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It began with the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in suburban Denver, when two students opened fire and killed 15 people, including themselves.

The aftermath of the tragedy saw the debut of Safe2Tell, a tool that lets parents and students anonymously report information about potential school shootings and other violent threats. Safe2Tell is still in use today. But it began with : In most school shootings, at least one person had information about the plans prior to the attack.

鈥淧eople will call and report, 鈥楳y friend said that they were going to kill themselves,鈥� and then law enforcement will go out and investigate, and in many of these situations, lives have been saved,鈥� said Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder and a former Safe2Tell board member. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 one of these things [that poses the question], 鈥榃hy don鈥檛 we have this system throughout the nation to do this?鈥� It just helps protect everyone鈥檚 safety.鈥�

Nearly two decades after Columbine, such tools have become an industry unto themselves and extend far beyond anonymous reporting. Particularly in the aftermath of this year鈥檚 shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Sante Fe, Texas, school and law enforcement officials are turning to social media as a way to head off potential violence before a single shot is fired. The reason: As a key platform for student self-expression, social media has also become an outlet for youth to broadcast school shooting threats and suicide warnings.

New tools use artificial intelligence to search for potential threats on students鈥� social media profiles and scan school-issued laptops in search of keywords that could spell trouble. After the Parkland shooting, lawmakers in Florida took it a step further and that combines law enforcement and social services records with social media activity to help officials investigate students who post suspicious or threatening information online.

While the tools promise to protect kids, they also pose questions about how far schools can encroach on student privacy in the name of keeping them safe.

Every bit of information could be helpful during emergency situations, said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. But he questioned the extent to which schools should be asked to monitor students鈥� off-campus behavior.

鈥淭he question becomes, 鈥榃here do you draw the line?鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淗ow much can we reasonably expect of a building principal or a system principal or maybe a dean to be the internet police?鈥�

鈥極utcries for help鈥�

To Gary Margolis, helping school officials identify online threats is crucial. Formerly the police chief at the University of Vermont, he observed the growth of social media from a law enforcement perspective. In the internet age, he said, 鈥渙utcries for help鈥� moved beyond students passing notes or exchanging whispers in the locker room.

Now, those outcries occur online.

In response, Margolis founded Social Sentinel to help schools pick up on troubling social media posts. Social Sentinel collects social media data and uses artificial intelligence to run posts against a 鈥渓ibrary of harm鈥� containing some 450,000 phrases, keywords, hashtags 鈥� even emojis 鈥� that he said could indicate a suspicious post. School districts are then notified, via email or text message.

鈥淚n the absence of a service like Social Sentinel, it鈥檚 impossible to be part of the conversation,鈥� he said. Once the program flags content for school officials, it鈥檚 up to them to act on the information. He declined to provide specific examples of how the platform has been used to thwart violence.

Among the districts using the tool is Ohio鈥檚 Lebanon City Public Schools. Each morning, Superintendent Todd Yohey, school police and the district human resources director get posts the platform flags as potentially problematic. The tool doesn鈥檛 offer identifiable information beyond the social media accounts the post came from, but Yohey said anonymity isn鈥檛 a big hurdle.

鈥淜ids aren鈥檛 very good at hiding their identity,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here are times we鈥檝e asked other kids, 鈥楬ey, do you know who this poster is?鈥欌�� since students generally know their peers鈥� social media accounts.

Social Sentinel generally flags about one social media post a day for school officials in Lebanon City, Yohey said, and more often than not, the posts are benign. During the NBA playoffs last year, for example, the tool flagged multiple posts.

鈥淭here were a lot of posts about, 鈥楾hat three-pointer was the bomb,鈥� and so the word 鈥榖omb鈥� would trigger a notice to us,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou read that and you figure out, 鈥極h, they鈥檙e talking about the basketball game, and so it鈥檚 not concerning.鈥欌��

Still, stumbling onto just one threatening post would make the effort worthwhile, Yohey said, if it helped the school avert a tragedy. The tool would allow the district to react to a situation more quickly. 鈥淚f we get a post that said, 鈥業鈥檓 planning to take a bomb to school tomorrow,鈥� or 鈥業 planted a bomb at the elementary school,鈥� those of course would require immediate attention.鈥�

In fact, a day after the Parkland shooting, a district student that he was going to shoot up a school. In response, Yohey issued a warning to students: 鈥淭here is no such thing anymore as an empty threat; no jokes, no kidding around, no 鈥業 didn鈥檛 mean it.鈥欌��

Although mass shootings this year caused a spike in anxiety and prompted heated policy debates, they are statistically rare and campuses have actually become safer in recent years, according to recent National Center for Education Statistics data.

Chad Marlow, senior advocacy and policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said he鈥檚 concerned about 鈥渟ubtle harms鈥� schools could inflict by surveilling students. Monitoring could signal to students that they can鈥檛 use social media freely to share information with their friends. As schools crack down on student speech, students of color 鈥� who already face 鈥� could be most affected.

鈥淭he rules governing these things involve standards that are uncomfortably subjective,鈥� he said. 鈥淢onitoring places many groups of students, who are already vulnerable by virtue of the communities that they are members of, in even greater places of vulnerability.鈥�

In one instance, in 2013, an Alabama school district to monitor the social media accounts of hundreds of students 鈥斅燼n effort that the superintendent claimed, somewhat dubiously, was launched after the National Security Agency alerted school leaders to a student鈥檚 social media threat. The district surveillance effort resulted in the expulsion of 14 students, 12 of whom were black. While some students were expelled for posting pictures with guns, for 鈥渉olding too much money鈥� and for making the 鈥淥K鈥� sign, which police said was a gang symbol.

In interviews, several social media monitoring companies have deflected concerns about government surveillance by noting that the services flag only content posted publicly on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Students concerned about privacy, company executives said, can update their privacy settings so their posts are only accessible to specific people.

Bowing to concerns from civil rights groups, an executive at one social media monitoring company said he changed his platform. The executive, Soter Technologies founder and CEO Derek Peterson, said the company disabled a feature in social media tool Digital Fly that allowed school districts to create a list of students with a history of posting troubling information online.

But the ACLU鈥檚 Marlow argues that social media monitoring programs meet the 鈥渢extbook definition鈥� of mass surveillance because they watch a large number of people at the same time.

鈥淭hey can call it rose pedals in a field of daisies if they want, but it is absolutely surveillance,鈥� Marlow said. 鈥淎nd surveillance has chilling effects on free speech.鈥�

Monitoring students online doesn鈥檛 stop with social media. As more schools adopt 鈥渙ne-to-one computing鈥� programs that place laptops in the hands of each student, some districts have equipped them with that scan online activity like emails and search histories for signs of threats or illicit activity such as drug use. These tools have from digital privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which noted in a 2017 report that students are 鈥渂acked into a corner鈥� because they have no choice but to use the school-issued devices.

In one instance, in 2010, a Pennsylvania school district paid more than $600,000 to settle an after a high school student accused it of using the webcams on district laptops to take covert photos of students 鈥斅爄ncluding a picture of the teenager sleeping in his bed. The district it had taken more than 50,000 such pictures in an attempt to recover lost or stolen devices.

Karen Gullo, the foundation鈥檚 spokeswoman, said in a statement that monitoring tools that flag specific words 鈥渃an cause false alarms and target innocent students.鈥�

鈥淧ervasive surveillance normalizes electronic snooping,鈥� Gullo said, 鈥渁nd can keep kids from testing out new ideas and identities as they grow.鈥�

鈥楽ee something, say something鈥�

Ironically, after a decade of online innovations, some observers say the most effective, and least invasive, method of neutralizing threats remains the low-tech idea that surfaced nearly 20 years ago: tips from actual people.

Schools across the country have adopted the 鈥淪ee something, say something鈥� mantra popularized after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A half-dozen states already have anonymous tip lines replicating the Colorado model, and officials from more than 20 states have contacted Safe2Tell to inquire about the program since the Parkland shooting, a spokeswoman for Colorado鈥檚 attorney general said.

In October, the Justice Department in grants to develop anonymous reporting systems and threat assessment teams for schools. Congress appropriated the funds last spring through the STOP School Violence Act. Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit that operates the Say Something anonymous reporting system, lobbied for the federal law. School districts in nearly half the states in the country are implementing the Say Something system.

Last school year, Colorado鈥檚 reporting tool collected , a 74 percent surge from just one year earlier. Post-Parkland, anonymous tips surged even more, Colorado attorney general Cynthia Coffman said in an interview.

鈥淜ids were reacting to everything they saw and heard, particularly on social media,鈥� Coffman said. 鈥淲e鈥檇 have multiple reports from kids about the same social media post that said something about Parkland.鈥�

Despite the increase in anonymous tips, it remains unclear what percentage of them represented true threats and resulted in intervention. Safe2Tell is collecting that data now, Coffman said. Still, that school and law enforcement officials have intervened in multiple suicide and school shooting threats based on the tips.

But even this low-tech, relatively noninvasive approach has drawbacks. On several occasions, people have used Safe2Tell to bully other students by filing false reports. In one case, a 15-year-old girl someone filed three false tips that she was suicidal and used drugs. On two occasions, she said police pulled her out of class to question her.

In order to discourage false reports, Coffman said people can be charged with a misdemeanor if they use the system to harass others.

While the bevy of tools on the market for educators to see students鈥� online activity are helpful, officials need to put the information into context and consider the student鈥檚 broader behavior, said Marisa Randazzo, managing partner at SIGMA Threat Management Associates. When confronting students about online posts, they should avoid a zero-tolerance response like automatic suspensions, she said.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 a policy that sounds good but actually has an inadvertent chilling effect on students鈥� willingness to come forward and share information and share what鈥檚 worrying them,鈥� she said.

Kingston, of the University of Colorado Boulder, offered similar advice, noting that school and police officials should respond to perceived student threats with caution.

鈥淎dults who are entrusted with these jobs have to walk this delicate rope of also making sure they鈥檙e protecting the safety of everyone,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e want to make sure that our interventions don鈥檛 do more harm to students.鈥�

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