My friend added the comment "I just can't believe this." My friend was quite right to be suspicious.

It appears that the story was derived (and extremely liberally quoted) from on another news-oriented Web site, The Daily Caller, titled "Fed instructs teachers to Facebook creep students," dated March 16 this year.

This story has, after just over 24 hours circulation, over 65,000 references to it according to a Google search I did for the headline.

What is curious, and rather obvious, if you read the from the Department of Education, is that you won't find any grounds for the claims regarding government pressure to monitor students' Internet use either at school or at home.

So let's get this straight: The DoE letter uses the word "Internet" just once, and the single use of "online" is to direct readers to resources on the Web, while "monitor" is never used in the context of online anything and "Facebook" is also completely absent from any discussion.