Can my school even do this?

[The Director]

I'm a high school freshman, and I've recently been raised aware to the way my school completely violates the privacy of the students. It's common knowledge that the school checks up on people's facebook accounts regularly. That made sense, so I didn't question it. Then, I found out that if you sign in to your email using one of their computers, they will take your password and regularly check your emails. This was a little unsettling to me, but I didn't think too much about it because they typically only do this to the trouble makers.

One of my friends recently got called to the office for violating dress code. She had to serve lunch detention in there, and while she was in there, she noticed the large collection of claimed phones the office had. She claims they were going through the messages of any unlocked phone, and I believe her.

The last straw was when I brought my brand-new iPad to school today so I could work on my research paper. I was warned about how if you use the school's wifi with your own device, they apparantly will install a tracker on it and gain all your passwords.

Can they do this? Is this even legal????

P.S. I go to private school. Does this make a difference?

[Alexis]

What the....what kind of school does that is so not legal

[Sam]

Depending on the school but I doubt they really do that. You do sign a waiver acknowledging that they have the right to monitor your computer use but saving peoples passwords would just be a waste of time. As for the phones, you aren't even supposed to have them so although it may not be ethical if they have a cause they can search your phone. And the last one no thats just a rumor. Period.

[john]

Holly crap your situation makes mine look like nothing. So I'm also in highschool but I go to public school and I think last week ortwo weeks ago my cousin was in his study hall was tweeting shit about this one asshole of a hall monitor (also his study hall teacher) and one of his friends that was new to twitter (literally two days) liked the tweet and the next day they called them both down to the office and told them that they found their accounts of twitter (the part that was confusing about this was that my cousin doesn't even use his real name on twitter, he uses his nickname, so we couldn't figure out how they found out.) and since they made those tweet during the school day the would need to get out of school of suspension. So yeah apparently school are starting to take away our privacy.
But anyways since my cousin and his friend are in the hall monitor's class, he's being as douche as he can be and not letting even whisper to each other while everyone else screams their lungs out. And he tried to get his class switched but they wouldn't let him and he has to stay in the class for the rest of the school year. Man it must be super awkward for him because he wad talking real shit to the hall monitor and he saw ALL the tweets.

[Boonie]

That is not legal! wow your school is going overboard. My school isn't allowed to go in facebooks or anything.