California Bill To Give Parents Access To Kids’ Facebook Pages | Hacker News Reader

California Bill To Give Parents Access To Kids’ Facebook Pages

techcrunch.com

41 pointsssclafani52 comments

Back in the late nineties I worked for a gay dating site, and when we had discussions on how to handle minors and their parents, we always sided with the (gay) kids, preserving their right to keep secrets from their parents.

I doubt anyone involved in this bill even considered that perspective, but in this age of diminishing privacy rights, I shouldn't be surprised that children have even less rights than adults. :-/

Admirable.

children have always had less rights than adults.

One of the things I've learned in the year I've been a legal adult is the amount of rights I suddenly was granted. It took a while for me to adjust to both the freedom, and the idea that I can actually screw up my entire life with just one/a few bad decision(s).

Example?

Weed

When you consider many of the people that write such bills, they'd probably say the problem lies with the child. They probably didn't even think of such a consequence, but I doubt they'd care if you told them.

I'd be just as interested in their email actives. Does that mean another bill is passed to force ISPs to give me access? This is a joke.

The free market already created a solution for this, and as a parent, you have all the power needed. put monitoring software on the pc and get the passwords from the child. No new micro managing laws needed.

States should focus on figuring out how to pay their bills, not creating business stifling laws that already have solutions in place.

I agree. I think that I have a tendency to give parents access to this type of information much more than many on HN, but you have to do it at the right endpoint: the computer and network a child uses to access the internet. Parents need to install a network appliance that can analyze and present all of the activity that occurs on their network (i.e., a good router). I'm surprised that these are not yet widespread. I would be interested in creating one if someone wants to invest money.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids that can circumvent this and access facebook from friends' computers, from school, cafes, etc. This is especially true if the kid knows they are being watched or if they have a laptop. Kids are smart. You suggest that a parent out-tech their child. I don't imagine thats so easy to do for some parents that aren't great with computers when they are up against a tech-savvy teenager.

Listen, what's the purpose of the law? To help parents control their children?

If you don't trust your children to understand your lessons about being careful online, do you install cameras on their way to school as well? Do you read their text messages and diaries? Is this seriously acceptable/normal over there or is this explicitly targeted at Facebook/social media sites?

For me this seems like an easy way out. If you are suspicious that your own kid does something you don't like (Yeah.. And you never did that in the good old times..), let's just snoop out their communication on Facebook.

And - as we all know - the things you say or write as a kid are like totally acceptable all the time. You'd never talk bad about things your parents like and you'd always like your parents to check out the people you've got a crush on..

Edit:

You suggest a kid can use a computer at another kids house (to do stuff on the 'net that has to be controlled) but trust your kid to not abuse the distance to your home in other ways? "Yeah, she's over at a friend's. Hope they're not on Facebook again."?

> Listen, what's the purpose of the law? To help parents control their children?

More likely, the purpose is to grandstand and give technophobic/worried parents the impression something is being done on their behalf, in the hope that they'll vote for the politicians responsible in future. Whether the law works is irrelevant.

There's always a way around this kind of thing, that's just part of life. If someone is adequately determined to circumvent your restriction, they can almost always do so. You're correct that many children could just use the computer at a friend's house, but there's nothing we can do about that short of imposing IP and/or MAC restrictions on Facebook logins (parents could extract Facebook passwords, however, and login to their childrens' accounts independently). A router with adequate reporting capabilities would be a huge upgrade for most families, and it's becoming increasingly important to place this kind of monitoring on the network side given the ever-growing preponderance of mobile devices.

The article seems to be linkbait anyways, but if it were true I would be entirely against it -- I am just pointing out where the argument for home network monitoring falls short when both parties are aware of the monitor being there. I suppose the key to having one, for a parent, or for someone building one, would be to leave a kid completely unsuspecting.

I suppose the key to having one, for a parent, or for someone building one, would be to leave a kid completely unsuspecting.

If I were a parent installing monitoring software, I think I'd tell my kids exactly what the software monitors, show them the logs, and teach them a way to get around it that logs access times but not content. I would say, "If you need to hide something from me, that's cool, but I'm going to know that you hid something and I'm going to ask about it, so keep that in mind." The purpose of the monitoring software would be to provide an opportunity to analyze the potential consequences of my kids' online activities.

Of course, imagining and doing are very different things, so ask me again in n years after I've actually started a family and see if I actually followed my own advice ;).

You ask the child for all their passwords and install a monitor on their computer for other activity. If the child is going to circumvent this by creating a fake account or lying to you about being on a social network then this law still won't help you. In order for a website to give you access to an account, you have to know that account exists.

Bottom line, monitoring your child is part of being a parent and there are already tools in place to help with this. As the saying goes Trust but verify.

> put monitoring software on the pc and get the passwords from the child

This.

Can't think of more elegant way to teach a kid about privacy, basics of cryptography, some hacking etc. :)

The article is completely wrong. This bill is actually a general privacy bill.

http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_24...

Most of the provisions are about preventing social networks from by default publishing information like home address of their users. In fact, nowhere in the legislation does it actually give parents access to the information, only the ability of parents to request _removal_ of information from the website.

Removal is still a problem, if the bill is referring to parents removing their older kids' accounts. Teenagers should have access to an online life that their parents can't just delete on a whim.

Only personally identifying information can be removed. And the bill is fairly restrictive in what counts. SS number, Credit Card number, drivers license number. Images and videos only count if they reveal the individuals current location.

Furthermore, the parents can only do this if the individual _identifies_ themselves as under 18. If they do not do so, Facebook (or whoever) doesn't have to do anything the parents request.

And again, this can only be removed if the parents have knowledge and access to the information they're trying to get rid of in the first place.

That sounds reasonable. I commented without reading the full article and bill because I know how much the Internet helped me experience the world when I was growing up in a small town, and would hate to see future generations deprived of the same benefits.

This dose sound reasonable but do we need a law for this. I get the feeling the Facebook dosen't want to publish SSN and credit card info. If a parent dosen't have the personal authority to prevent their kids from publishing the information online, then I don't think they have the right to have it removed. Now personal infomration realted to the parent they have the right to remove, just like every other individual though.

I am not very impressed with this article. What the legislation actually says is that social networking websites have to set privacy options to maximum by default for new users, and that any user (or if a minor, their parents) can have certain personally identifying information removed within 48 hours on request.

http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_24... It's very short, and although I think it's a bit flawed, it's clearly aimed at protecting privacy rather than enabling snooping.

Whoa, thanks for the link.

After reading that I guess TechCrunch tried to get a nice headline here.. I don't see that the bill allows parents access to the profile. It 'only' allows parents to request that personal details of their children are taken down within 48h and it says that the default privacy settings are rather strict (Name, City revealed only) and need to be explained in plain text.

That seems to be a lot different from 'Your parents can access your profile, young boy'? Am I misreading the text?

Well, it could be used to gain access to a minor's profile. Say Maurice Minor sets up a Spacelook account and elects to share his personal data with Spacelook Friends only. His parents become concerned because strange people start appearing at the door every day claiming to be Maurice's good friends, but since Maurice's parents are not Friends with him on Spacelook they can't tell exactly what information he's making available. Fearing for young Maurice's safety, they demand Spacelook get rid of his personal data but the company does not respond. They sue, Spacelook asks the court to dismiss their suit and denies any liability, and now the parents ask the Court to order that Spacelook reveal any and all data about Maurice's account.

But as written, it doesn't seem like the parents can just demand access to any and all personal information about a minor's social network account - only that it be removed or restricted from public view. I don't know what existing law says about access rights of parents to a minor's data/accounts - that'd be a bit of a project. IANAL, TINLA, etc.

Much ado about nothing, it seems. I'm wondering if Mr. Biggs actually read the very bill he linked to?

http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_24...

The only reason the "evil parents" are allowed to direct the website to remove information on the minor's behalf is because a minor is, well, legally a minor!

The only people I would suspect getting all uppity about this are minors themselves (whose opinions matter little, to be frank) and sites that don't want to spend the money to retool their new user sign-up policies and defaults.

This doesn't seem very practical to me. How is Facebook meant to decide whether (a) one fb user is a parent of another fb user, and (b) that the 2nd fb user is under 18?

Lawmakers have no need for practicality and common sense.

Very true. Sadly.

If not checked correctly, the abuse that could be created with this could really become a problem.

How would this have any jurisdiction over social networking sites outside of California? If not, then it seems this will just push them out of the state.

It doesn't. And it would.

I think it's a bit premature to suggest that either a) Facebook would move out of California or b) a new social network would start up outside of California and eat Facebook's lunch because it didn't have draconian laws. Surely there are easier ways to solve the problem at hand.

I'm only going from the article, which is evidently flawed (TechCrunched!), but it could effectively add a tax on social networking sites operating in the state. States compete for companies all the time and this could provide an opening for somewhere else to put together a more compelling package. Obviously the big drawback to leaving is the lack of tech people, so I guess you weigh your options. Personally, I feel like Facebook and Google would set up shop on the moon if it were in their financial interest and they could find someone to run it.

What you're missing is that the state the company is located in doesn't matter. In general, if it's doing business in California, it can be sued in California court. This has been the case for a long long time. Otherwise everyone would just set up in Delaware or whichever state was most inaccessible and/or sympathetic to corporate defendants.

Why would you think that?

I'm so glad Congress wasn't paying attention to the Internet when I was a kid.

Adults especially seem to forget that there is no clear change that happens when kids turn 18. Children turn into adults in a very gradual manner over a large period of time rather heterogeneously. This then causes problems when adults, especially those who have been adults for a large period of time attempt to treat all "children" (including teenagers/etc.) as children, especially when the use of power is used.

To give an example (taken from this page), put yourself into this sort of position. You have somebody who cares for you, wants all that is best for you. Somebody like a spouse. You live together, talk/etc. If you found out that they were spying on you, listening in on what you talk with to your friends, trying to find what websites you visit/etc. You'd consider it a rather massive invasion of privacy and you'd consider the spouse to be at the very least creepy, even if they were aiming to learn this information "for your own good".

Similarly a few posts here are variants on "spy on your kids", using various clandestine methods. I'd imagine that you would find it rather distasteful if your government were caught doing similar things to you, especially if the reasons used were that it was "for your own good", and yet the child's perspective in this isn't being considered.

To illustrate, say you are 18 and one day (age of majority 18), and had any of those things happen to you, you would be, quite understandably, pissed. Now as a 17 year old, your reaction would likely be unchanged, however there would be a lot less understanding and a lot more of a tendency to explain the anger generated and the resulting behavior as simply "poor behavior" of the child.

And while they're at it, they can set the value of pi to 3.

whenever both are true simutaneously:

1. child doesn't want to share his online presence with his/her parents

2. and the parents still insist on it

then this parent/child relationship has much more serious problem than just the issue of access to the online page, and applying the government force on the side of the parent against the will of the child - how would it make the situation better?

Bear in mind that parents can be liable for the actions of their children in a variety of ways. If a parent can be hit with negligence because they allowed someone to abduct their child because they were seduced away by somebody obviously creepy on $SOCIAL_NETWORK, then they need the power to discharge their legally-obligated parenting responsibilities.

I'm not saying this PROVES this is a good law or anything, I haven't read it, I'm just saying that this should be taken into account when trying to figure out the correct child-parent rights balance. If you come down on the side of the child, you are also saying that you agree that the parent is legally blameless if something goes wrong. I'm not sure everybody is quite ready to take that step. You should also consider the full age range; I think a lot of people mentally consider only late teens, but it has to work for 7-year-olds too, and all other ages. Everybody is on the net now.

Seems like California legislators take Silicon Valley's "capital of innovation" status a bit too much for granted.[1][2][3]

[1] http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days-Payments-...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/16/california-bill-to-give-par...

[3] http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArtic...

Do people really need government assistance to take care of their own kids?

You'd be surprised.

Republican in the house ^^^

e.g. welfare?

Before you-all get in a tizzy from Techcrunch's sensationalist headlines, please take a look at some of the links to the actual law in the comments below.

A thought experiment: how quickly would this bill be killed if Facebook played hardball and threatened to kill all California accounts?

That would be an easy bluff to call.

I think only the FBI should be able to access my kids' facebook accounts. Heaven help us all if someone who knows, loves and has their best interest at heart should learn about my kids interests, friends and beliefs!

How long until some poor gay or trans kid gets outed and kicked out of home by religious parents because of this? I think it's going in absolutely the wrong direction. Kids should have their privacy respected.

Hmm, I think California lawmakers flunked constitutional law..

As I understand it that is no US Constitutional distinction between rights of parents or rights of children..ie when you are born in the US you have full rights under the constitution despite not being able to enter contracts a non-minor. That would mean that a parent getting private access to a private other FB member account of a child would fall under the right be to be secure form search and seizure ..among other constitutional issues

> As I understand it that is no US Constitutional distinction between rights of parents or rights of children..ie when you are born in the US you have full rights under the constitution despite not being able to enter contracts a non-minor.

You need to re-read the US Constititution. It has several prohibitions based on age. And the Supremes have been more than happy to accept several others.

> That would mean that a parent getting private access to a private other FB member account of a child would fall under the right be to be secure form search and seizure ..among other constitutional issues

In almost all circumstances, parents can consent to have their children's physical property searched. (This is very settled law.) Given that, what makes you that "virtual property" would be treated any differently?

BTW - Even if you're an adult, other people can consent to have your property searched in many circumstances.

To my reading, 4th amendment law doesn't much follow the 4th amendment, but the Supremes have gone a different direction for decades.

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