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Geek Profiling: The Next W.A.V.E.
from the -constitution-isn't-for-kids dept.
According to David Bresnahan, reporting on the WorldNet Daily site, the new "W.A.V.E" program, developed by Pinkerton Services Group,a division of the international security firm Pinkerton, Inc. is starting up in North Carolina, and is soon to go nationwide.
W.A.V.E. offers anonymous toll-free lines for students, who will be trained to watch for and report "dangerous" behavior like depression, or kids with weapons. Every North Carolina school will have free access to this program, which will include a Web site, classes, school assemblies and special sessions for parents and teachers. W.A.V.E America was created by a North Carolina task force on school violence working together with Pinkerton. A contact list of law-enforcement agencies is also being developed for each school in the state to notify when a tip has been received by Pinkerton on its nationwide toll-free line.
W.A.V.E joins new sofware "security" programs like Mosaic 2000, which is being tested in public schools in America to compile and computerize information on students believed to be dangerous or potentially violent. This new rat-on-kids industry is an offshoot of the Geek Profiling anti-Net hysteria that broke out all across the United States after the Columbine High School killings, whose first anniversary is fast approaching. Despite the fact that horrific incidents like Columbine are extremely rare, and that the FBI and Justice Department have both reported that youth violence has dropped to its lowest levels in more than half a century, the belief persists in much of America that technologies like the Internet (and activities like computer gaming) are turning otherwise healthy school children into mass murderers.
In a newsmagazine survey taken earlier this year, 81 percent of Americans said they believed the Net was responsible for the Columbine massacre.
In the lunatic world of American education, and the surreal aftermath of Columbine, it now seems perfectly reasonable, even sensible, to suspend and force into counseling children who who are angry, depressed, who wear white, game obsessively, or who say intemperate and stupid things. The W.A.V.E program is not only institutionalizing but rewarding a culture in which kids are being taught to turn in classmates whose behavior they consider abnormal or dangerous. It also reinforces the notion that school students have no Constitutional rights of due process such as privacy, confronting accusers, behaving in non-conformist ways, or even knowing that accusations against them exist.
Although school-age children are presumed to have few rights, it's obvious that this kind of anonymous and intrusive law enforcement would blatantly unconstitutional for adults. Just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that permits police to search people for firearms solely on the basis of anonymous tips. Citing the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, the court ruled that such a law would enable "any person to harass another to set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search..." Authorities, the court ruled, needed some corraborating evidence before they could invade the privacy of any citizen. It's frightening to imagine how school authorities can possibly teach citizenship when they have so wantonly violate the very idea of constitutional rights.
This Orwellian phobia (who do we turn in next?: "dangerous" parents, neighbors and sibs?) has been a staple of the most venal political systems in the 20th Century, from Nazism to fascism to Communism. It is presumptuous and arrogant on so many levels it's astonishing to see public officials like North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt adopt the idea so unthinkingly and enthusiastically. But he's not alone -- plenty of parents and educators are along for the ride.
It isn't clear where information goes once it's collected by kid-profiling software, or toll-free hot-lines. Presumably, it remains in a computerized dangerous-kids database for life. This is just one more reason that it's insane to ask young children to evaluate their classmates for emotional disorders and other signs of potentially "dangerous" behavior. Not only are kids patently unqualified to make judgments like that, the temptation to turn in kids that are socially competitive, "geeky," different, disliked, abrasive or unhappy seems almost irresistible, especially when doing so brings tangible rewards like cash, and is cloaked under anonymity. Monitoring and evaluating behavior is a science that's supposed to be done by trained professionals -- teachers, psychologists, guidance counselors, and therapists. Even then, kids ought to have the right to be openly confronted with the accusation that they're a menace to society, and to respond, rather than wonder if some angry classmate has branded them for life on an anonymous toll free line run by a profit-making private company with a vested interest in promoting the notion that schools -- and kids -- are dangerous.
"A safe school environment is fundamental to helping North Carolina's students succeed in school," announced Governor Hunt. "Every school ought to be a safe one and W.A.V.E. American will help get every kid involved. This program is more than just a tip line, it teaches students and parents to look for the early signs of violent behavior and to resolve conflicts constructively."
This is the worst kind of political exploitation of kids. It takes schools off the hook and turns the complex process of school administration over to adolescents. Kids will ultimately have to live in fear that the deskmate they jostled with will turn them in for money, or that bragging about exploits on Doom will get them turned into W.A.V.E. as "unbalanced."
If a kid or a parent becomes aware that a classmate has a gun and plans to use it, there are plenty of cops and law enforcement officials they can call. There is no statistical evidence to support the notion that schools are so dangerous that children need to be manipulated into turning one another in. Nor is there much doubt about who will be targeted -- geeks, nerds, Goths, oddballs, along with anyone else who is discontented, alienated and individualistic.
That kids are being rewarded for doing this is revolting enough. That they are being asked to do by a profit-making private corporation for money suggests a culture a lot sicker and more dangerous than most schoolkids. that?
This is a fine idea, IMO! (Score:3)
Think for a moment; you know plenty of kids are going to suffer under this regime. Eventually, some kids w/ influential parents will suffer, and that will be the end this misguided plan. It seems to me eminently logical that these children-of-influence be targeted first, to spare the much larger number of other children, whose parent's voices are marginal, the same suffering. If the goal is to bring down this system quickly, I think the original poster is dead on.
I don't expect you to like this idea. Personally, I think it's devilishly clever, and hope to see someone try this, but soon.
As to innocents not suffering for a cause, I've yet to hear of a worthwhile cause that innocents haven't suffered for.
-Isaac
Disgusting! (Score:3)
Pinkerton's Corporate HQ can be contacted here:
4330 Park Terrace Drive
Westlake Village, CA 91361
818-706-6800 - Telephone
818-706-5515 - Fax
Re:This can be a good thing (Score:3)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Just as a minor note or three, in case you didn't know:
1) Much of what happened in Nazi Germany in regards to the Holocaust was actually based on both eugenics programs in the United States and the committment laws in place then. (Back then, you could legally be involuntarily committed to an insane asylum just for being "different" or "rebellious"--even as an adult--and most states had laws mandating sterilisation for all "mental defectives", that is, anyone who had been committed to a mental institution. I'll also note that in those days once one was committed it was next to impossible to ever leave; it literally took major reforms in the 1960's to committment laws to fix this.)
2) Much of the actual horror of the Holocaust actually started with first the involuntary committment and sterilisation, then the outright murder, of "mental defectives" and other handicapped persons. (Yes, this was even before they started on the Jewish, Catholic and homosexual populations--and everyone thought it was a Good Thing because eugenics were seen as a Great Cure to things like insanity, people being born crippled, etc.)
2a) As a minor side note to the above--most of Mengele's "experiments" were done in hospital settings to children of Holocaust victims who were involuntarily committed to hospitals.
3) If one doesn't think being labeled as a "mental defective"--rightly or wrongly--doesn't affect one's chances in life, ask any of the orphans who are held in "defectives orphanages" in various countries that were formerly part of the old USSR (or Romania, for that matter)--more info here [hrw.org]. Hell, for that matter, ask anyone who has publically been revealed in the US to have suffered from a mental disorder how devastating it can be (one of the Kennedys was involuntarily committed, for one; at least one US Presidential candidate actually lost the nomination after it was revealed he had suffered from depression; persons with mental illness have a far harder time getting and keeping jobs than the general population, Americans with Disabilities Act or no [usually, just as with age and occasionally sex discrimination, they find some other excuse to not hire or to fire the person once a history of mental illness shows up in a background check]...persons who have had a history of mental illness (with or without violent tendencies) are also prohibited from many things Americans tend to consider as rights, such as owning a gun (even for hunting) or, in several states, even driving (which, outside of major cities, can actually lock you out of not only jobs but even treatment for mental illness).)
4) Rights for juveniles in the US have been rolled back considerably since the 1980's; pretty much, the legal criteria for involuntarily committing a kid is nearly the same as it is for adults back in the Bad Old Days of the 30's where one could end up in a mental hospital for merely being "different" (all it takes is to convince a parent, or failing that, a judge; the strict legal requirements in place for adults generally don't apply to those under 18). Kids can already be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals by stuff as mere as the recommendation of their high school counselor--stuff like W.A.V.E. will only make things far worse, truly sending things back to the Bad Old Days.
5) Not all mental illness is genetic. In the worst kinds (bipolar illness and schizophrenia) there is a definite tendency that is probably genetically determined, but even then only fifty percent of identical twins will develop schizophrenia if their twin has it--in other words, there are probably also environmental factors involved. The same is probably true, to a greater or lesser extent, with the entire spectrum of "autistic spectrum" "disorders" (which go all the way from severe autism to Asperger's (which one is high-functioning, and there are a surprising number of geeks who have a touch of Asperger's) to hyperlexia (mostly you just have trouble "reading" folks and with speech, but reading skills are actually better than normal-- hyperlexic kids might not talk till four or five, but it isn't unuusal for them to be reading at kindegarten/1st-grade level at age two or three and to be reading as advanced as high-school level by first or second grade)...there is a genetic tendency in some cases, but some of it is environmental and most of it is a mix of the two. For depression specifically, some depression is linked with genetic tendencies, but a fair amount is just iatrogenic (there is no family history) or even the result of environmental factors (severe abuse, especially emotional or spiritual (religious-based) abuse, WILL cause depression in darn near any sane individual; depression is extremely common in walkaways from religious cults, and the highest known rate of suicide in teens exists with gay teens in fundamentalist households) or even cultural factors (the Japanese have a strong tradition against the disgrace of one's family or one's self, and if one does disgrace one's self or gives one's family a bad name committing suicide is actually seen as the honourable way out).
6) Most of the kids who blow away other kids have either been severely abused--not just at school but almost constantly--and most also have serious underlying personality disorders. Personality disorders are one of the few disorders that are thought to not have much of a genetic basis (save in some cases) but are the result of something going Very Wrong in early development--like when they were children. A history of abuse, oddly, can cause a personality disorder to develop (especially in the case of more violent people--there is a very strong correlation between childhood abuse, especially physical and severe emotional (and, according to some studies, religious) abuse, and the development of severe personality disorders that lead to violence). In the Paducah shootings, for instance, there are some hints that the kid could have been trying to walk away from fundamentalism; there are indications the Columbine shooters had long-standing personality disorders.
7) There is a rather healthy industry here in the United States of private mental hospitals and teen psychiatrists--often working with insurance companies--that basically tell parents that their children need at the least psychotherapy and/or Prozac--and more often than not, institutionalisation--for behaviours that sometimes are part of normal teenhood. Pharmaceutical companies make a minor killing off of giving kids Prozac and Ritalin (in fact, the problem is so bad here--kids as young as three are now being given Ritalin and Prozac even though the longterm effects of giving kids that young such powerful drugs is unknown--that even the FDA and Presidential committees are asking people to please not give kids that young psychoactive drugs until proper studies have been done); it is not at all uncommon for private mental hospitals here in the States to hold a patient exactly as long as the insurance company will pay (typically one to two months) and then dismiss the kid (even if the kid is well or was never sick to begin with). It is bad enough that even investigative programs with newspapers and TV have reported on the "teen mental health industry" here in the States...it's also, sadly, not uncommon for parents who are sick of dealing with their kids to have them committed for "depression" or have "out-of-control warrants" swore out on their kids to have them involuntarily committed...some parents even drop off their kids at the mental hospital whilst they take vacations. :P
(As a minor aside on this--if W.A.V.E. had been in affect whilst I was in high school or even elementary school, it is entirely likely that not only would I have been profiled but probably involuntarily committed until I was 18. I had some problems growing up (yes, I was depressed--the result of emotional, occasional physical, and longstanding religious abuse--alas, at that time neither social services nor anyone else seemed to recognise that religious abuse even existed [this was just around the time of the first televangelist scandals here Stateside] nor that teens could suffer abuse without "bringing it on themselves", which didn't help matters) and as it was, I was profiled and got to go through most of my middle and high-school years with the official label of Fucking Nutter Kid even without the wonderful things known as W.A.V.E. and other "geek profiling" tools. In any case, all the visits to the shrink, "special programs", the initial visit to the "teen ward" when the school no longer wanted to deal with the complaints that I was being severely bullied at school, and my parents threatening to send me back to aforementioned "teen ward" when I tried to be the least bit assertive didn't help; getting out at the age of 25 from that toxic situation has begun the process of healing, though I admit I've a long way to go (I have a bad habit of kicking myself in the arse and worrying too much--probably the result of the abuse I suffered--which makes me depressed sometimes, and which nothing short of time and relearning is going to help--all the Prozac in the world isn't going to fix how my folks essentially used the Bible, the shrink, and the occasional belt and fist as weapons to hurt me). Needless to say, I've wondered at times if this has affected me getting a job (I've had a hard time getting jobs, even with qualifications above and beyond what they're asking for); I know for a fact it's affected me with social interactions (not just people freaking because of my history--I don't have much idea of what a normal teenhood consists of, and I have a very hard time trusting anyone because when I've asked for help I've usually been kicked in the nuts over it). I also saw and experienced a fair amount of the abuse that goes on in the "teen mental health industry"--including the kids who ended up getting committed when it was the parents that could've used psychiatric help--and what with the age of Columbine and Geek Profiling and sillybuggers like W.A.V.E. I can only imagine it's gotten even worse nowadays. Nearly bad enough to put me off having kids altogether, in fact (I sure as hell don't want them going through what I've had to go through, and right now I don't trust myself to have kids just yet)...so, well, I know all too well of what I speak. I ended up in the "Teen Mental Health Industry" basically for being bullied (and an incompetent middle-school principal and counselor who didn't want to deal with the bullies) and for beginning to walk away from a Bible-based cult my parents were (and still are) involved in and starting to get the sense something was Seriously Bent in my family. (I'm only now starting to realise just HOW bent it was.))
My worry is this--How many kids are going to end up getting churned up in the machine that is the "Teen Mental Health Industry" who literally haven't done anything other than be gay and have the shitty luck to be born in a house of raving fundies (all the Prozac in the world won't help that, either--about the only thing that WILL help is getting the kid the hell out of the house, and even then he's still gonna be depressed because his family has essentially disowned him for something out of his control), or who gets the living shite beaten out of him both at school (by bullies) and at home (by Mom and Dad) and who might act gothy or tough as a means to try to protect himself, or the kid who has the cojones to be Wiccan or atheist or [insert non-conservative-Protestant-Christianity religion here] in a sea of fundamentalist Christians (this isn't uncommon in parts of the US--our Supreme Court is now taking a case on whether prayers should be allowed at football games which involves a school district largely populated with fundamentalist Christians--the people who have protested the prayers (including Catholics, some Baptists, Jewish folk, and an atheist) have been harassed and beaten in school...in one case involving school prayer here, a person who protested sectarian school prayers in Alabama was literally run out of town by the local fundies), or who is trying to walk away from a coercive group Mom and Dad are involved in, or who dares to be different enough to arouse the ire or fear of the students, parents, or community...there are going to be a lot of kids caught up in that meatgrinder as a result, which is going to result in a lot of pissed-off kids who are pretty much going to be unemployable (both because of the "history of mental illness" and because, well, even compared to regular public schools, "schools for the emotionally disturbed"--which is where these kids will likely end up, even if not committed--have Base Minimum educational standards, and at times literally have to get into partnerships with either vocational schools or gifted/talented magnet schools to even provide educational opprotunities to those kids that don't drop out after about their junior year or go back to regular school--and unless you show some real spark of intelligence, like I was lucky enough to do, you will be shunted into a voc-ed program, probably either nursing or body-shop)... if anything, it might make the problem worse. (Hell, if you know you're going to be profiled and probably committed because the other kids Plain Don't Like You, and you get hell beaten out of you anyways...and you know once you end up committed it's pretty much going to be on your permanent record and will follow you around for life, making it almost impossible for you to be employed or possibly even get health insurance (you folks in the UK are lucky--you at least have Public Health Service; folks in the US who don't have insurance who are mentally ill usually end up either in the state mental institutions or on the streets because they're SOL)...what is there to lose, really?) Kids, both sane and mentally-ill, are going to get hurt BAD by this crap...
Then again, we've got Tipper Bloody PMRC Gore pushing this crap on one end and Bush pushing for them to just go ahead and lock up the entire teenage population of North America on the other end...other than a Geek's Rights Party I dunno what can be done (if folks ARE interested in starting such a beast, well, technically, there are probably at least a few of us of legal age for both House and Senatorial seats federally as well as in state legislatures...and we can always start by working up from stuff like school boards (all the better--we can keep shite like W.A.V.E. from ever being implemented in the FIRST place locally, and it keeps the Religious Right from being able to take over school boards to turn them into little theocracy training centers)... ;)
*Huge* Privacy Violation (Score:3)
But then read their privacy statement [waveamerica.com]. It's shocking:
That's it. That's their privacy statement. Under COPPA [loc.gov], this will be illegal. COPPA demands that websites get a parent's permission in order to collect data from children 12 and under. COPPA goes into effect April 1st, if I recall correctly.
I won't tell Pinkerton if you don't. But I *will* report them.
-Waldo
Not Nazism and Nothing to do with Geeks (Score:3)
It looks to me like it's only Jon Katz who's hell bent on associating geekdom with psychological instability and violent crime.
BTW, there *are* other free democratic societies in the world where this sort of social responsibility to one another is taken for granted. It's really only in the US that the idea of personal liberty is worshipped to the extent that issues of safety and security are ignored.
W.A.V.E needn't be Nazism. It depends on how it's implemented. I suppose at bottom it basically depends upon whether the people doing the implementation are closet Nazis or not.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Where's the ACLU? (Score:3)
How about these for starters:
- ...among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- rights against unreasonable search and seizure,(4th Amendment, I think).
- Free speech, especially the right to protest without harassment.
There are others but in the interest of brevity and time I'll quit here with a more emphatic repeat of my question: where the h--- is the ACLU, and why aren't they involved in fighting this crap?with the idea that the pursuit of happiness should not be encumbered by undue governmental intrusion(s)
Just yesterday the Supreme Court voted unanimously to deny police departments from doing the same type of things that "WAVE" views as foundational -- profiling a person solely based on an anonymous tip -- which in the schools you know will lead to false accusations and then immediately by harassment (getting called to the school's office and subjected to hostile interviewers)
Perhaps I choose to be different than you. Perhaps part of my protest of the existing status quo includes words such as "I hate...", "I feel powerless...", "let's make some noise..." Am I therefore to be branded as dangerous, my name kept in databases I know nothing about? Databases kept by a commercial entity with (AFAICT)no stated privacy policy?
The webpage url (Score:3)
Now, gimme the moderation this incredibly Informative (hint-hint) posting deserves!
Re:Your points are annoyingly close to home (Score:3)
A fine example of that tactic was when those who fought to cap the new federal income tax at 10% were called alarmists -- because the number they chose for the cap was so absurdly high!
Alas, sometimes the 'paranoid' are right...
Its WORSE than we thought!!! (Score:3)
The main school in this article [Permian High]is the school I went to. Imagine how much worse this Nazi-like youth 'movement' can be when it happens in a school where:
1. There's ARMED guards
2. There's Metal Detectors
3. Students are required to wear BARCODED ID BADGES!
"Student identification badges will not only immediately show who belongs and who doesn't but also contain bar codes school administrators can instantly scan to show everything from previous tardiness and truancies to medical records. "
4. There are security cameras IN THE CLASSROOMS!
5. Random Searches!
"Permian High administrators, for example, periodically seal off hallways, order students to drop what they are carrying, then run the purses and backpacks through metal detectors."
I was outraged when I heard this was happening at my old high-school. When I was there [grad '92] It was a pretty good school [if you could ignore the football fetish]. We had open campus for lunch and there really weren't any violence problems [a usual amount of fights I guess].
I'd like to think that the students at the school in my day would have fought this. But my mother and step-dad are both teachers in that district [not at this school] and say that the students don't mind it at all...
I think that these 'security' measures, plus this quite Orwellian peer-servailence[sp?] is a VERY dangerous thing.
Ender
Re:Neonatzi's in the US (Score:3)
Disclaimer: I was/am a member of the Boy Scouts, with the rank of eagle.
What's interesting that information like this gets moderated up to "Interesting," and without any facts to back it up. First off, The BSA was founded in 1910 (before WW1 or 2!) by Robert Baden-Powell and William D. Boyce. It was based on the British Military system (yes, even the uniforms), and has been adapted into what you see today
Information on Boy Scouts: /index.htm [aol.com]
http://www.scouting.org/factsheets/0 2-503.html [scouting.org]
http://members.aol.com/randywoo/bsah is/b-p.htm [aol.com]
http://users.aol.com/randywoo/bsahis
Information on Hitler Youth:
http://www.cord.edu/homepages/amm orris/paper.html [cord.edu]
http://youth.net/memories/hypermail/0 554.html [youth.net]
Google Search: hitler youth [google.com]
Re:Your points are alarmingly close to home (Score:3)
A fine example of that tactic was when those who fought to cap the new federal income tax at 10% were called alarmists -- because the number they chose for the cap was so absurdly high!
Alas, sometimes the 'paranoid' are right...
I have to admit that history was never one of my stronger subjects but even to me this slow erosion of rights, privacy, and freedom seems so obvious.
What really annoys me is that kids starting school today will graduate pre-profiled as conformist, non-conformist, trouble-makers, etc... What happens if someone starts selling that data to employers? Don't say it won't happen. Who would've thought 20 years ago that we'd all have to piss in a jar in the name of creating a safe working environment? Corporations with a lot of money have every right to know every detail they can find out about their employees lives right? How much of the shit in Gattacca would be fiction if corporations/govt had the technology and freedom to do such things? Where's the wording one my 'urine sample analysis authorization' that says "The Corporation agrees not to save this sample for future DNA analysis and will not store it in corporate database or resell it. Furthermore we agree the the owner of said DNA retains the right to control all future reproduction of said DNA." I'm sure a lawyer could word it bettter, but I'm just a paranoid geek
Here's a truly paranoid idea... suppose in the next 20 years or so our government has changed for the worse and has become truly oppressive. The kids we raise today and teach to think for themselves will be flagged in databases and easy targets for an oppressive government. Will this happen? Maybe, maybe not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Is it worth the risk? NO!
Too bad that being 'naive', 'short-sighted', 'oblivious', or 'uninformed' doesn't carry the same stigma as being 'paranoid' or 'alarmist.' I personally prefer 'clueful', 'aware', or even 'visionary' to describe those that use the past to recognize the negative side effects that our present actions will likely have on our future.
numb
The greatest weapon of the facist is the tolerance of the pacifist. --Suicidal Tendencies (hmm, that one will get me added to a database somewhere I'm sure
Stanford prison experiment (Score:3)
The ability of people, experimenters included, to get caught up in games of control is chilling.
Re:The Wave? (Score:3)
Wrapped in too many words, there is a really scary story here. Someone is trying to change "Innocent until proven guilty" to "Suspect, even if proven innocent"
The real point comes late in the article:
If you have *real* concern about a classmate, there are cops, teachers and parents to inform. If you do not find it necessary to inform any of those directly, simply shut up.
Was the net to blame??? (Score:3)
Yeah, it was that and Duke Nukem. Personally, this is getting to be a big pet peeve of mine. "The internet made me kill 27 people." "The internet made me want to rob a bank." "The internet made me go out and fuck my neighbors cat."
I'm sorry. I believe that the internet can have a small effect on people but really... I spend over 60 hours a week online and I haven't killed anyone yet. If they went out and killed people because of the internet, it was because they were already mentally instable. If the internet wasn't enough to push them over the edge, it was just as likely that the next commercial they saw for a Leonardo DiCaprio movie could have.
It's kind of like the "guns don't kill people" thing. The internet doesn't kill people, people do. In this case, it was a bunch of sick, wacked out punks with some serious problems.
Please, if the internet was responsible, I'd like to know how. I want to know what type of scripting it takes to make a web site pull the trigger of a gun.
Don't get me wrong on this. I feel terrible for all of the people at Columbine. I just think that blaming the internet is a stupid attempt at rationalizing things and trying to make things better. Humans just can't admit that we have flaws so we have to blame something else.
kwsNI
Could this be a Hoax? (Score:4)
Press Release [yahoo.com]
Official Site [waveamerica.com]
Here's the Official Promise (facists!):
This is my school, my space. I want it to be a safe place. I know that violence prevention begins with me. So that's why to this promise I agree. I will... Resolve conflicts peacefully. Talk about problems openly. Treat others with respect. Walk away from a fight. Take all threats and warning signs seriously. Talk to a parent, counselor or other adult about my concerns.
CREEPY!!! Why doesn't everyone scour their site for interesting tidbits!
Re:Please stop dissing the USA (Score:4)
You're close to being right but not quite...I think I'd rate Canada as being MUCH more liberal as well as a few European countries. I know you said the US gov't isn't perfect, but your comments are still quite positive. Keep in mind that your comments are relative, so they don't really speak to the amout of freedom or control we have over our lives.
Our governement operates like any other government really...they have to keep the population apathetic and throw us a bone once in a while to keep us happy. This prevents their power from being seriously threatened. Movements like the ones in the 60's bring about change, but it is usually nothing incredible, at least not what the "revolutionaries" envisioned. They die out as well, as the institutions remain.
Over the past few decades we've seen plenty of fascist/police state features creep in. Increasing militarization of police, the highest incarciration rates in the world, and strict sentancing guidelines. Modern survailence technology doesn't help either, nor does a media that sensationalizes events and certainly does not promote the citizens best interest. And you would be right, our press is still probably the most open in the world. That doesn't make it any good.
So obviously this article bothers me. I'm not a libertarian like most here are, as I'm not a big fan of capitalism. So when companies come up with plans like this for making money it bothers me just as much as if the government had done it, because corporations have even less public accountability than the government does, and thus are essentially fascist. They care even less about the public than the government does. Corporations that operate for profit in the law enforcement industry have been growling rapidly over the last 10 years or so, and they now have a big lobbying vioce, because more people in prison means more money for them.
All it really takes to end this is education, but not in the traditional sense: people ned to be taught to think for themselves. We all know that the internet didn't cause the Columbine massacre, but most people aren't "aware" enough to realize otherwise. People that read this site know otherwise, but that is because we have been there.
It's one of our countries biggest problems really: instead of finding the root problem and working through it, we take a pill and hope it just goes away.
Re:Wasn't that an Afternoon Special (Score:4)
A good page detailing Ron Jones and The Wave phenomenon [geocities.com].
This is a perfect weapon... (Score:4)
... for pissed-off students to take revenge on other students that have annoyed them. All they have to do is make a single, anonymous phone call and their victim will become marked and monitored, possibly for ever, with no knowledge of the situation or chance of repreive. And I think we'd all agree that at that age, kids can be incredibly vindictive, and I don't doubt that this would become yet another way to pick on enemies and people not conforming to the "typical student" mold.
Any good this service could do (which I personally doubt anyway) will be completely undone by hoax calls in search of revenge. Given a moment's consideration, you would have thought that the people behind W.A.V.E. would have realised this - or maybe they have and it's just a pure publicity stunt with nothing behind it at all.
Interesting... not that scary... (Score:4)
Okay, yes the hyseria regarding school violence is misplaced. Innercity schools with REAL problems are not being targetted, it is suburbanites who avoid the "evil cities" that are scared that violence can hit there area.
I went to a private school for three years at the end of high school after many years in the public school system. We dealt with this nonsense all the time. The school had a dress code that enforced conformity, the school held talks for parents (and made them go or the kids couldn't participate in extra curricular activities) on alcohol use and encouraged parents to report on other children, etc.
This database is unlikely to be maintained indefinitely. If for no other reason, than you need parental consent for recording information on minors. Parents will obviously not consent for their children being labeled insane. This is most likely going to result in people wearing black trenchcoats in school being annoyed by guidance councilors and not wearing black trenchcoats in schools.
While enforcing conformity is a bad thing, it isn't Nazish or Stalinistic, it is obnoxious. This program appears to be well intended: if you think someone is a threat to himself or others, you call a number and they have someone speak to him. Overall, not a terrible state of affairs. If the situation isn't a problem, they go about their business. If they are depressed, maybe they find a good shrink and lead happier lives.
The fact that it is a profitable company doesn't make it wrong. It means that they are going to try to make a profit instead of syphoning off as much money as possible in grants to spend frivolously because they have them. Libertarians champion everything being privatized, this seems like an example of that.
While I think that there MAY be a real concerning story here, our author has failed to separate facts from his fears, so it is hard to tell what, if any, injustice is real and what is yellow journalism by rambling fool.
Alex
It's all a merchandising gimmick (Score:4)
So that's the plan. It's a marketing gimmick. A scheme to get kids to buy from their affiliated merchants, build web traffic, and get click-throughs. Maybe to position Pinkertons as an "Internet company", and WAVE as a "portal".
Oh, and you'd think a site intended for kids would have a strong privacy policy? No, it doesn't. [waveamerica.com]
Re:Depressed people (Score:4)
my father fought his depression for three decades until it finally won one morning.
In the meantime he was a major scholar in his field, respected and well-liked by colleagues and students across the world. We were simply astonished by the bundles of condolences from around the world, which kept coming for weeks.
he wrote several of the standard texts in his field, as well as what are now the canonical translations / commentaries on a number of classical texts, and was credited with making it a significant area of study wherebefore it was an obscure backwater.
And practically nobody was aware of his illness outside of his family and his closest colleagues. A less dangerous man i can hardly envision.
Now under the WAVE regime, i guess that, if anyone had actually noticed the symptoms, he would have been labelled as dangerous (to people other than himself) and might well have been unable to continue in academia and thus to carry out his work, his humble attempt to add to the sum of human knowledge.
By all accounts this man was a really good teacher. Clearly I'm somewhat biased, but when he taught me, i could see the talent he had. And three decades worth of students would have been deprived of his abilities, care, concern and sense of duty, had he been 'blacklisted' on health grounds.
Tuberculosis is contagious - that's why it's a notifiable disease. depression is an all-too-often fatal condition, but it is not contagious and should in the main remain a matter for the patient, their family and their physician. it is NOT grounds for a witchhunt
TomV
W.A.V.E.: Not unprecedented (Score:4)
The United States of America may tout it's capitalist infranstructure as the Glorious Saviour of Mankind, but they are closer to communists and fascists than many of their citizens are willing to admint to themselves.
George Orwell warned that this could happen in his epic novel, 1984.
The fact that U.S. is not heeding this warning does not surprise me. After all, this is happening when the people in power in government are of the first generation to not be able to remember James McCarthy, and the Communist Inquisition, first hand.
--
Re:Wasn't that an Afternoon Special (Score:5)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0083316
Apparently based on a true story...
Technological Neutrality (Score:5)
And it's our god given right to use those, right?
Then on the other, you have W.A.V.E. . Similar anonymous measurement, *EXACT* same potentials for abuse(unpopular people get slammed unfairly for fair actions, etc.) The technology itself--anonymous evaluations--remains consistent. So what's different?
Lets see. The former consists of individuals commenting on members of a larger institution. The latter consists of larger institutions retrieving commentary from their individual members <i>regarding</i> their individual members.
Still, this doesn't establish that there's anything wrong with W.A.V.E. I generally want the institutions I'm a member of to protect me from other members--particularly schools. There's an irrational "tattle tales are bad" chant that ignores the fact that Geeks Like Me would be toast without the ability to go to a counselor or a dean of students and say, "That kid over there is beating me senseless on a daily basis. That sucks!"
Yes! Tattle! If someone's making your life miserable, <i>you can do something about it</i>! Schools have and need infrastructure to deal with this.
And that's when things start to fall apart for the W.A.V.E. program. There's something truly perverse about what it has people report...it's not those students who <i>cause</i> the most misery who get busted; it's those students who everyone looks at and says, "Man, that kid is such a loser and everyone hates him. Shit, he's gonna take a gun and shoot up this place!"
In other words, W.A.V.E. has implicit in its design a scheme that doesn't prevent harassment, rather it provides a means of tagging and identifying the harassed. This wouldn't be an awful thing, if it wasn't so presumptuous and backwards--we need to do something about this poor kids who get kicked around every day...not to deal with the violence of them getting kicked around, mind you! "That's normal, you see. Kids establish a pecking order, you can't fight that." No, this isn't about stopping the kicking, it's about essentially providing a means of recognizing when a kid's been kicked so low that they might start fighting back. It's to recognize when kids are brought to the point where they have nowhere to go but up.
How scary, that after months of enduring torment, your institution itself gets into the act, worrying that something must be wrong with you if the popular kids don't like you.
And thus, where the <i>real</i> fear of this system is coming from: It's not the anonymous reporting--we like anonymity, look at all the people who make a career out of bashing Katz on a regular basis. (Incidentally, I was impressed by this story--this is probably some of Katz's beter writing.) It's not even the knowledge of the institution that there are kids who are getting kicked around.
It's that the institution isn't the school.
It's the idea that, someday, some accountant will send your dean of students a "scientific report" saying you're just too likely to react dangerously to all the abuse he's been allowing under his nose. There's a tendancy to use science to absolve personal responsibility in institutional management, and if The Numbers Say You'll Kill Someone, it just doesn't hurt administrators all that much to "send the child to a special school" "just to be on the safe side."
Nobody wants to be held responsible when some kid shoots up the school, and *THEY KNEW* something was going to happen--after all, that kid had a 83.2 on the Gonna Shoot Up The School scale--why wasn't he kicked out, they'll ask?
Don't laugh. If 82% of America can blame a f*cking network of computers for a schooltime massacre, *phear* what they could do to the actual administrators.
This is essentially outsourced psychological risk assessment. Instead of people within a school dealing with the problem and actually handling things from the inside--where things are visible--schools become a sort of "black box", with little candy treats being waved around to elicit data about its inner operations from unknown members inside.
When the data comes in from an outside agency, with a scientific chart o' student issues, held within a database protected by not a relevant data protection code in the country(ooh! Wanna sell Prozac? W.A.V.E. licensing divisions, how many depressed kids would you like to sell to today?)...it stops being an issue of whether tattling is right or wrong, and starts becoming a question of just how much cynicism are we willing to accept in our school infrastructure.
Calling this program WAVE, after that after school special, is so amazingly unfortunate for this program that it defies description.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Upend a box of monkey wrenches into the works... (Score:5)
Congress has 100 senators and 435 representatives. At least a few of them have teenaged kids. I'm sure they'd appreciate the early warning from anonymous sources that have fingered junior as a depressed violent druggie anarchist.
After School Special meets 1984 (Score:5)
This is not the first rat-on-your-peers program I have heard about. In my college, they recruited students who lived in dorms for one. It was a special group called peer counselors. They were basically behavior/mental illness narcs. They were supposed to gain the confidence of other students if they saw any signs of depression etc. Any hint of depression and they would turn over their fellow students. They were trained in how to do this.
You see, depression can lead to suicide so they treated any even mildly depressed students as "A danger to themselves or others." This is a cause for summary suspension in most schools and cause enough to lock anyone up against their will indefinitely in most states. You lose all civil rights. You may be tortured. You have no right to communicate with others if doctors feel that is not in your best interest. You lose your right to vote and marry. And you never get a real trial. Sadly, a student just homesick and a bit blue could find themselves forced into counseling and maybe out of school. Oddball or unpopular behavior might lead to the diagnosis of schizophrenia with similar results.
My school had plenty of volunteers for their corps of depression narcs; after all they were helping those poor kids. There are always plenty of people willing to mind their peers business. Let people feel good about this and you have a loyal following. Some churches seem to function on this theme as well. It is very compelling. At least the charge of sin doesn't get you locked up.
In the United States at least, the charge of mental illness is very like the cry of Witch! in Salem once was. And once accused, you lose credibility no matter the truth of the charge. The only way to prove your sanity is to take tests that may very well help them lock you up. It does not matter if you have done anything wrong. Admitting to a single thought that you wish you could die even though you would not harm yourself can be enough to condemn you. Imagine telling someone you thought of as a friend about an embarrassment and saying "I just wanted to die" and then being kicked out of school. It has happened.
Peer behavior narcs in high schools is a very scary thought to me, but then I am not pleased with the paranoia that D.A.R.E. teaches kids. Did you know they outed the Snuffelupagus because they felt teaching children that sometimes they are right when the whole world doubts them was dangerous?
Scary stuff.
This sounds even worse than Hitler youth to me. (Score:5)
Actually, this sounds even worse to me. The Hitler Youth was "just" a youth organisation, at least at the beginning. And even later on, the motivation was mostly political and even paramilitary "education" of the members, not using them as a extension of the Gestapo (the Nazi internal intelligence service). The Hitler Youth has to be seen in this context. They were the pre-school of the fascist government, preparing young people to be "good citizens" (in the perverted sense the Nazi government thought of this). Spying on others was not explicitly asked for, at least not as far as I know. (And Nazi history takes up quite a big part in german history education).
It was a bit different with the "Freie Deutsche Jugend", the national youth organisation of the former GDR. Members were explicitly asked to inform their leaders of any planned attempt of "Republikflucht" (unauthorized leave of country, usually to the FRG) they got to know of, and some even turned in their parents.
But what you are talking about _is_ asking for spying on peers, and what's more, it is happening in a democratic nation. Appropriate action should be taken (and I do consider your article as such) before this starts to take off.
Re:This sounds even worse than Hitler youth to me. (Score:5)
People should be taught to tolerate other lifestyles, maybe how to discuss them if they don't like them, but not to "report" them as abnormal.
This is just another example of a seemingly good cause being used to lobby for inhuman programs. Giving out incentives to students for spying on their fellow students and reporting peculiarities is inhuman in my opinion.
Re:Wasn't that an Afternoon Special (Score:5)
Successful fascism starts in culture, not in politics.
And perhaps what's most frightening about this... (Score:5)
*sigh* What ever happened to the days of simply getting harrassed, teased and occassionally roughed up simply because you were different? Now you have to worry about secret profiling, your own peers spying on you, and potentially much worse. It's not as if I'm remembering a time all that long ago either. I graduated high school in 1995, and I must say I had the good fortune of graduating from a high school that, while not the most accepting of places, at least allowed kids to be different. Now I find when I went back last week to visit a former teacher of mine, there are security cameras everywhere, students must wear id badges, and those who are not the classic, good little J. Crew model kids are afraid to even talk to each other.
So here's my idea. After speaking with a few former teachers of mine (who also can't stand where things have gone, but they have to follow administration, or else they lose their jobs), none of whom are happy about where things are heading, this is what they'd like to do. They'd like to be allowed to actually play a role in their students lives. They'd like to be allowed to be friends again, and instead of further marginalizing those who are different (many of whom read this) and actively pushing them towards violence (that's what things like this do, it's very easy to adopt a cornered animal mentality in this type of setting), why not allow faculty to get to know students again. Maybe if teachers can be mentors again, instead of secret police there wouldn't be such a serious problem facing schools.
But then again, what do I know, I've only been then, graduated, and moved on to a successful life, thanks in large part to teachers who not only were mentors, but were also friends.
-J
Please stop dissing the USA (Score:5)
I'm not an American but I grew up there. The truth is that the American political system, no matter how much everyone bitches and whines, is one of the most liberal and open systems in the world! You vote for INDIVIDUALS. You cast your vote and get a person that is 'responsible/accountable' to you because you voted for HIM/HER, not the party. You don't get this anywhere in Europe where you vote for these huge religous-ideological blocks. Bleh.
The US also has very good separation of church and state. Do laws that support a certain church's preaching get passed? Of course they do, but only because the people who voted wanted it this way. Each election has propositions, or laws directly voted on by the people. In any European country you'd need a referendum to get an issue passed, and even then the exact wording of the bill would be left up to the politicans.
The truth is this. Every election, Americans make choices concerning their freedoms and restrictions. They have the power to directly influence both, including allowing themselves to exchange some freedom for a feeling of safety. You don't get this in a lot of European and Asian nations. And you certainly don't get it in Africa.
I'm not saying that the US political system is perfect in any way, I'm just saying that you need to remember that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Remember to VOTE!
Jay
-- polish ccs mirror [prawda.pl]
Re:Interesting... not that scary... (Score:5)
Instead, we get the facts and opinion jumbled with no citation or clear distinction. We have VERY little information on the actual program being run, just on his "fears" of geek persecution, which I question if it is real or he is catering to his audience. While I have no doubt that he considers this a real threat, I find it disappointing that he is ignoring the greater issues and just tailoring it to the slashdot audience. I think that the
No where in the article is there a discussion about the methods of therapy being used and wht they are trying to accomplish. I truly doubt that N.C. is trying to root out video game playing, they no doubt have real goals, and that side of the story is hidden in this piece.
Alex
URL of Jim Hunt's press release (Score:5)
The actual press release from Governer Jim Hunt of North Carolina is at:
http://www.governor.state.nc.us/news/releases/WA VErollout.htm
This really saddens me, expecially since I am a Western North Carolina resident. First we have to deal with little broadband bandwidth in the backwoods here, and now with Hitler youth!
Princess Leia had it right (Score:5)
Turn yourself in (Score:5)
But don't just register yourself with W.A.V.E., register yourself on The Psycho-Killer Registry [geocities.com] as well. In fact, don't stop there, register all your friends and family too.
- Have you ever listened to Marilyn Manson, or other "dark" music, and not disliked it?
- Have you ever gone to hollywood movies, and enjoyed them?
- Have you ever played computer games?
- Have you ever felt lonely?
If any of the above are true of you, then you may be a threat to society, ready to snap at any moment!Go on, do the right thing - register [geocities.com].
Wasn't that an Afternoon Special (Score:5)