Nearly everything we write these days is preserved in virtual eternity. Text messaging, often performed with the fanaticism of a meth-addicted pit bull, is no different, as many teens are finding out the hard way.

Across the country, teachers grumble about the distraction cellphones pose in classrooms. For one thing, surreptitious messages can be used to cheat.

Who can argue with them? Banning cellphones in classrooms seems as reasonable to me as banning chewing gum or iPods.

But what happens if officials confiscated phones and then read all the internal phone messages – many of them sent outside of school hours – to unearth “incriminating” evidence? Where do we draw the line when it comes to the privacy of students?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado contends that officials at Monarch High in Louisville stepped over the line and committed felonies when they commandeered cellphones, perused text messages, took notes and placed so-called incriminating evidence in the students’ permanent files.

I agree.

The ruckus started, apparently, when a student was accused of smoking. An administrator emptied the student’s pockets and backpack. Nothing. Next the student’s cellphone was searched for evidence. This investigation led to other students, and their cellphones were searched, as well.

Since then, more than a dozen kids and a half-dozen parents have complained to the ACLU about the school’s tactics.

I asked Mark Silverstein, legal director of ACLU of Colorado, why rummaging through text messages is any different than, say, rummaging through notebooks or intercepting notes between students?

“That is a completely different type of intrusion,” he contends. “The thing about searching cellphones is that it divulges all kinds of personal information. It’s one thing to search pockets or backpacks, if an administrator has a reasonable suspicion that a student is smoking. But if they fail to turn up anything, they don’t perform a strip search; it’s unreasonable. So is this.”

Silverstein points out that a cellphone could potentially hold text messages with sensitive personal information, not only about the student, but also about friends and family. He says there is no way to limit a search of text messages to include only areas relevant to the suspected violation of school policy.

“More importantly, listening to the parents we’ve spoken to, they want to be the one to know what’s in the text messages,” he goes on. “They don’t want an administrator or principal knowing what’s in there.”

And clearly, if parents would give their blessing to such searches, students would have little recourse. Instead, Silverstein says, school officials are arguing that “kids give up all privacy rights in school – and that’s wrong.”

There are Fourth Amendment issues at stake here, according to Silverstein, though he admits that school administrators are allowed to conduct searches without having to meet the higher standards of probable cause that exist outside of school.

But he also points to Colorado statutes prohibiting the search or transcribing of telephone and electronic communications to protect privacy. Either the sender or receiver of the message must give consent before the conversation is transcribed or searched.

Do those laws apply to children and/or school officials? I suppose, as usual, lawyers will have to work it out.

Silverstein says he wants the local school board to “direct administrators to stop conducting these cellphone searches that violate state and federal law.”

Common sense tells me they will.

It also tells me that investigating a smoking incident should not include a search of a student’s entire electronic works.

First of all, simply because a school finds a “incriminating” evidence in writing doesn’t necessarily mean the student is guilty.

Teenagers tell each other tall tales, after all. If we took their words as evidence, most of them would be serving time in Leavenworth.

Besides, as a parent, the only person I want searching my children’s private messages is me.

David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.