Can a teacher read a student's text messages?
Closedpaul -
I would like to know if a teacher confiscates a mobile phone from one of their students, whether they have the right to read the messages contained in the phone. If not, and someone has a link proving that they don't have the right, I would appreciate it, thank you in advance ;)
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15 réponses
no, he absolutely does not have the right, it violates privacy. You can report it to your school's principal, who will take the appropriate action. If he does not want to return it to you, tell him that you will file a complaint for theft with the police. Do you have any witnesses?
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Hello,
I don't see what the point is of bringing up a discussion that's 15 years old.
We need to remember that at that time, smartphones were not widely used; the first consumer iPhone came out in 2007.
The initial discussion probably concerns a simple phone. Screen locking was not as common as it is now, so reading texts on a confiscated phone was a perfectly plausible possibility. That's no longer the case today.
Back then, teachers were mainly concerned about their right to their image. There are still videos on YT from classes 15 or 16 years ago with teachers being disrupted, unfortunately easily recognizable.
Social media was not as developed and, above all, it hadn't completely taken over the social lives of teenagers. It certainly wasn't a concern for teachers in 2009.
What one understands well is clearly expressed,
And the words to say it come easily.
(Boileau)
Hello
This is indeed an old discussion.
The issue still arises, and the follow-up was due to a legal point that cannot be answered here; indeed, the SMS appeared on a device in one of the descriptions from May 6, 2024, shown by a student. In the follow-up message.
But each time in the discussion, the situation described is different.
We may have slightly different problems today, but they are still present.
See the announced evolution of WhatsApp.
check this out:
http://www.commentcamarche.net/contents/droits/respect vie privee.php3
have you talked to your parents about it? if so, what did they say?
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it's true that the use of mobile phones is prohibited in schools, but the teacher should have returned it to you at the end of the class and asked you not to use it on school grounds. As for confiscating it, on what grounds? Your parents can go see the teacher and demand its return. Now it's up to you not to use it in school; if you're a big boy, there are rules and laws to follow.
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Did the whole class go behind her back to check that she was ACTUALLY reading the messages?
If not, it's hard to prove. You just saw your teacher pressing the buttons on your phone that she just confiscated because you were using it in class.
See you later!
Thanks again
you're welcome, my pleasure.
mark your question as resolved if you got the answers you were looking for.
see you!
I know she should turn it off during class, so she's at fault, but the teacher confiscated it from 11 AM to 12 PM.
Her expelled classmate sent her a text insulting the teacher, so she read the message and then replied using my daughter's phone at 12:40 PM, even though she had not returned it to her.
I have been summoned tomorrow by the principal of the school; she has 3 hours of detention and is going to a disciplinary council.
The teacher boasted about having read all my daughter's messages. What can I do? Thank you.
In France
In its 1st article IV° 5th paragraph, law no. 2004-575 of June 21, 2004 known as the law for trust in the digital economy (often abbreviated as "LCEN") provides a very broad definition of electronic mail, which encompasses both SMS sent by phone and emails sent by computer: "Electronic mail is understood to mean any message, in the form of text, voice, sound, or image, sent by a public communication network, stored on a server of the network or in the terminal equipment of the recipient, until the latter retrieves it." However, it does not establish a regime for it. The fact is that electronic mail can be used either for private correspondence, or for public communication, especially when addressed to a group of recipients on a large mailing list. The example of direct electronic advertising, or "spamming," illustrates this. If an electronic mail constitutes private correspondence, it then benefits from the protection derived from this qualification.
If electronic mail is considered as private correspondence, the act (committed in bad faith, cases of error or ignorance of the recipient being excluded) of opening, deleting, delaying, or diverting correspondence that has or has not arrived at its destination and addressed to third parties, or fraudulently accessing it constitutes a criminal offense, as provided and punished by article 226-15 of the Penal Code. These criminal offenses and the penalties provided for in punishment aim[ref. needed] to sanction article 9 of the Civil Code, which states the right to respect for private life, correspondence being part of the notion of private life.
So no, a teacher cannot read the messages, except for a message sent to multiple recipients, mailing list.
Good evening,
I just read your very interesting response.
If the message is public, it can be read by someone other than the phone owner if I understood correctly. You mentioned email and mailing lists.
Do exchanges in a WhatsApp group (more than 2 people) fall under this category, please?
I can't find the laws regarding this situation: a student gives their phone to a teacher so they can take pictures of exchanges that took place in a private WhatsApp group. The student in question agrees, but not the other people in the group. Is the teacher within their rights, please?
Hello Eledye
To insult a person and do everything to prevent that person from publicly producing the message whose existence is not denied, and of which we know that several have received it because it was sent to them, requires an awareness of what one was doing in insulting that person, and an awareness of seeking to conceal the evidence, thus knowing the reprehensible nature of the act.
Also knowing that the means of communication used to make the insults in a restricted group, albeit with several people, were not permitted for use in the place and at the time of the events,
there was an awareness of deliberately using prohibited means at that precise moment to take action against a person within a group, excluding them solely from having the means to defend themselves against that action.
Phone and social networks!
This is a different reading (which remains theoretical as we are only working on a story being told) regarding one of the actors, in a situation, which does not exclude your reading on another actor, during a situation.
Does the fact that a teacher does not have the right to read a private conversation give a student the right during a class to choose a prohibited means of communication to insult the teacher in front of several people, since the means of communication used connects a group? This question can also be raised.
We can also wonder what all this has to do during a class at school. What is the principal doing in their school about all this? Wasn't the goal to avoid such disruptions during a class by prohibiting phones?
Because this whole discussion is indeed proving what happens when the phone is used for private conversations during a class. Everything, except the planned and normal course of a class.
Hello,
And who says that the conversations in question took place in class and that they are insulting?
In any case, and regardless of what is said in <17> the conversation is not public: it is not spam directed at an indeterminate group of people but a personalized communication to a particular group of third parties.
The teacher does not have the authority of a judicial police officer and generally cannot consult these conversations even if their content is presumed or confirmed to be offensive, which he cannot know before reading them.
But in the case we are interested in, the confidentiality of correspondence applies only to its author; nothing prevents anyone from consulting that of third parties if the author or recipient of such correspondence has given their consent for this purpose.
Hello
The professor, in their class, has a control assignment regarding the means used during the class or for the student's work, as they need to check how they are being used by the student in order to guide them.
It is distinguished that what is used during the class can be monitored by the professor as it is supposed to be a working tool at that moment.
Hello,
Why not, the concept of "illiteracy in the digital age" is trendy, but it is assumed that a dedicated group has been created for these "practical exercises" and that therefore the confidentiality of correspondence does not exist there.
Moreover, it is difficult to grasp this type of exercise; practice shows that many people who clearly have not spent much time in school, or at least not to great benefit, know how to use WhatsApp, which no one taught them, indicating that there are other "emergencies" in digital learning.