Panopticon High School
March 7th, 2008
My initial response when seeing this article on Slashdot was, “Oh for the love of Christ.” It’s tough to get too mad when your kid is in the room, but feel free to toss in your own expletive-laden response to this idea: Chicago Public School security cameras will soon be linked up to the CPD’s headquarters and 911 center.
From a Constitutional standpoint, I guess it’s likely no harm, no foul. Past jurisprudence has demonstrated that students have little to no expectation of privacy at school. You also have the whole idea of “in loco parentis” and all that jazz — we’ve always allowed schools some latitude to raise our kids and deprive them of rights we’d fight to keep for ourselves. Certainly, there’s some benefit to giving the police information about what is happening inside a school in an emergency situation. However, aside from a situation where someone is shooting inside a school, what real use do these cameras have?
Will they stop drug sales in schools? Not really, there’s no cameras in bathrooms. Will they stop bullying or other harassment? Nope, the cops have better things to do.
What they will do is desensitize students to a constant surveillance presence that goes directly to law enforcement. The average person is on a security camera more often than he or she is aware. It would seem logical that the best path to a true surveillance society, one where government and law enforcement watch our every move, is to start by desensitizing young people. Make them feel that it is normal. Make “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear,” more than some bullshit meme and turn it into just the common logic about surveillance. If you make it commonplace, then it’s not really intrusive anymore.
And that’s what has me worried — how low are we setting the bar? At what point do we decide that some vague sense of security is worth less than our own privacy? When government assures us that it’s only looking to protect us, and then systematically violates privacy rights (see also warrentless wiretapping), who is protecting us from government? If we continue to desensitize our kids to the issue, well, eventually nobody.
And now back to my usual lack of posting.
Entry Filed under: Law
1 Comment Add your own
1. little yang | March 12th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Interesting stuff. From a sociological perspective, your idea of socializing kids to ignore or, worse, not even recognize surveillance, is pretty dead on. I think the important factor to remember is that it’s unlikely that this is a vast government conspiracy, but is probably being pushed for well-enough meaning reasons in response to very real fears. Yet, that is the way systems usually go, sociologically speaking. 1 company owning 6 tv stations may let them operate independently with no interference, but slowly but surely, policies will be enacted not allowing negative coverage of said company.
As for possible alternatives, I’m not sure what there could be. Hysteria that parents often exhibit is hard to counter for fear of being accused of not caring about kids. And, as you well, know, horrendous things are enacted to “keep our children safe.”
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