Texas Schools Are Forcing Kids To Wear RFID Chips. Is That a Privacy Invasion?

[Scipio]

Interestingly enough, I spent most of my class period yesterday explaining that we discrete privacy rights, but no constitutional privacy bubble.

[dps]

Interestingly enough, I spent most of my class period yesterday explaining that we discrete privacy rights, but no constitutional privacy bubble.

I guess most of that was used to explain the use of "discrete" as a verb.

[Eddie Teach]

Was a typo. He meant "excrete".

[CountDeMoney]

I figured he misspelled "discredit".

[Viking]

Interestingly enough, I spent most of my class period yesterday explaining that we discrete privacy rights, but no constitutional privacy bubble.

and how do you say that in english?

[The Minsky Moment]

When you say it like that you make it sound like you think that's a bad thing   

It makes me nervous given that you are going straight to hell.   

Jews believe in hell?

No but why risk it?

[Viking]

When you say it like that you make it sound like you think that's a bad thing   

It makes me nervous given that you are going straight to hell.   

Jews believe in hell?

No but why risk it?

Exactly what risk are you taking here then?

[Razgovory]

Dammit JR, don't goad him into this shit.

[Viking]

Dammit JR, don't goad him into this shit.

Don't take sanity advice from Raz, he follows the religion of cannibalism and vicarious redemptive human sacrifice.

[Martinus]

I think government tracking your ID is much more invasive than requiring you to have it, yes.

Do you think you have a right to privacy while in school?

Considering how the US courts don't think so, don't know why people suddenly think they do.

EVERYBODY TO THE AUDITORIUM WHILE THE DRUG DOGS SWEEP THE LOCKERS

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I've said before regarding CCTV and Loitering Police Surveillance Drones that anything a person can do e.g. standing on a street corner with a camera or flying in a helicopter with a camera should be treated in the same way as doing the same thing with a robot or drone or camera on a light-post. I think the same applies to schools. If the same outcome can be achieved by putting school employees in every corridor with note pads then it isn't an invasion of privacy.

People seem to freak out about this however. I don't think this is due to fears of invasion of privacy, it is a fear of systematization of data as well as the anonimization of it's collection.  People are obviously willing to accept much more invasion of privacy from a person who's motives and attitudes can be estimated and who is incapable of effectively using any such relevant information effectively.

People want a low level of incompetence and corruption in their government because sometimes they need to go around the law just a little bit because, y'know, I am mature enough to be able to decide when, in some small way, the law needs to be broken for the greater good. I can actually sympathize with that. That's why I think greater surveillance should be directly associated with more liberal and flexible laws.

An example of this is my suggested system for traffic monitoring. Connecting your drivers license (with chip) to a gps in every car which sends speed-location-licence information to the highway patrol means you will get fined every time you speed, it also means that you can now set flexible speed limits based on conditions with the present speed limit info sent from the highway patrol to your car and also for example permit short 15 second bursts for exceeding the speed limit  for overtaking and emergencies.

I also think this has something to do with a broader issue of the American attitude to law breaking compared to the European one. I have this pet theory that modern American criminal law developed in circumstances entirely different than modern European criminal law; in that, with America of the 18th and the 19th centuries being, largely, a lawless country, laws had to be few and far between and they were rarely enforced but as a result they had to be quite severe in punishment once the culprit was actually caught (and in many cases, they would actually treat the perpetrator as an outlaw). As the European laws were both enforced better (for obvious reasons) and more numerous, they had to be more lax, on average, when it came to punishment (you can't just hang or imprison the entire populace).

As America became more civilized and the level of law enforcement improved and the number of laws increased, this attitude did not change, however, keeping very high penalties for crimes that in Europe would get you a slap on the wrist (stuff like 15 years in prison for smuggling shrimps from Mexico come to mind). The flipside is that Americans are much more leery about better law enforcement (e.g. through better surveillance) - because with their attitudes towards crime, this would turn their lives into a nightmare.

[Viking]

I also think this has something to do with a broader issue of the American attitude to law breaking compared to the European one. I have this pet theory that modern American criminal law developed in circumstances entirely different than modern European criminal law; in that, with America of the 18th and the 19th centuries being, largely, a lawless country, laws had to be few and far between and they were rarely enforced but as a result they had to be quite severe in punishment once the culprit was actually caught (and in many cases, they would actually treat the perpetrator as an outlaw). As the European laws were both enforced better (for obvious reasons) and more numerous, they had to be more lax, on average, when it came to punishment (you can't just hang or imprison the entire populace).

As America became more civilized and the level of law enforcement improved and the number of laws increased, this attitude did not change, however, keeping very high penalties for crimes that in Europe would get you a slap on the wrist (stuff like 15 years in prison for smuggling shrimps from Mexico come to mind). The flipside is that Americans are much more leery about better law enforcement (e.g. through better surveillance) - because with their attitudes towards crime, this would turn their lives into a nightmare.

To the best of my knowledge europeans have precisely the same attitudes to surveilance. I think american attitudes to justice are more likely to be a result of a general divergence in views on individual responsibility. It's after WWI that these things really change and come to a head in the 1960's. Americans traditionally had law, it just was locally sourced and accountable rather than being accountable to a higher level of government (remember they elect sheriffs and judges).

If anything sentencing is more a case of Europe adopting the early 19th century american attitude to crime and punishment (what was Tocqueville doing there in the first place you might ask?) of sentence and redemption (the word Penitentiary is american and about penitence rather than punishment). Over the same period as american society became less homogenous they abandoned reform.

[Barrister]

I also think this has something to do with a broader issue of the American attitude to law breaking compared to the European one. I have this pet theory that modern American criminal law developed in circumstances entirely different than modern European criminal law; in that, with America of the 18th and the 19th centuries being, largely, a lawless country, laws had to be few and far between and they were rarely enforced but as a result they had to be quite severe in punishment once the culprit was actually caught (and in many cases, they would actually treat the perpetrator as an outlaw). As the European laws were both enforced better (for obvious reasons) and more numerous, they had to be more lax, on average, when it came to punishment (you can't just hang or imprison the entire populace).

As America became more civilized and the level of law enforcement improved and the number of laws increased, this attitude did not change, however, keeping very high penalties for crimes that in Europe would get you a slap on the wrist (stuff like 15 years in prison for smuggling shrimps from Mexico come to mind). The flipside is that Americans are much more leery about better law enforcement (e.g. through better surveillance) - because with their attitudes towards crime, this would turn their lives into a nightmare.

Marti, American criminal law was just imported British criminal law.  It's obviously been modified and altered in the last 200 years, but it has that same basic origin.

[The Minsky Moment]

Exactly what risk are you taking here then?

Of being in the general vicinity when the awesome power of celestrial wrath is visited upon you as divine vengeance for your notorious blasphemy.

[MadImmortalMan]

Marti, American criminal law was just imported British criminal law.  It's obviously been modified and altered in the last 200 years, but it has that same basic origin.

Still Marti's theory of how they evolved since then seems somewhat legit.

[The Minsky Moment]

Marti, American criminal law was just imported British criminal law.  It's obviously been modified and altered in the last 200 years, but it has that same basic origin.

Yeah - plus Martinus, being a euro, has a tendency to think of 18th and 19th century America through the prism of wild west stories.  Early America was not "lawless" nor were laws rarely enforced, except perhaps on the far extremes of the frontier.