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This wouldn't be Capitol Valley without an occasional Facebook post.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Not to rain on anyone's parade here, but Facebook had a fantastic way of verifying identities. Before opening the site to the general public, one signed on with an address from a verified network, to which your identify could be traced. 

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to other users, sometimes classmates and others they know.

Are these actual facts? Is that news, or opinion? Any new communications system can be considered a "new venue" once it reaches critical mass, and cyberbullying dates back to AOL's glory days. Perhaps CNN could have at least backed up these bold assertions with a call to the Pew Internet and American Life Project which has done several excellent studies on those subjects.

CNN.com had an article today that, while in no way dispensing any new information, is something that could be pretty useful for people who a) are brand new to social networking sites or b) have kids who are on or want to be on one.

"I don't want to have to worry about all the different online scandals and problems," says Brown, an education major at St. Joseph College in Connecticut. She'd like to control her personal information and keep it out of the hands of identity thieves or snooping future employers. "It's just common sense."

It sounds like her info is locked down and airtight. But is it?

Turns out, even the privacy-conscious Sarah Browns of the world freely hand over personal information to perfect strangers. They do so every time they download and install what's known as an "application," one of thousands of mini-programs on a growing number of social networking sites that are designed by third-party developers for anything from games and sports teams to trivia quizzes and virtual gifts.

The rest of the article is here, and if you fall into either of the categories I mentioned, you should totally check it out.

I feel the need, again, to make the point that nothing is free.  Not entirely.  If you want the neat applications and you don't want to pay for them they need to be supported by ads.  The ads are more effective and therefor more profitable if they are targeted based upon assumed interests and patterns of behavior.

So should you be careful?  Sure.  Should you whine and moan because your online activity is being tracked?  No, you should just stay away from sites and applications that do the tracking.

My hometown paper, The Washington Post, has a (for once) terrific and thoughtful article on the public policy and employment law implications of social networks: that which you have done in the past but recorded for your own memory, can now be easily used against you. Quoth the Post:

It's almost like Googling someone: Log on to Facebook. Join the Washington, D.C., network. Search the Web site for your favorite school system. And then watch the public profiles of 20-something teachers unfurl like gift wrap on the screen, revealing a sense of humor that can be overtly sarcastic or unintentionally unprofessional -- or both.

One Montgomery County special education teacher displayed a poster that depicts talking sperm and invokes a slang term for oral sex. One woman who identified herself as a Prince William Countykindergarten teacher posted a satiric shampoo commercial with a half-naked man having an orgasm in the shower. A D.C. public schools educator offered this tip on her page: "Teaching in DCPS -- Lesson #1: Don't smoke crack while pregnant."

Sarcastic? Yeah. Unprofessional? I'm not so sure. I think the danger begins when you identify yourself by your employer. While we were all proud to post that first job on Facebook, many of us neglected to take down photos or change profiles. And then they caught on. I saw an old employer's H.R. director on Facebook. As much as I considered her a friend, there were parts of my life I wasn't comfortable sharing. So, I blocked her. I also went through the trouble of blocking the network of another employer from viewing this sight. Hindsight being 20/20, many of them have written to me since unblocking it in complementary terms, but I did out of an abundance of caution, not to mention never making a single reference to where I worked or what I did for living. I live a very public life (or as my friend Andy Beal says, a Radically Transparent lifestyle - BUY HIS BOOK!).

I know that employers will look at that page, and I need to be more careful," said Webster, adding that other Prince William teachers have warned her about her page. "At the same time, my work and social lives are completely separate. I just feel they shouldn't take it seriously. I am young. I just turned 22."

many school systems are wrestling with the problem, as teachers are in a way, public figures, and certainly role models. To the credit of some systems, they aren't reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. Pulled on one hand by the need to maintain reputations, but on another by the need to recruit quality teachers who are enthusiastic about their jobs (anecdotal evidence shows young adults with healthy personal lives have better interpersonal and workplace skills) they are walking a fine tightrope, and to some, it may come down to a Justice Potter Stewart-style "I know it when I see it" mentality which some smart employment lawyers are going to have to codify.

Local school officials say they have no policies concerning social networking pages or blogs kept by teachers. But they said that online improprieties would fall under general guidelines requiring proper behavior in and outside school and that sketchy Web sites would be handled case by case.

"I hate to think of what's out there. . . . There's so much out there that it's hard to know what's there," said Ken Blackstone, a Prince William schools spokesman. "But as public employees, we all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach."

Above Reproach? Get thy recruiter to a nunnery, Mr. Blackstone! Here is the sad truth, you will find eager young men and women who want to be teachers. Inspired by one of their own, or driven by a calling or desire to help or do good, they apply for underpaid, overworked positions which are afforded little respect by parents or the institutions which they serve.