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Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

theguardian.com

281–290 of 560 posts

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#281
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.

The framing of this comparison is fraught due to unequal bucketing. Most other countries are the size of US states or even cities, so they can boast individually low numbers while in the US everything gets bundled together. The US should instead be compared to something like all of Europe or all of Western Europe.

Sure, but what difference does that make? The US still comes out way ahead in school shootings if you compare it to all of Europe. And e.g. the UK has about 1/5th of the population of the US but vastly less than 1/5th as many school shootings. I don't think you can really have thought this through if you think that "bucketing" is the issue.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, a comparison versus the rest of the G7? https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-...

I suppose I'm conflating school shootings with mass shootings which is what most people worry about, a la Columbine or Parkland. The figures in your link are mostly gang violence, which is a completely separate although valid issue. We do absolutely have higher rates of targeted gang violence than other countries, which after controlling for factors like density and poverty is highly correlated to young urban male de…

The figures in the article are literally school shootings, i.e. shootings on school grounds.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#283
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what do you assume I wanted to say?

I have made no assumptions; I believe I misunderstand you. Can you clarify your meaning?

If you put someone into a situation that isn't optimal, they generally have the means to adapt and not look disadavantaged. This is true for caged animals and humans that lost some of their rights. If you do it slowly enough, you can strip away basically all freedoms without the victim even noticing.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#284
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software like Forcepoint/Websense logs blocked attempts by default and can be configured to log all traffic. I don't believe there's a reliable source on what companies do. The Levandowski incident at Google revealed that they had VERY extensive logs. They appear not to look at them routinely, but the logs are there when needed.

Was that the IP incident between Google and Uber? can you say more about the evidence here or post a source? just curious.

Yes. Here's the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#285
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the vast majority of the problem, to be specific, as that perception is far out of proportion to the actual risk. So address the fearmongering and contextualize how rare these incidents are, insteading of blaming gun owners and further eroding civil liberties.

School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.

I don’t understand your comment. It seems to boil down to “they are obviously too frequent, regardless of how frequent they are”. Is that a fair summary?

Anyway, in principle any death for any reason is unacceptable. In reality, however, we need to decide how to allocate limited resources to making various classes of death less likely. Given that dying in a mass school shooting is much less likely than dying from a lightning strike, and is about as difficult to prevent[0], it doesn’t make any sense to focus on.

[0]: No, we can’t just “make guns illegal”. The political structure of the US makes this impossible.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the sense that people in Sweden or Germany feel over-burdened by a lack of liberty.

Germany has barely made it to the 30 year mark of “not being a dictatorship” if you count the East. America has been one of the freest countries in the world for at least 150-some years.

Correct. So free that women got the right to vote in 1920s. African Americans in the 1960s.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To me the upsetting part is that these kids must feel unsafe / monitored. Many larger schools have their own police officers, because they have to. My fiance is a high school teacher and just out of her classes in the past 2 months she's had one student arrested and expelled for bringing a firearm to school and another for bringing nearly a pound of marijuana (in a state where it is illegal at the state level) to sc…

Do you want them to be lined up single file with boys and girls in one line each between classrooms too? That’s what they basically do in college in Pakistan at this point. When do you expect them to make the transition to the other side of the panopticon as responsible adults?

Gender has nothing to do with limiting what children can carry, or conceal, coming and going from the school building.

In Pakistan the gender segregation is almost certainly a religious thing given Islam is the religion of 96% of the country. Segregation by gender is also found in masjids/mosques, this is a normal part of Islamic culture.

Comparing a religious custom in a predominately Islamic country to clear backpacks in American schools is wholly irrelevant.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#288
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School shootings are unacceptably frequent in the US, regardless of how infrequent they are in an absolute sense. Many countries go decades without a single school shooting.

I don’t understand your comment. It seems to boil down to “they are obviously too frequent, regardless of how frequent they are”. Is that a fair summary? Anyway, in principle any death for any reason is unacceptable. In reality, however, we need to decide how to allocate limited resources to making various classes of death less likely. Given that dying in a mass school shooting is much less likely than dying from a l…

I mean that they are vastly more frequent in the US than in any vaguely comparable country. It would be as if, e.g., 100x more Americans died of electric shocks than Europeans. This would suggest that something fixable was wrong.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're not talking about first aid kits, we're talking about guns. And I think the burden of proof is on those who claim freedom of private firearm ownership works as an anti-tyranny deterrant to play around in the historical fiction realm of how Venezuela, Iraq, Hong Kong, et. al would have turned out differently with a more armed populace (remembering to factor in the possible scenario "Basically the same as it…

I don't necessarily disagree, but neither would I call it "historical fiction." Armed populaces have fought back against their governments repeatedly throughout history. In any event, I'm one of the guys who would rather go down shooting than in a gas chamber. And, yes, that kind of liberty comes at a price.

... but it's a price generally paid by people other than the person who is armed in peacetime.

Re: Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance

#290

THIS IS NOT OKAY. We can't have children being used to constant surveillance and accepting this as a part of life. It sets them up for so many problems in the future, where they won't understand the serious implications of constant tracking and surveillance. And sure, nothing too bad comes out of this stuff right now in most of the world, but have you seen China? The minute a government decides to do so, all that dat…

The flip side of the coin is that kids learn from a very early age what it takes to slip past the surveillance net. The smart ones watch everyone around them get caught for infractions. Taking note. Quietly gathering data. Towing the line, purposely being caught for the occasional minor infraction so as not to appear too good to be true. Until one day, they disappear from prison in the middle of a storm and take the…

Then most people are still living in a surveillance dystopia / prison to stick with your analogy

I‘d rather not be in prison than hoping I‘m the chosen one who gets out

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