It seems like the military industrial complex won’t be satisfied until every public office has a personal armoured surveillance swat vehicle with subsidies and training from federal agencies.
a frightening reminder of how technology originally developed for use by the military or intelligence services, ranging from blast-armored trucks designed for use in war zones to invasive surveillance tools, keeps trickling down to domestic police and even the institutions where our kids go to learn.
The Gizmodo reporters found some school districts that had spent up to $12,000 on the tech, which was designed for use in war zones
In March 2020, the North East Independent School District, a largely Hispanic district north of San Antonio, wrote a check to Cellebrite for $6,695 for “General Supplies.”
from reading the title i thought that schools are buying the aforementioned tools to teach students to use them lol, i thought, well, this isn’t that bad :/
This was my first thought as well :D
This is a big step towards a fascist, no freedom and no privacy society and of course the right wing doesn’t care, they probably like this.
The republicans want police at schools and surveillance. It’s time to accept that they are fascists or fascist enablers and not “just conservatives”.
Does everything have to be political with you people?
the reality is everything is political
I’m not american. I am tired of hearing about american politics on subjects that have no correlation. Nowhere in the article are politics mentioned, yet it has to be brought up in the comments for some reason.
tired of hearing about american politics
this part is understandable. however, the rest of what you said is incorrect.
everything is political, i wasnt being sarcastic. politics cannot be removed from discussion of this article because they are intrinsically linked.
If you were worried about sending your kids back to school after the pandemic ends
why are people concerned about sending their kids back to school? are they concerned about their health because of the way the government handled the pandemic? are they concerned about how their child will be educated? are they concerned about if they child has fallen behind? all of this has to do with politics. education decisions are largely made by governments, and in the US, the government is legally responsible for ensuring children have access to education
some US school districts are buying tools designed to break into phones to download texts and photos… even ones that have been deleted.
why would schools be doing this? just because? do we all live in a vacuum where nothing relates to anything else so they are just doing this completely randomly, void of any influencing factors?
Commenting on the devices, Cooper Quintin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that they “started out in the provenance of the U.S. military or federal law enforcement, and then made their way into state and local law enforcement, and also eventually make their way into the hands of criminals or petty tyrants like school administrators.”
the US military, federal law enforcement, local law enforcement… hmmm… sounds… political
Unlike in law enforcement, though, school districts don’t have to get a warrant to use the devices on students’ phones.
hmm… school districts don’t have to get a warrant. this sounds like it could be ~political~. let’s find out:
The Supreme Court ruled that school officials only need to reasonably believe that a student is guilty of something and that searching the phone will probably obtain evidence of it.
oh, would you look at that. it is!
Yes the supreme court tends to decide things, especially when it relates to entities controlled by the government. What makes politics relevant in this thread? Why can’t everybody just agree that spying on students is wrong? Why does this have to become “My team is better than their team” when at the end of the day regardless of your political position the vast majority of people will agree that spying on students is wrong.
I’m pretty sure this is a 4th amendment issue, and I’m no expert but from what I gather the republicans are big 4th amendment stans. I genuinely don’t understand. I’m not a republican/conservative, I’m just an internet user tired of everything being “US VS THEM” when I just want to be angry that schools are spying on students. I don’t care what your political beliefs are and it’s all so tiresome.
Thanks for reading my rant/blogpost.
Yeah I am sorry I agree that the US vs THEM thing is annoying. I should have said that in my experience it’s mostly conservative politicians who don’t give a shit about privacy or the rights of kids etc.
This is an inherently political article. Stripping kids of their privacy like this is worht a huge political outrage and should be scary for anyone
I agree that there should be outrage.
No I don’t always talk about it if that’s what you mean. But of course everything is political, this very much so obviously.
Me, as a libertarian socialist I can’t just accept that any people use this surveillance tech on kids ffs
as a libertarian socialist
There we go again. Can’t we all agree that mass surveillance on school children is bad without sharing our political beliefs?
