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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

#121

Post by mayneack »

krilly wrote: post #29
rahuldottech wrote: post #20

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…

Which bit of this are you upset with specifically? Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades. The clear backpacks are silly I'll admit, and also pointless. I agree that kids getting conditioned to be okay with surveillance is bad, but this is all coming from the private sector right now. In China, you now have to submit your face to be scanned…

Not that it makes it more or less effective, but my public school in Birmingham Alabama required clear backpacks back in 1996

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

#122

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nguoi wrote: post #97
noonespecial wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer. And everyone with half a brain knows this. It conditions the entire population to accept security theater and government surveillance as part of everyday life. This sets the entire society up to be unable to resist government overreach in the future. Clear backpacks increase the risk of death from tyranny.

>But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer I must be missing most of my brain then because, to me, this sounds unfounded.

Someone who wants to pack heat to school isn't gonna be stopped by a clear backpack. They'll cut out a texbook or hide it on their person. Look to the TSA's track record to see why making the formerly hidden visible doesn't actually help that much.

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

#123

Post by zepto »

nguoi wrote: post #101
werfds wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if we're forcing the kids to have clear backpacks because of an infinitesimal risk, we should ban them from biking to school, being driven to school and playing in the school football team. Which is ridiculous.

That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships. Fashionable backpacks do nothing.

Freedom from arbitrary restrictions does something.

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

#124

Post by wbronitsky »

whiddershins wrote: post #109
wbronitsky wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain who is teaching nihilism to whom and where? In school, while I did not have a clear backpack and quite obviously had internet monitoring on someone else’s network, I was never, not once, taught nihilism. In fact, in my education through grade 12, most everything was filtered through a compassionate lens. It’s not like I was taught that the Holocaust will happen again because humans are inherently bad…

[flagged]

What does you comment have to do with teaching Nihilism in schools? Why does it matter that people are also discussing this elsewhere?

I don’t understand how this is a response to my post, rather than that thing where people put their hand up to ask a question and then just state their position instead.

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

#125

Post by qxnqd »

shadowgovt wrote: post #89
turk73 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather just shut down the schools than give up any more rights. If you haven't noticed, our Federal government is totally out of control and has gone rogue and I don't think it's a very good idea to cede any further power or individual rights to that monster. The right to bear arms was paid for in blood and not just once. Good men laid down their lives so we could have these rights. That a few kooks will shoot up…

How do other countries get along so well without the right to bear arms, and have they paid any less blood than the US for the society they formed?

With repression and fewer liberties, mostly?

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

#126

Post by lm28469 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #85
lm28469 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And worse, gun restrictions only benefit criminals. There's plenty of people who legally own firearms and protect their homes and their property legally. The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries. You shouldn't feel the need to "protect" your home in the #1 power in the world.

>The real question is why are the US ranking so high in violent crime and murder rates compared to other developed countries This question has been asked time and again and the gist of the answer is that the people who make their living moving around illicit substances drag up the average. For people who don't associate with drug trafficking the US is basically on par with Europe.

> the people who make their living moving around illicit substances drag up the average.

Isn't that happening all around the world though ?

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

#127

Post by Mirioron »

shadowgovt wrote: post #84
lolc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.

It is an interesting aspect of human psychology that more people are afraid of a mass shooting in a school, though far more students will graduate knowing someone who died in a car crash than someone who died in a mass shooting. ... but it is how human psychology works, so the school must account for it.

It's essentially the same thing as air travel safety vs cars. What seemed to work for air travel is to make it into trivia so that any time this point comes up somebody repeats back the trivia.

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

#128

Post by swebs »

rahuldottech wrote: post #33
cj wrote: post #21

I get that some people don't like this. But the reality is that schools are a lot more dangerous than they were just 10 years ago. If our response to that shouldn't be cameras and backpack checks, then what's an appropriate response? (Perhaps the bigger picture political answer is "gun control", but that's not something schools can sit around a wait for to happen)

> But the reality is that schools are a lot more dangerous than they were just 10 years ago. Only in certain places in the western world, due to the governments refusal to implement gun control. Most countries haven't had a school shooting in decades (or ever ). Gun control doesn't work? Go tell that to the graves of children who died due to school shootings, just because the country they were born in refused to impl…

>It's a gun problem

Then how come gun ownership is negatively correlated with homicides?

https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predi...

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

#129

Post by slothtrop »

lolc wrote: post #65
grecy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ummm, please explain? Surely the US has by far the highest gun murder rate in schools among developed countries. EDIT: The down votes are interesting - are you down voting because what I said is not true, or because you just don't like that it is true?

Look up how many kids are killed by cars. Then go see how many are killed by guns outside school. Then check how many are killed by guns in school.

Far more school shooting deaths than any other developed country by my count. You're choosing to brush it off because it represents a small percentage of the population. That's a ridiculous position, you could hold the same if school shooting fatalities were in the 10,000s instead of 200s; too insignificant. The weight is in whether it's acceptable or it isn't, not how likely your kid is to get shot. It's been worse in the past 20 years than the 20 years prior. You're either a) tacitly saying that the certainty of future school shootings is absolutely fine with you, or b) that it can't be helped, which isn't true. Pick one.

We don't have to accept high rates of vehicular deaths either. Automation will make this moot in the end, but far stronger punishment for inebriated driving is due, among other things.

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

#130

Post by philwelch »

ptero wrote: post #11
t34543 wrote: 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.

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
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