I am trying hard not to be offended by the flippant title of Stephanie Rosenbloom's article: I Spy; Doesn't Everyone?:
"There was a time when unearthing someone’s private thoughts and deeds required sliding a hand beneath a mattress, fishing out a diary and hurriedly skimming its pages. The process was tactile, deliberate and fraught with anxiety: Will I be caught? Is this ethical? What will it do to my relationship with my child or partner? But digital technology has made uncovering secrets such a painless, antiseptic process that the boundary delineating what is permissible in a relationship appears to be shifting."
She is right. The boundaries are not as clearly defined as they were a generation ago. I do not recall every asking my children to share the contents of a note that may have been passed across a school room full of desks or worrying about the early days of AOL's instant messaging. Unfortunately, today, there is considerable room for concern over who might be sending messages to children across various electronic media... and I believe it is important for parents to monitor what children are doing via IM, cell phone text messaging, and email. I am not so sure that it should be done without the child knowing that electronic communications might be monitored, rather than spying or snooping in a more covert fashion. That trust, however, that monitoring is about security and safety only, is a sacred trust...and if violated can be disasterous.
And just when does a parent stop monitoring and hope that wise advice and counsel soaked in well enough to believe a child's self-defense system is adequate? After reading some of the scams that show up in my email regularly, I worry that even educated adults are still at risk. The "when" question isn't an easy one to answer. Modeling ethical behavior when it comes to monitoring versus spying or snooping (electronically) is growing in importance for parents (and IT professionals as well). Understanding the difference at the family level may be instrumental in providing perspectives on what is legislated on the federal level.
According to Robert J. Hong, the director of educational technology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, “For this latest generation, there’s an obscure line between lawful behavior and ethical behavior,” Mr. Hong said. On the balancing scale of "legal access to information" and "ethical conduct regarding access", I would hope that the scales never tilt toward unethical behavior as a societal norm simply because it is an easy, available path.