Loss of Privacy

Alex Evans doesn’t understand why his school suspended him for playing an imaginary game during recess.

“I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended,” says Alex Evans, who doesn’t understand his suspension any better than he can pronounce it.

“It’s called ‘rescue the world,’” he says.

But his imaginary play broke the school’s real rules. The school lists “absolutes” designed to keep a safe environment. The list includes absolutely no fighting, real or imaginary; no weapons, real or imaginary.

In light of Obama’s proposal this week to study the impact of media on violence, Adam examines what exactly it is about video game violence that attracts us, and how those unfamiliar with new media have a tendency to misconstrue it.

Source.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, Albuquerque public schools has decided to embrace all out surveillance on its students. Instead of looking at the reasons behind why people decide to shoot up schools, New Mexico is throwing money at more surveillance cameras to solve the problem of school violence.

APS uses surveillance cams to monitor schools

The digital cameras are motion activated, grabbing onto people as they move. They’re in hallways, libraries, cafeterias, playgrounds and parking lots.

“Someone watching the camera can see if a person comes on campus who doesn’t belong there, and they can immediately call help if they need to or go to the door and see who the person is,” explained Lt. Rider. “They can address them before they even enter the campus.”

So far they’ve helped solve vandalism and even keep an eye on teachers, but they’re also tracking students.

APS also uses the cameras for other things. Monday they used them to monitor weather conditions especially at their East Mountain campuses.

The public school systems in the United States are becoming more and more indoctrination centers where everyone is monitored and tracked. Once young students are trained to be monitored 24/7, such systems will be moved to the general public where monitoring and tracking will no longer seem out of the ordinary and privacy is a thing of the past.

More.

The law is wrong in so many ways. Redditor highguy420 sums it up concisely as to what is to wrong with the law.

The list isn’t even a list of pedophiles. It is people who urinate in public, kids that are exploring their sexuality in a healthy way with age-appropriate partners (i.e. sexting), victims of false accusations gone too far, and also some pedophiles too. The list is so vague as to be useless. Actually, I have to correct myself there, it works to help pedophiles find neighborhoods that have a false-sense of security since no pedophiles live there. So, I can’t say the list is completely useless, it’s simply not beneficial to society in any way.

Something as simple as public urination can put a person in this list. Their lives are ruined because the laws are vague enough that many people believe that you must be a pedophile if you’re on the list. It’s inconceivable why law enforcement continues to put teens, streakers, and drunk people who pee on the side of the road in the same group as rapists and pedophiles, yet they do and they never think of the consequences.

The list is a symptom of a law enforcement system that has no idea how to do their job. It is an ineffective half-measure designed to placate the populace while doing nothing to benefit them. It increases fear and justifies large law enforcement budgets, but does nothing to promote safety. In fact, the list does all sorts of things it wasn’t (publicly) intended to, and fails at the single task it was created for.
These laws are deplorable and unjust. If a sex offender has been released from prison, then the prison is attesting to the fact that their time has been served and they are no longer a danger to their community. It is the job of the prison system to ensure that they have been rehabilitated. To not do so is failing in every aspect of a civilized society.

If they cannot be trusted in society, then they should not have been released. To continue punishing them after they have served their time is inhumane and often forces them to live in clustered communities where they can’t really have a normal life anymore.

If you’re a murderer, identity thief, fraudster, scammer, or any other type of convicted felon, feel free to keep using Facebook and going about your life as normal. You are, apparently, “better” than a sex offender, even if he was just drunk and peed in the bushes.

Picture from the Telegraph.