessions away without proper justification? In one word; none.

Unfortunately for the school, our constitution doesn’t provide for vigilantism or citizens arrest. Therefore, they are as answerable to laws as everyone else. They legally have no right to take away your phone. It has just become the norm that schools can do what they like, ignoring any pre existing law. The fact is, schools are not above the law. Schools are answerable to the law and students shouldn’t have to oblige by rules that have no legal standing.

When first hearing about the new policy and it’s ability to confiscate mobiles on the grounds of absolutely nothing, should teachers feel so inclined, one thing immediately popped into my head. The anti-terrorism laws. There was a controversy a few years back about these laws that allowed to detain individuals for up to 90 days without charge if there were thought to be involved in terrorist activities. Why did this pop into my head? Because it’s essentially the same principle as the mobile policy. Person detained under suspicion, phone confiscated under suspicion. Civil liberty of right to fair trial removed, civil liberty of privacy removed. While on a totally different scale, it’s the same thing.

In the case of the school confiscating mobiles, your civil liberties are being infringed upon. The civil liberties which were created to, by law, protect you from interference. The privacy laws created to protect you and your property from unlawful prying eyes. This policy sweeps away all legalities and proceeds to take what is yours and punish you if you do not abide. This policy presumes your guilt and seeks to raise the school above the law regardless of what you may say or do. Above all, this policy places the school on a moral cliff edge, with the intention of using the policy the right way being away from the edge, and careless invasion of privacy a long, long way down.