District officials say tracking sender behind racist letter with
death threats is difficult
Gilroy – Police are tracking who sent a racist e-mail to a Gilroy teacher last month, the first of two death threats aimed at the minority woman.
Ethnic slurs and profanity smeared the first e-mail, sent to an algebra teacher at Gilroy High School in September. A second e-mail, sent last week from the same Yahoo! Mail address, contained a simple, scary message: Die.
Both messages were sent from computers within the school district, administrators say, and either is grounds for expulsion – or worse.
“This is not only a school issue – it’s a police issue and a felony,” said principal James Maxwell. “This person is really, really going out on a ledge by doing this.”
The ugly e-mails may be tough to trace. Cherie Somavia, school resource officer, said Gilroy police have yet to identify a suspect. Police issued a subpoena to Yahoo! last week, looking for the name under which the account is registered, said GUSD public information officer Teri Freedman. But that name could easily be a fabrication.
Karen Mahon, a Yahoo! representative, was unsure what legal responsibility, if any, Yahoo! might bear for the incident. Recipients of harassing e-mails from Yahoo! accounts may file a complaint with the company, she said, which evaluates it and considers whether to deactivate the offending account.
Even if police find the computer on which the e-mail was sent, Freedman said, fingering a specific suspect is tricky. GUSD students have individual log-ins, but linking a student to his or her log-in would require video surveillance, she said, “and it would have to be really accurately time-and-date stamped” to prevent students from being framed.
In addition, many students choose to use the generic log-in, ghsstudent, when they’re not working with personal files.
Other schools have successfully snagged violent e-mails: last May in San Diego, a Yahoo! user issued a death threat to a high school teacher. The threat landed on the desk of Grant Gutstadt, district security administrator, the next morning. Within a day, Gutstadt identified the specific computer on which the threat was sent, narrowing the number of suspects to 12. Then, using school Internet use records, a single student was identified and arrested.
What made it so easy? In San Diego schools, Internet servers store each web address visited, the time and date of the visit, and the IP address of the computer used. In addition, the schools log each student’s Internet use with an individualized log-in.
“Without logging to go back to,” said Gutstadt, “you have nothing.”
Some teachers favor closer monitoring of students’ Internet use. Michelle Nelson, president of the Gilroy Teachers Association, said upcoming union negotiations would include the issue.
“Cameras might prove to be too expensive, but we will be looking at other ways that we can monitor this,” Nelson said. “For instance: a sign-in sheet. Students could be assigned to a particular computer, and sign in with the day, the time-in and time-out.”
GUSD could not provide information on its server’s logging capacity. Rob van Herk, IT manager, said such monitoring could be costly and time-consuming.
“You’d really have to enforce it,” van Herk said, “and I’m a bit worried about the amount of time it’d take to make it work.”
Besides, he said, “the technology is there to assist the students, not necessarily to track and look over their shoulder.”
The system used in San Diego, produced by 8e6 Technologies, costs at least $7,000 to install, said Eric Lundbohm, Vice President of Marketing. With far fewer students than San Diego, the programs would be more expensive per student in Gilroy to install, van Herk said.
Gutstadt said daily maintenance on the system was minimal:
“We’re not hand-holding it,” he said. “When you need to go into it, you use it at that time.”
Another tool used by Gutstadt is the much-maligned MySpace and other social networking sites. In San Diego schools, when another threat was issued, Gutstadt searched for the Yahoo! e-mail address on MySpace.
“Wham-o – we found this person, and their picture,” he said. “Due to his ignorance, we nailed him in a few hours.”
But Van Herk said panning for e-mail addresses on MySpace could turn up as much sludge as gold. Anyone can pretend to be anyone else, he warned, leading administrators after a false scent.
“It’s not proof,” said Gutstadt, “but certainly it can be useful. You couldn’t take someone to court on it, but it can go a long way in identifying a suspect.”
School administrators worry that excessive focus on misuses of the Internet could drive IT resources into policing, rather than facilitating, Web use.
“Whenever this happens, people say, ‘See, I told you so – these things are dangerous,’ ” said Juanita Contin, enrollment coordinator. “But we shouldn’t pull back from it – it opens so many opportunities for students.”
Van Herk agreed.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, students are making good use of our still relatively limited resources,” he said.
But even a rare misuse of the Web’s powers can spook teachers and staff. With episodes of school violence making national headlines, an anonymous threat is particularly unnerving.
“New teachers have enough on their plate without worrying about any other distractions,” Nelson said.
To support the teacher, a relatively new one at GHS, both the Teachers Association and school administrators have opened their arms. The association has provided personal visits, phone calls, an understanding peer group and, when a willing ear isn’t enough, contact with a lawyer.
Currently, there are no specific guidelines for teachers who receive threats, said Nelson.
“I don’t think it’s ever been discussed,” she said, but after this incident, “we need to have a procedure in place.”
Gilroy Teachers Association is reviewing the safety article of contracts from 10 comparable districts – Evergreen Elementary, Hollister Elementary, Oak Grove, Salinas City Elementary, Franklin-McKinley, Salinas Union High School, San Benito High School, Eastside Union, Milpitas Unified, and Morgan Hill Unified – to determine what changes, if any, they want made to their contract.
Unfortunately, schools face the toughest Internet security challenges, said Lundbohm. He estimated that half of 8e6 Technologies’ business is done with schools; the other half, with companies. With dozens of students logging into a single computer in a day, pinpointing a culprit is a hassle – and students are more likely than office workers to test the system.
“We learn most of what we learn about people getting around filters from the students,” Lundbohm said. “A 14-year-old kid will not be fired. He’s got a lot of time, and if he’s able to get around the filter, he becomes a folk hero.”
