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

theguardian.com

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

#491

Post by asdff »

ajuc wrote: post #472
ta0987 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would be called draconian by Republicans and the NRA, look how they react to any increase in gun laws today. That's because those increases are never compromises or exchanges. They are simply demands. Republicans and the NRA look at what the gun laws in DC and Chicago were before the Supreme Court cases and think: "That's their end game. Zero guns. Because look: when they had the political power to take them awa…

Why would you demand "exchange" to introduce a law that is sensible and has positive impact? You don't have drivers' association demanding privileges in exchange for penalizing drunk driving or restricting maximum speed. The whole NRA situation in USA seems so absurd from outside.

The whole NRA situation is absurd from the inside too. The organization is the propaganda mouthpiece of the gun lobby and GOP very poorly disguised as some sportsmen's club of yore.

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

#492

Post by asdff »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #77
foldr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They've tried banning everything in England and criminals will still kill people with just about anything anything. First it's the guns, then knives, then machetes. If these alternatives are just as effective as guns, why do you feel that you need a gun? Of course, you know that guns are more effective at killing people - especially large numbers of people. That's why we in the UK have not had a mass killing in a sc…

> Of course, you know that guns are more effective at killing people - especially large numbers of people. A knife is quiet, you could probably kill more people with knives, a gun is loud and everyone nearby will hear it, probably what a crazy shooter would want is to strike fear into victims. > You're more likely to use the gun to kill yourself or a family member than you are to use it to kill an intruder. Since nei…

My home defense weapon of choice is my Louisville Slugger. If a crackhead in my place saw me chasing them, crazed, in a bathrobe, with that bat waving blindly, they are booking it. There is no question that they are getting clubbed with this bat.

However, if I had a gun, I'm not sure I'm prepared to end a life right there in my living room and deal with that for the rest of my life. Bloodying a crackhead with a bat I can do, and the crackhead knows that too.

As far as guns being loud, that's almost a good thing for a criminal. Witnesses run away, and by the time the cops show up you are gone and the gun is in the sewer.

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

#493

Post by asdff »

hcurtiss wrote: post #378
snowwrestler wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that people in the U.S. should have guns so that they can shoot at U.S. police and military if they disagree with a government policy?

Yes, depending on the government policy, that is precisely what I'm arguing.

You think your AR 15 is going to stop a guided missile launched by an 18 year old with a joystick on a destroyer in the middle of the Atlantic? I think we've all played the AC-130 mission in Call of Duty by now. We are way past the days of a militia dealing with the U.S. government.

But back in 1776 when you and uncle sam had the exact same musket, sure, that was the last chance.

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

#494

Post by asdff »

radmuzom wrote: post #286
philwelch wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And right to gay marriage in 2015.

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

#495

Post by shadowgovt »

asdff wrote: post #481
shadowgovt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constant use of smartphones has become a pretty central part of US culture. Shouldn't school reflect the environment the student is being taught to live in?

Ahh yes. I remember back in my day I was sent home if I didn't show up to school with my rotary telephone and a fresh copy of the Times under my arm. Essential components of US culture, after all.

We were taught newspaper literacy at my school. We didn't have to provide our own copies though, since newspaper is easy to come by; the school provided it.

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

#496

Post by yowlingcat »

swiley wrote: post #59
leggomylibro wrote: post #39

My Aunt has a child in early middle school - years 6 through 9 or so, for people outside the US. Not only does the poor kid have a school-issued laptop with heavy monitoring tools installed on it, but they are also required to bring a smartphone to school! My Aunt had made them tape over the laptop's webcam and explained that everything the kid typed could probably be seen by the school, but she was still concerned a…

Have they considered home schooling? Often modern home schooling looks more like private school (because almost no one actually does it home, they send their kids to parent run “co-ops”) and you won’t have to deal with most of this stupidity. The Co-op my sister went to banned smartphones inside the building. IMO that was a little extreme and made logistics more difficult than they needed to be but it meant they just…

Absolutely fascinated by this -- my partner and I are projecting ahead a few years and I've wondered what this kind of home-schooling would be like. What do the financials look like?

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

#497

Post by shadowprofile77 »

grecy wrote: post #455
School-Cotton wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest it be prevented? I suspect it's some variant of “amend the US constitution to allow the federal government to ban guns”. This is essentially impossible in practice due to the political structure of the United States. If your response to that is “well then, change the political structure of the United States” then that would involve a violent revolution or some other chaos, which would almost cer…

> I suspect it's some variant of “amend the US constitution to allow the federal government to ban guns”. Sigh. You Americans have been taught to think in such black and white terms. It's either "have guns" or "ban guns". You honestly think there is no middle ground, which is utterly and completely moronic because virtually every developed country in the world has a way of dealing with this that America is convinced…

>So people that "want guns" can still "have guns", but the murder rate is much, much lower in those countries than the US, because other more powerful weapons are restricted or even outright banned.

That right there is resting on a huge unsubstantiated assumption on your part. I personally don't think giving people the right to bear arms necessarily reduces crime but I say this because evidence doesn't really bear the notion out. You say the opposite without any backing evidence. By way of opposing arguments: In most Latin American countries (including the extremely violent one I live in) private gun ownership is either outright banned or extremely curtailed. Despite this, most of Latin America has murder rates per 100,000 that are several times to several DOZEN times higher than those of the U.S. Another example, in the U.S itself, homicide rates (same metric of deaths per 100,000 people) vary enormously from state to state, county to county and municipality to municipality, and the correlation between this variance has very little visible connection to gun ownership rates or gun access restrictions in those same municipalities. Go look at the stats yourself: this is why states like Wyoming, where gun laws are extremely lax, can have extremely low murder rates while places like the city of Chicago, Illinois or Baltimore, have enormously higher homicide rates despite having local gun laws that are nearly as strict as those of many European countries. Other factors besides gun laws are largely to blame for the higher-than-average murder rate in the U.S (by western standards), not access to lots of powerful guns.

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

#498

Post by grecy »

School-Cotton wrote: post #465
grecy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the very detailed reply. I guess you're right - even though I've spent 5 months in the US this summer, I hadn't understood the difficulties involved in making stuff better. It sounds terrible, and I'm sad so many people have to live like that.

All things considered, I think the US is a fine country by global standards. Canada is significantly better in many ways, but the US isn't exactly Syria or El Salvador.

I've never understood the fascination with comparing the US to developing or undeveloped countries. It's a waste of time, and only causes more inaction because "everything is fine, it's better than x,y,z"

Next you're going to tell me your pro football team is doing just fine because they're better than a high school team. (Even though they're literally on the bottom of the pro ladder)

Surely, what is ostensibly the best country in the world should at the very least be comparing itself to OECD countries if it ever hopes to improve.

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

#499

Post by detritus »

asdff wrote: post #482
detritus wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people hate being watched in the old days we'd have God watching over our conscience. now we have cctv.

Crime never occurred in the good old god fearing days, huh?

Crime doesn't occur these days, huh?

Funny how some people choose to react when the concept of 'God' is dropped into a response, irrespective of the author's belief or sincerity.

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

#500

Post by tinalumfoil »

ajuc wrote: post #473
sdinsn wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

USA has 12.21 gun-related deaths per 100,000 population per year. It's 10th highest in the world, and all the countries higher up aren't considered developed. 19th highest in the world is Argentina and it has less than half the deaths US has. In top 30 there are countries with less than 1/4th the deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

The US homicide rate is the 94th globally [0]. Looking at "gun related deaths" is misleading because it includes suicides, which in the US is very high. The vast majority die from disease so if the goal is to prevent premature death a marginal improvement to US healthcare system would save far more people than whatever this high school surveillance state is trying to accomplish.

That's not a reason not to implement these policies but infringing on privacy, which should be considered a fundamental right, for an at best insignificant decrease in the homicide rate is.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...

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