Anne Bubnic's List: Digital Citizenship/Federal & State Mandates

In April 2008, Gov. Steve Beshear signed House Bill 91, often referred to as "The Golden Rule Act." The measure is aimed at protecting Kentucky's students by requiring "bullying" policies in the state's public schools. "This legislation hits home for many children, teens and their parents," said Gov. Beshear. "By prohibiting bullying and harassment among students, The Golden Rule Act will help protect Kentucky's most valuable resource, our children."

A bill passed earlier this year makes it mandatory for Pennsylvania school districts to have a written anti-bullying policy in place beginning next year.

Illustrating how important this threat has become, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) proposed a federal law that would criminalize acts of so-called cyberbullying. In this blog, two national security advisors propose to take it further so that on-line masquerading is also defined and considered. They would also like to see H.R. 2163 increase the penalities when a cyberbully uses a false identity or steals another person's identity when bullying a victim.

Governor Rod Blagojevich Thursday signed Senate Bill 2512 legislation to help protect children from the dangers of the Internet. SB 2512 requires school districts, beginning in the 2009-2010 school year, to incorporate an "age-appropriate Internet safety unit of instruction in the current course of study regularly taught in the district's schools," beginning in third grade.

Kentucky's Office of the Attorney General's home page for cybersafety and cyberbullying awareness and information.

New Hampshire's effort to educate the public on the dangers of the Internet--and helping parents Connect with Their Kids! about Internet safety.

This site is brought to you by Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath and the Montana Safe Schools Center at The University of Montana.

The Pennyslvania Center for Safe Schools has released a new Internet safety video: <b>Protecting Kids Online</b>. This 22-minute Internet safety resource speaks to parents and caregivers on topics from understanding the serious repercussion of cyber-bullying to learning how to safeguard our children from online predators.

The California Department of Education (CDE) and the Office of the Attorney General (AG) co-administer the School/Law Enforcement Partnership program. The Partnership has funded the Kern County Office of Education for a five-year period to administer the statewide School Safety and Violence Prevention Training Grant. The grant provides for safe schools planning, bullying prevention, and crisis response training. This training program does not currently include prevention of bullying that occurs via electronic communication devices. <b>Need for the bill </b> : A poll commissioned in 2006 by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, showed that one in three teens and one in six preteens have been victims of cyber bullying and that more than 2 million of those victims told no one about the attacks.

The Michigan Cyber Safety Initiative (Michigan CSI) is an Internet safety education program with customized presentations for kindergarten through eighth-grade students and a community seminar. There are many downloadable handouts for educators and parents, including an online safety contract, social networking discussion questions (parent dialogue with child), templates, slides and sample presentations.

Florida's Cybersafety Initiative consists of SafeSurf Web sites for <a href = "http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurfkids"><b>Kids</a>, <a href="http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurfteens"><b>Teens</a></b> and <a href= "http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurfadults"><b>Adults</b></a> and a <b>cybersafety school assembly program </b> that specifically targets middle and high school students to educate them about cyberpredators and personal internet safety.

The Montana Attorney General's office follows the national lead with a web site of their own on cybersafety resources and information for parents, educators and teens.

17-minute parent presentation on cybersafety developed by IKeepSafe and Comcast with Bob McDonnell, Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia. The video is available free for all Comcast Digital Cable customers via Comcast's signature On Demand service. It explores the risks associated with the Internet, and teaches parents and guardians how to become involved and take action to protect their children from these risks. It can also be downloaded online.

If Congress wishes to address cyberbullying through federal legislation, it should focus on education-based approaches instead of criminalization, argue Berin Szoka and Adam Thierer in "Cyberbullying Legislation: Why Education is Preferable to Regulation," released today by The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Criminalizing what is mostly minor-on-minor behavior will not likely solve the age-old problem of kids mistreating each other, a problem that has traditionally been dealt through counseling and rehabilitation at the local level.

Sen. Menendez's bill, the School and Family Education about the Internet Act, would provide for grants for educational programs and award them based on objective criteria, with the grants adjustable from year to year based on changing needs and technologies.

I am sure that Vermonters don't like the idea of teens sending sexy pictures from one phone to another. Nor do Ohio and Utah parents want their kids using cell phone minutes to bare their bodies with their buddies. Nevertheless, their state legislatures are among the first trying to sensibly ratchet down the penalties for sexting. They are backing away from laws that currently treat a teenager with a cell phone the same way they treat a child pornographer. They know there's a difference between truly dreadful judgment and a felony.

Here's the newest from Sen. Ted Stevens, the man who described the Internet as a series of tubes: It's time for the federal government to ban access to Wikipedia, MySpace, and social networking sites from schools and libraries.

A new law aimed at deterring the proliferation of cyberbullying at public schools goes into effect Jan. 1, bolstering educators' ability to tackle the problem head-on.The law gives school administrators the leverage to suspend or expel students for bullying other students by means of an electronic device such as a mobile phone or on an Internet social networking site like MySpace or Facebook; the law, however, only applies to bullying that occurs during school hours or during a school-related activity.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is the key privacy regulation that protects children from having information about them collected by web site owners. In effect since April 2000, COPPA prohibits a web site owner or operator from "knowingly collecting information from children under the age of 13 unless the operator obtains parental consent and allows parents to review their children's information and restrict its further use."

Do school officials have the authority to impose discipline in response to harmful off-campus online speech? Should they? This is a major challenge facing school administrators today. Many state legislatures are now adding statutory provisions requiring schools to incorporate cyberbullying into bullying prevention policies. But this has presented some concerns. For example, in Oregon and Washington, language incorporated into cyberbullying legislation appears to restrict administrators from responding to any off-campus bullying regardless of the harmful impact on campus. Administrators from these two states are advised to check with their legal council. Administrators in other states should understand that the American Civil Liberties Union is trying to use language in the cyberbullying statutes to override federal case law and restrict administrators from doing anything in response to off-campus harmful speech.