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Sat 3 Dec, 2005 07:16 pm
Free Market News | December 3 2005
Related: Kids Being Conditioned To Big Brother and Police State
Picture if you will: An eighth grade student discovers a video camera taping activity in the school bathroom. He and his friends remove it, and he brings it home to his mother, concerned that his rights are being violated. She contacts the principal, who informs her that the camera was there to catch vandals. . .and that her son is now suspended, for stealing school property!
Is this a bad episode of "Boston Public" or an old "21 Jump Street" rerun? No, it happened in real life, in Central Georgia, recently, as reported by Steve Watson of Infowars, and 13-year-old Mac Bedor is the student under suspension. Meanwhile, Jasper County Comprehensive School principal Howard Fore has restored the camera, and intends to continue to film. Watson notes similar abuse of civil liberties in Ohio, Texas, and New York where cameras have also been placed in student bathrooms. "It seems that the message is Big Brother is watching," he notes, "and if you resist him you will be punished. These incidents reflect the slow creeping surveillance society's debilitating hacking at away at the fourth amendment. It is simply now accepted that we must all be watched even in the bathroom in case someone does something wrong at some point."
Watson also notes an even more alarming fact: "Kids are conditioned from day one to accept surveillance and draconian security policies as the norm." He cites other examples of this "boiling frog" technique: RFID chips in student ID badges, metal detectors at all entrances, police patrolling the halls armed with Tasers, etc. "In short," he concludes, "the youth are being indoctrinated to accept as a norm the fact that they must scan or swipe to have access to buildings or books. It's also OK for authorities to store records of what you are reading or photocopying, and you must accept the chip." There is also a dangerous precedent being set, according to Watson, as kids start to feel important when they carry a card or a chip. "They can gain access to places other people cannot go, open doors electronically and have the use of superior resources. In actual fact the technology given to them can track their every move and is primarily a form of control. By the time students leave education and move into the wider world, surveillance technology is everywhere and they are completely unfazed and totally conditioned to it."
I think you're overreacting, Blue, and so is Free Market News. If the student bathrooms had, indeed, been vandalized in the past, the use of a surveillance camera is a legitimate safeguard. And, quite apart from that, it's hard to argue that taking expensive school property home isn't theft and that the kid shouldn't have been suspended. That said, I also think that the school administration should have notified parents of the plans to enhance security by installing the cameras before they were actually installed. if parents had objections to this move, that would have been the time to voice them.
New Safety Enhancements Slated for Chicago Public Schools
6 Additional Schools to Get Comprehensive Video Surveillance Systems
link
Quote:"Cameras have proven to be an effective deterrent to disruptive behavior in and around our schools," said Board of Education President Michael Scott. "Schools are a place of learning, and our students need to be able to come to school every day focused only on learning."
The six targeted schools will receive a total of 180 cameras which are scheduled to be installed this month, 36 of these cameras will be located on the exteriors of the buildings. In some cases, they will be supplementing existing surveillance systems.
Merry Andrew, I merely posted an interesting article. It's a brave new world.
blueflame1 wrote:Merry Andrew, I merely posted an interesting article. It's a brave new world.
But you have a reputation for posting only articles that you agree with,and that attack any govt anywhere in the US.
Then when challenged,you claim "I only posted an interesting article".
So tell us Blue,do you think the school was right?
mysteryman, no I dont think the school was right. They didn't even have the decency to inform students and parents about camera's in the little girls and boys rooms. I wouldn't be surprised if the shower rooms have hidden cameras too.
blueflame1 wrote: I dont think the school was right. They didn't even have the decency to inform students and parents about camera's in the little girls and boys rooms. I wouldn't be surprised if the shower rooms have hidden cameras too.
Are you concerned about the safety issue? The possible violation of human rights issue or, since you voice a concern about possible shower room cameras, are you worried that the tapes may be used inappropriately by a sexual pervert?
What you fail (and Free Market News fails) to comprehend is that if Mac Bedor (the student) had an issue with the camera that is one thing and he should have pursued the proper avenues for having it removed. He stole the camera. The stealing of the camera is theft. He needs to be punished for that and when you stop and think about it, the cameras were put in because of vandalism and ripping the camera down is in itself vandalism. Bottom line, Mr. Bedor is both vandal and thief...no matter what his motives may have been.
The theft issue is a red herring here. There was no intent to take property of value for the student's personal gain. More properly considered, this was an act of civil disobedience rather than stealing.
This isn't a simple matter. When the London subway bombers struck, their identities were established so quickly because London is presently the most monitored city in the western world (as a consequence of the IRA problems earlier). That fact might strike us perhaps as quite odd, given the British traditions of liberty and their spirit of independence from state control and given that such pervasive monitoring hasn't produced a groundswell of Brit protest (I read two Brit papers each day and I had no idea London was so pervasively monitored until the recent coverage of the subway issues).
But not all societies are the same. There's no guarantee that Britain and Canada and Singapore and Bejing and America will put monitoring capabilities to the same uses. In fact, we know they won't.
A lot of you here will argue against this but I think there is very good reason to worry about the consequences to liberty from America's use of citizen monitoring than Brits need be concerned regarding. One bit of that evidence is the relative difficulty Blair has had in instituting patriot act style legislation there and the relative ease Bush had, particularly initially. America demonstrates a level of paranoia regarding threat (external and internal) which seems likely to be much more problematic. The McCarthy period is, obviously, an example. If you consider that that story is old and irrelevant, you might wish to read Ann Coulter's book defending McCarthy.
Another serious issue here is the increasing technological ease of secret monitoring (emails, web spyders, electronic miniaturization, wireless technology, data banks, satellite photography, etc).
I think there is clear cause for acute concern.
If I placed a camera in my bathroom and taped whomever was bathing and going to the bathroom Id be in jail so fast it would make your head spin. My question is who watches the tapes of nude little girls and boys after the tapes are removed from the camera. If I were a member of this school unit there would be a new board, prinicipal, and superintendant.
blueflame1 wrote:Merry Andrew, I merely posted an interesting article. It's a brave new world.
Yes, and you headlined that story "Big Brother Goes to School," an apparent reference to Orwell's
1984, not Huxley's
Brave New World.
Blatham, I don't necessarily disagree with you regarding the danger of government encroachment on personal privacy and the perils that this entails for personal liberties. Particularly in view of the mindset of the current administration in Washington, the danger is all too real. I do think, however, that in this particular case, a mountain is being constructed out of a molehill. My response was strictly to the story as posted by blueflame1, not to the ever-present threat of Big Brotherhood becoming a reality.
But I can't agree with you that ripping out a surveilance camera and taking it home amounts to no more than "civil disobedience." Sit-ins constitute civil disobedience (as this took place in a bathroom, I must assure you that no humour is intended here
). Demonstrating with placards outside the school is civil disobedience. Covering the camera with anything at hand, including reams of toilet tissue, would have been civil disobedience. What the boy did amounts to both vandalism and theft.
rabel22 wrote:If I placed a camera in my bathroom and taped whomever was bathing and going to the bathroom Id be in jail so fast it would make your head spin. My question is who watches the tapes of nude little girls and boys after the tapes are removed from the camera. If I were a member of this school unit there would be a new board, prinicipal, and superintendant.
I haven't heard yet just where the cameras were set. It is highly unlikely that they were placed in toilet stalls or over urinals or in any place where nudity or partial nudity would be expected. If the cameras are positioned over the sinks or directed at the door or a hand dryer then there is not expected nudity and in those cases the cameras are in perfectly justifiable locations.
rabel22 is creating a whole new scenario, replete with paedophilic voyeurs and horrors too dire to contemplate.
Haveing lived a long time I know that not all people are good. So I look at the seamy side because I know that such people are out there. Why give them more latitude for wrongdoing. Or are you going to claim that a schoolteacher wouldent do such a thing. If that is what you are claiming then you need to return to school yourself for more education.
rabel,
Do you have the same problem with cameras in shopping malls,parks,stadiums,casino's and other public places?
merry
I think not 'vandalism and theft'. Intent is the determiner. Vandalism, as in graffiti or breaking a window for no other reason than to mar or destroy, is not the case here even if some expense for the school was incurred. The kid didn't rip a stall door off its hinges, he removed what he considered an inappropriate intrusion into his (and others') privacy. That's a political intent, and justifiable politically, quite unlike vandalism or theft.
Whether this particular case is properly representative of the sorts of monitoring we ought to worry about is a different matter. I think the principal rather authoritarian (not many principals would hold his views or support such monitoring).
Mysteryman
You must live in a very different place than I do. Here if your caught nude you go to jail. Even at a stop sign. In answer to your question I dont like the idea of giving tickets based on a camera. I dont trust anything electrical having been an electrician for 40 years.
blatham wrote:I think not 'vandalism and theft'. Intent is the determiner. Vandalism, as in graffiti or breaking a window for no other reason than to mar or destroy, is not the case here even if some expense for the school was incurred. The kid didn't rip a stall door off its hinges, he removed what he considered an inappropriate intrusion into his (and others') privacy. That's a political intent, and justifiable politically, quite unlike vandalism or theft.
You are fabricating an intent to justify your view. The "evidence" comes from a source known for sensationalizing stories. His intenet may very well have been to steal the camera and when his mother found out he had it she freaked.
More on the story, "We learned from Cindy that there was another student who took a photo of the camera prior to Mac's awareness being alerted. This child and his parents took the picture to the Sheriff yet no action was taken. Furthermore only the high school principal knew about this and not the middle school principal or administration."
http://infowars.net/articles/december2005/011205Kidsconditioned.htm
fishin' wrote:blatham wrote:I think not 'vandalism and theft'. Intent is the determiner. Vandalism, as in graffiti or breaking a window for no other reason than to mar or destroy, is not the case here even if some expense for the school was incurred. The kid didn't rip a stall door off its hinges, he removed what he considered an inappropriate intrusion into his (and others') privacy. That's a political intent, and justifiable politically, quite unlike vandalism or theft.
You are fabricating an intent to justify your view. The "evidence" comes from a source known for sensationalizing stories. His intenet may very well have been to steal the camera and when his mother found out he had it she freaked.
Assuming, but not fabricating. If his intent was otherwise, that is, if it were simply theft, then the topic isn't even slightly interesting.
when i went to school, we were still in the dark ages (perhaps we agaain are - just a different kind). we did not have separate bathrooms for staff and students; teachers and students used the same bathrooms and vandalism was a word we connected with history - the vandals.
during lunch breaks our teachers stayed with us , perhaps to chat a little bit about our lives , or to ask the teacher some questions that had nothing to do with the lessons being taught . when we were in the schoolyard , again our teachers were without - so bullying was pretty well out of the question . as i said , it was the middle ages
as for the security cameras in great britain , i've seen that some british cities have extensive camera surveillance systems in the city centers. i have to admit that i don't particularly like them ; on the other hand , if they contribute to safety ... but i'd rather see the police on the
beat preventing crimes and not waiting to inspect the tapes after a crime has been committed. hbg
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