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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

#451

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #105
nieksand wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's views of the world have been drastically skewed by the news industry. Consider how much news coverage was given to the Las Vegas mass shooting. That resulted in 58 dead and 413 wounded. Compare that to how much national coverage is spent on car accidents. About 40,000 Americans per year are killed by cars. That's about two Las Vegas massacres worth of dead each and every day of the year. The news industry th…

Hypothesis on the specific topic of cars vs. guns: The US has already done about all it can to regulate cars to maximize safety. There is, perhaps, more to be done, but since the Constitution doesn't include a right to keep and bear cars, regulation and law in the space of publicly-operated vehicles is already large and mature. The same is not true for firearms, which is why it's such a contentious topic in the US.

> The US has already done about all it can to regulate cars to maximize safety

Texting while driving. Hypothesis disproved.

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

#452

Post by hcurtiss »

kickopotomus wrote: post #431
jriot wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean unconstitutional opinion.

Quite honestly, the amendment should have been worded differently and I believe that is part of the reason we are in the mess we have found ourselves in today. For some reason, many Americans only ever seem to quote the final clause of the amendment: ..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. However, the meaning of the final clause is modified by what comes before it: A well regulate…

The United States Supreme Court directly disagrees with you. See Heller.

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

#453

Post by big_chungus »

EliRivers wrote: post #429
superkuh wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine each one of those cameras were being held by a person. How would you react then? This is the true nature of the situation. Surveillance Camera Man made it explicit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP5ZVPwP7bg : people hate being watched. Doing it with machines is an exploit for the human psyche.

people hate being watched So what's the deal with the selfie obsession and the instagram obsession and so on? Is it that people dislike being watched live? Or is it that people dislike other people having control of the footage?

I don't understand that, either. I don't use instagram, nor do I take "selfies"; I regard both as profoundly narcissistic, privacy concerns aside.

That said, the reason people get depressed by platforms like instagram is that they don't show real life but a photo-shopped, re-touched, carefully-curated version of life. People only see what others allow them to see.

Furthermore, I know that most of the footage taken by a surveillance camera is discarded. Most of the footage filmed by humans is created for a specific purpose and will be used. Someone else will likely watch it.

Finally, if I walk into a grocery store with a camera, I am going into someone else's establishment informed. If someone walks into a classroom and films me (like in the "Surveillance Camera Man" videos), there was no such agreement, implicit or otherwise.

I really do hate being watched, and hate others taking video. I hope surveillance cameras go out of use, and people stop recording everything on phones. However, there is a difference between that and some silly two-bit social network.

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

#454

Post by CompanionCuuube »

shadowgovt wrote: post #289
hcurtiss wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it really isn't. The majority of the gun deaths in the US belong to suicides compared to homicides.

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

#455

Post by grecy »

School-Cotton wrote: post #436
grecy wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that we're talking about innocent children being gunned down at school by their fellow citizens. Utterly preventable and disgusting. You might not think it's a big deal, but the rest of the world is horrified by it. (Also your example is very poor - you should use per capita statistics so countries of different populations can be meaningfully compared.)

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 can't work. Even though the evidence is blatant.

In many, many countries (including the US actually) citizens are allowed to own certain types of guns, and not other types. I ask how many anti-aircraft guns Americans are allowed to own? Or missile launchers? Or tanks with live rounds?

Clearly there are some weapons that regular people can have, and some they can't.

All America needs to do is tighten down what's acceptable, just like other developed countries do. For example, I live in Canada. I have a large calibre hunting rifle, and it isn't even registered. My friend has a handgun which is tightly controlled. Australia is similar.

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.

Further to this, it's a simple idea that people should be required to have licenses and training to own a firearm, just like a vehicle. So what if you need to amend the constitution to do that. You've already amended it 27 times - it's not like the thing was perfect the day it was printed and will still be perfect in the year 3500 or some such nonsense.

Be very clear, I am in NO WAY talking about "Ban guns" or "Take guns away". I'm talking about restricting certain types of guns, and restricting certain types of people, which of course America has already done.

It's really not hard. The rest of the world has done it very well, but you guys are still busy arguing black and white while kids are literally being slaughtered in schools, and people at concerts and movie theatres get gunned down.

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

#456

Post by HoppyHaus »

twoquestions wrote: post #18

Why do they spend so many words talking about preventing self-harm and suicide? In my experience the school doesn't actually care, so long as they don't off themselves on school grounds. At least when kids died when I was at school, the administration was pitiless towards their siblings' assignments and attendance, and punished them for crying in grief.

So that when somebody disagrees with this, they can go with the classic "So you support self-harm and suicide?".

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

#457

Post by desks_dos »

EliRivers wrote: post #429
superkuh wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine each one of those cameras were being held by a person. How would you react then? This is the true nature of the situation. Surveillance Camera Man made it explicit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP5ZVPwP7bg : people hate being watched. Doing it with machines is an exploit for the human psyche.

people hate being watched So what's the deal with the selfie obsession and the instagram obsession and so on? Is it that people dislike being watched live? Or is it that people dislike other people having control of the footage?

I'd say it's the latter. The selfie obsession is all about curating how you present yourself and your lifestyle. No one would want an IG or Facebook account with someone else at the helm.

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

#458

Post by bb88 »

xabotage wrote: post #364
bb88 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few observations: 1. Active shooters, while rare, have completely eroded our trust in our fellow humans. Either a gun is safe to bring into a school or it's not. If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? Active shooters have been both kids and adults. You might make the case that kids can't handle firearms safely -- though I was once a kid with access to firearms and I k…

> If it's not, then why do we allow open carry/concealed carry permits in public spaces? It's often not allowed to carry in places like schools (varies depending on district or state). However, many pro-gun supporters make the argument that CC supposedly makes public spaces safer because active shooters don't really need a license to murder people anyway, so anyone carrying during a situation has more defense (just s…

It's not so much about how good or how bad you secure your weapons. It's about how likely are you to become insane when you have access to weapons. It seems to me that adults have been active shooters as often as children.

Note that in most of the geographic US, concealed carry is the norm, not the exception:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Conceale... (blue and green are either constitutionally protected rights, or the state is legally required to give a permit)

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

#459

Post by pbhjpbhj »

linuxftw wrote: post #394
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So anyone can have a gun, you just have to get someone else to purchase it? I was under the apparent misapprehension that the license you needed to purchase a gun was an ownership license - ie you got the right to own, then could purchase.

> So anyone can have a gun Yes, unless prohibited by law (criminal conviction, judged mentally infirm) > you just have to get someone else to purchase it? No, that's not lawful.

Well, that clears it up ... /s.

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

#460

Post by soraminazuki »

sdinsn wrote: post #406
bobbles wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's only because most countries lack the resources to actually enforce gun control laws, not because they're ineffective. It's more likely that economic wealth and effective gun control reduces violence, instead of intrusive mass surveillance.
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