Cell phone seized, but student's privacy saved

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — Inch schools across the country, cell telephones travel on and cell telephones acquire confiscated, often on a day-to-day basis. Students may lose their darling telephone for the remainder of the school day. But they don't anticipate to lose their privacy.

In a little town east of Stockton, Calif., that is what happened to Justin Tomek, a senior at Basswood High School, last October. Months later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern Golden State weighed in.

"Schools demand to understand that just because a pupil utilizes a cell telephone when he or she is not supposed to doesn't intend the school have a licence to travel in and read their private messages," said Ann Brick, an ACLU staff lawyer in San Francisco. "It's wish rummaging through their private letters."

Senior broke ruleFor Tomek, a senior who maintains his classes high and is the captain of his baseball game team, Oct. Twenty-Five did not begin out well. He and his female parent had a little statement before school. During his P.E. class, he called her on his cell to apologize.

He knew it was against the regulations at Basswood High to utilize a cell telephone while social classes were running. Sure enough, he got caught. It wasn't until he went to pick up his telephone after school that the existent surprise hit: He couldn't have got his telephone back because a instructor had not finished going through his textual matter messages.

His reaction: "I was embarrassed. They were reading my personal information. They read through all of it."

Mom telephone calls the ACLUEventually he got his phone back. The state of affairs didn't sit down well with his mother: Barbara Tomek called the ACLU.

On March 3, Brick sent a missive to Basswood Incorporate stating that the board's policy permitting hunts of textual matter messages, telephone phone calls and photographs on pupil cell telephones was excessively wide and violated the Fourth Amendment and the Golden State Constitution's commissariat providing privateness for people of all ages.

On Wednesday, the Basswood school board tightened its policy to state pedagogues could read textual matter messages or expression at photographs on pupil cell telephones only if they believe the hunt would demo a school regulation or law was violated.

"We desire to be compliant with the law," Basswood Overseer Ronald Estes said.