Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

401–410 of 560 posts

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

#401

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…

I hate to say it, but it's perfect training for the world they'll live in once they enter the work force. It's the same thing there - you have no expectation of privacy when you're using the organization's equipment, if you want to do something sensitive you have to use your own equipment and data plan, and even if you do that, you risk being disciplined for doing something personal on the organization's premises/time.

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

#402

Unpopular opinion: make private gun ownership illegal instead of forcing kids to be monitored to make sure they're not carrying

I will never give up my right to carry a weapon. Liberals say they want to ban guns and then they turn around and foam at the mouth when cops try to take away the guns if it’s a black persons guns. I would consider giving up guns if liberals would let cops do stop and frisk. Or let cops do anything really.

But liberals don’t care because they live in their mansions, far away from any danger. And rich SV CEOs throw money at anti capital punishment efforts while they relax in their mansions where they are sure to never encounter anyone that it might be used on.

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

#403
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And I wonder if the answer would be different if they asked parents instead of kids (who remember having regular, metal knives at school cafeterias; being able to bring a folding knife to school; etc.). It seems to me that that public acceptance of such surveillance is a side effect of the mainstream media pushing scares and sensationalist coverage (because this is the only thing they have a chance of selling…

In some countries like the UK, even adults are discouraged and disallowed from carrying folding knives anywhere. Scenes like this are commonplace: https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980096

Okay, I was scrolling through this feed to find some proof that this is a joke account. But they are actually serious, right?

Are there laws in the UK that allow the police to enter your house and steal all your tools? For people who didn't click on the link: It is a picture with literally nothing but tools supposedly found during a "#weaponSweep"

This is fucking dystopian

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

#404
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and compare rural US where all the guns are to rural Europe. Similar rates of crime and violence. Take out the major US metropolitan areas that have gun control and see what happens to your comparisons. When you compare an island the size of Mississippi with 29 citizens of 250k population and a much larger homogenous population, historically weak self-defense and higher reliance on government, etc etc to the…

>major US metropolitan areas that have gun control They don't have gun control in the sense that the UK and most other European countries have gun control. You can even get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in NYC, for example.

NYC has an impressively low homicide rate, if there is such a thing, and has become a very safe city in the last decade or two.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-citys-murder-rate-hit-...

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local corner shop has about 16 CCTV cameras in it, covering as many angles in the shop as they can. This is common. Very common. I'm totally OK with that kind of apparently 'pervasive' CCTV coverage - we're not talking government-owned networked cameras linked up to face/gait/whatever recognition systems or deep cold storage banks, we're talking small store-owners keeping an eye on junkies and thieves. The oft-reg…

Mind showing me a camera that you can definitively say the government (or other actors) don't have the potential for backdoor access to? I certainly can't.

Not to mention camera technology that only records “junkies and thieves” and not the thousands of innocent people going about their day. There is nothing ok about pervasive, constant surveillance of law abiding people.

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

#406

Poor, emotion driven risk management as usual. School shootings kill very few people per year and are rare events (especially in places that can afford this tech) despite what the New York Times would have you believe. Why not focus efforts on things that actually do kill young people, namely: * Car crashes (teach people to drive more defensively) * Suicides (provide better mental health services) * Violence that occ…

Comments like this look absolutely insane to anyone outside the US. Look at the numbers: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-ver...

> Comments like this look absolutely insane to anyone outside the US

No, it looks insane to the 6 countries mentioned in your article that have significantly less schools shootings.

The other 188 countries in the world are purposely not discussed, since many of them have extremely high violent crime rates despite restrictive gun control laws...

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

#407
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? To me the upsetting part is that these kids must feel unsafe / monitored. Which is exactly what they shouldn't go through in school, it's far from a good start in life. But then again with all the school shootings I don't blame the security companies, it's a deep cultural/societal issue. It's similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years, now it's busine…

The odds of being shot at school are incredibly low (~1 in 614,000,000), and have been falling since the 90's. It's just that when it does happen, it's so horrific that we cannot bear even the 1 because that 1 might be ours - myself included. That's ripe territory for companies to come in a make some good money on those mathematically irrational fears. The ones who suffer, though, are still the kids. While the likeli…

Parents subjecting their children to their own fears should be made aware of what they are doing.

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

#408
post #2

> This level of surveillance is “not too over-the-top”, Ingrid said, and she feels her classmates are generally “accepting” of it. Of course they think that, they’re still kids. Who’s going to protect them from surveillance? IMO this is way over the top - and it’s conditioning future generations to accept this level of surveillance as adults.

Once we all get old enough this will just be the crazy ramblings and no one will care. What the children are told and believe is true is what will be the truth. Once we're all dead this won't even be an issue. Maybe your old enough to remember a time when you could walk away and live somewhere without anyone from your old life being able to find you...I'm not. Maybe you remember when "everyone" 15+ didn't have a cons…

> It seems like with each generation we become used to a little less freedom and a little more control.

This has probably been true to a certain extent ever since we began organizing into tribes. However, I would put forward that even if you aggregate all of the liberty concessions humankind has made for the last few millennia, it would pale in comparison to the supreme control afforded by technological improvements of the last 20 years.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation Needed]

You need a citation to believe that "the rejection of all religious and moral principles" would incentivize people to make their own "screw the system" morals? Really?

As if "religious principles" in any way inhibit immoral choices and create a moral system outside of one beneficial to itself.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, making something illegal does not make it disappear, and you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence (as are the people calling for clear backpacks) of school shootings. The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Consider that the news cycle and FUD have created a terrible availability bias in our…

> you're also grossly overestimating the occurrence The bodycount might not be "spectacular" but the rate of school shootings in the U.S. dwarfs other developed countries. Fatalities 200+ so far. At any rate, you don't know what they were 'estimating' exactly. > The vast majority of shootings are between criminal gangs - making the guns illegal will not magically make criminals into upstanding citizens. Criminals ret…

So the vast majority of gun death happens because of illegal guns and yet the problem is that guns are legal. The wretched cesspools that we call public schools are creating a bullying environment that makes kids suicidal and in this way kills lots of kids (some of which translate their despair into murder-suicide) and yet it’s our 2A right that we should dismantle, not the public schools? Our kids are an international embarrassment and cannot even point to Tunisia on a map. And the most famous school shooting of all time, the one that started it all, columbine, sources it’s guns from an illegal gun dealer, not the home and yet it’s my right to defend my home that needs to be infringed?
Post reply on HN