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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

#521

Post by CompanionCuuube »

foldr wrote: post #92
giancarlostoro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You could probably kill more people with knives So why are you worried about gun bans? You can just use a knife instead. I think you must know, really, that guns are more dangerous and effective than knives. That's why you want the right to own one. It's also why the US has frequent mass shootings in schools, whereas there are no instances of mass stabbings in UK schools. Just look at the recent terrorist incident…

> So why are you worried about gun bans? You can just use a knife instead.

You seem to be confused about the concept that self-defense is a different use case than mass shootings. Why is that?

> I think you must know, really, that guns are more dangerous and effective than knives. That's why you want the right to own one.

Are you under the impression that this poster would not object to a ban on knives? Why?

> It's also why the US has frequent mass shootings in schools, whereas there are no instances of mass stabbings in UK schools.

Thank you for providing a good example of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy

> The first principle of responsible gun use is not to point a gun at anything you don't want to kill.

And that's why there's always bullet holes anywhere that a gun has pointed, because they always have to shoot anything it points at? Were you similarly not aware that it is possible to pull a gun but not point it at the person?

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

#522

Post by sdinsn »

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...

> 12.21 gun-related deaths

Which includes suicides & accidents.

It also ignores the overall homicide rate, which is much more important. Do dead people care whether they are murdered with a gun or a knife?

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

#523

Post by shadowgovt »

Kaiyou wrote: post #514
foldr wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, people will come to regard high levels of violence as normal if they spend enough time immersed in a violent culture.

Yes, people adapt. I'm saying you can't look at someone and determine whether how things are for them are good, just because they look fine. An animal raised in captivity looks fine, but maybe it would be better if it was raised in freedom. Or maybe it wouldn't. The point is you can't tell by looking.

Sure, but that's a critical difference between animals and people.

In addition to sampling a whole host of metrics related to a person's health, life expectancy, purchasing power, &c, you can also just ask them how they feel about where they are in life and where they're going. You can't do that with an animal.

Sweden, for example, is showing an OCED Better Life Index of 8.5 for safety and 8.9 for life satisfaction [http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/]. This is compared to the US's rankings of 7.5 and 7.4, respectively.

If the Swedes have sacrificed their freedom (assuming "freedom" is a quantifiable that the US hasn't sacrificed), I wouldn't draw the conclusion they haven't noticed; I'd conclude they actively don't miss it.

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

#524

Post by filoleg »

t-writescode wrote: post #504
asdff wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China, definitely. They are halfway there, using Orwell's 1984 as a playbook now that the right tech innovations have made big brother surveillance possible. Will it happen in the U.S.? Definitely not. Political influence on daily life is astoundingly weak here compared to China. Government is far more efficient in China too and can manage big projects like this (whereas the U.S. recently took 100 years to build a…

Fahrenheit 451 is a very, very different book from 1984. Pleasure and an obsession with non-offense eventually lead to where they were in that story.

I feel like Brave New World is another interesting side of this coin when you are attempting to see where the future is headed. Constant dopamine production stimulation and complacency with things seems to feel more relevant in the US (and most other western countries, I assume) than the straight up authoritarian dystopia ala 1984 (which is imo more resembling of China).

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

#525

Post by philwelch »

foldr wrote: post #506
philwelch wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't see what you're getting at here. You yourself have been making (irrelevant) comparisons to France, which has about the same population as the UK. I’m comparing the US as a whole to Europe as a whole. If you want to cherry-pick the best example of Europe, maybe I should cherry-pick one of the northern states that abolished slavery and enfranchised black people in the early 19th century. If you get to…

You were not comparing the US as a whole to Europe as a whole. It is not clear to me what point your are intending to make with this array of different comparisons.

My overall point, I think, was adequately well-stated with my first comment in this thread: America has been one of the freest countries in the world for 150 years.

Your counterarguments seem to consist of, “so was Britain” (which is insufficient to refute my point) and “Britain didn’t disenfranchise based on race” (which is factually dubious when you consider colonization as well as insufficient in terms of proving that Britain was substantially freer than America as a whole).

You also alluded to “lots of Western countries”, which is why I specifically broke down specific periods where many (most?) Western countries were not free within the past century. This is when you doubled down on the UK angle, which is a fair point but proves very little.

You also claimed the UK enacted women’s suffrage before the US. I didn’t bother fact checking this at the time, but the US enacted full women’s suffrage eight years before the UK.

> In 1928 the Conservative government passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act equalizing the franchise to all persons over the age of 21 on equal terms.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_Unit...)

The US:

> After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920.[4] It states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_Unit...

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

#527

Post by philwelch »

cardiffspaceman wrote: post #440
foldr wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Scenes like this are commonplace What's your basis for saying that they're commonplace? One silly tweet doesn't really show anything.

> Scenes like this The link points to one example. The OP didn't support their assertion that constables commonly confiscate screwdrivers during weapons sweeps, but I don't think OP intended the picture prove that, just to show the definition of "weapon" in use.

Here’s another example: https://i.redd.it/hzigm9tmiyn21.png

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

#528

Post by ajuc »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #500
ajuc wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> it includes suicides, which in the US is very high

I wonder why :)

Have you considered the possibility that easy access to guns make suicides more common?

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

#529

Post by ajuc »

sdinsn wrote: post #522
ajuc wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> 12.21 gun-related deaths Which includes suicides & accidents. It also ignores the overall homicide rate, which is much more important. Do dead people care whether they are murdered with a gun or a knife?

> suicides & accidents.

Which are more common when the access to guns is easier.

> Do dead people care whether they are murdered with a gun or a knife?

Deaths caused by guns are easily preventable. Why not prevent them?

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

#530

Post by ajuc »

ta0987 wrote: post #515
ajuc wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars. And to the most common objection: yes they are. Gun control proponents often bring up and praise the UK (near total ban) and Australia (significant limitations compared to the U.S.) as examples to emulate. And in Chicago and DC, before the Supreme Court cases, there were effectively total bans. And when the plaintiffs sued, they didn't say, "well I guess we wen…

> Because, unlike with guns, nobody is trying to ban cars.

That's actually wrong. Gun control isn't banning guns, and if you consider background checks a "ban" - then driving licence requirement is a "ban on cars" :)

If someone had the bright idea to put the right to drive a car in constitution - Americans would be now arguing whether countrywide requirement to have a driving licence to drive a car is ok or not :)

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