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Showdown With The Pinkertons
from the Brave-New-World-21st-century-edition dept.
Dawn, Jim, Shannon and I sat down around a conference table in a tightly-secured office building south of downtown Charlotte, N.C. on a brilliant spring day. From the window, we could see the hills of South Carolina in one direction, the towers of downtown in the other. A collection of Pinkerton baseball caps filled a wooden shelf.
If anybody had told me that I would be munching chicken salad sandwiches and fries with executives from the Pinkerton Corporation, the largest security concern on the planet, arguing about kids, violence, oddball profiling and the Net, I would have refused to believe it. But that's the Net for you. Jim was a Pinkerton senior veep, Dawn and Shannon, the Web developer and site architect, respectively.
Jim was courteous, but clearly exasperated.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a highly critical column here about a WAVE (Working Against Violence Everywhere) America Web site developed by the Pinkerton Services Group under contract to the state of North Carolina and soon to go national. It offered an anonymous toll-free number, so schoolkids could turn in classmates they believed were acting strangely or dangerously. After the column appeared, Jim revealed, WAVE America received more than 70,000 e-mails and a few mail bombs, and repelled a number of assaults on their system firewalls. Jim had clearly never heard of Slashdot before all this, and he was still struggling to figure out exactly what it was or why he had to pay attention to it. This Net furor had clearly put a bit of a cloud over Pinkerton's ambitious plan to peddle WAVE America all over the United States in response to the post-Columbine school-violence hysteria. My guess was that this meeting was Dawn and Shannon's idea.
I'd flown to Charlotte, against what I knew were hopeless odds, to persuade Pinkerton to trash WAVE America . We argued for more than three hours behind closed doors. Clearly, the flap over the Web site was something Pinkerton wanted resolved if possible. Jim said the company hoped to set up anonymous toll-free "safety" and anti-violence hotlines across the country to relieve unnerved and overburdened school districts of the responsibility of monitoring students who might be disturbed or dangerous.
Although I write often about corporatism and its unhappy impact on free speech and culture, I had rarely penetrated so deep into the belly of the beast, nor felt so affirmed and unnerved by what I saw there. These were perfectly nice people I was meeting with, and they were unwaveringly embarked on what I believe is an awful course. Corporatism doesn't allow for moral notions like right or wrong, however. Corporatism (which is not the same thing as capitalism or corporations) has one ideology: successful, profitable marketing. Corporatism doesn't like controversy, because it, potentially at least, can scare off or offend potential customers. That's why I was there. I would be reminded of this 20 times over the next few hours. Ethical arguments, like peas off an M-1 tank, failed to penetrate.
It's hard to imagine going into any confrontation better prepared. I felt righteously equipped with the usual brilliant assortment of eclectic e-mail, screeds, quotes, citations, studies, suggestions and encouragements from Slashdotters. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice had sent me some stats -- school homicides declined 40% in a single year, from l998 to l999. Students have a one-in-two-million chance of being killed in school, even though the public thinks it's likely to happen.
Computer engineer Chris Burke of the University of Michigan sent me a wonderful set of applied criterion measuring the probability that children considered dangerous actually will be. Chris's criteria are too complex to detail here, but he concluded that the probability that someone who meets the criterian actually is potentially dangerous turns out to be surprisingly low. "If we assume that the number of dangerous students is 1/25000 -- which is ridiculously high, but for the sake of argument I'll use it ... then only 6.7 per cent will be dangerous. Which means that 92.3% of the time you will be harassing innocent people." Reading this aloud to the Pinkerton people was one of the highlights of my life.
Meredith Dixon and many others e-mailed me about Todd Strasser's eerily prescient novel, The Wave, (which became a movie), about a junior high school teacher who uses anonymous reporting techniques reminiscent of the Hitler Youth to demonstrate how easily independent thought and moral conscience can be subordinated to an evil system. The book, published in 1981 and still available (Laurel Leaf Library: ISBN: 0440993717), was based on an actual incident in Palo Alto in l969. The Pinkerton folks were not happy to hear of this antecedent name for their cheeful, up-with-America, let's-promote-some-respect Web site. Nor were they impresed by my repeated arguments that every repressive political system in the 20th century -- Nazism, Communism, Fascism, Apartheid -- featured anonymous reporting -- especially by children -- as a cornerstone tool in their efforts to subjugate dissidents. The idea that this might not be the way to teach citizenship in a democratic society didn't seem to make much of an impression.
Joey Maier e-mailed me this quote from former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." If anything captured the spirit of WAVE America, that was it.
A Slashdot editor and writer urged me to ask Pinkerton what remedies students and parents would have against false accusations. (The answer: None. Pinkerton doesn't make accusations, they just pass along information. That wasn't the company's problem, the execs said. Nor were any misuses of anonymously reported information by the schools that received it).
I also brought this message: "When I was a teenager, I didn't want people to listen to me because they might be afraid of what I might do," chromatic wrote on Threads. "I wanted people to listen to me because they cared about me and could identify with the way I was feeling and the thoughts I was thinking. Don't alienate young people even further in the guise of helping them. Please."
Even as I was searching for one of my favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes, Jamie McCarthy e-mailed it to me: It's from The Gulag Archipelago, his epic story of Stalin's concentration camps: "... In every village there were people who in one way or another had personally gotten in the way of the local activists. This was the perfect time to settle accounts with them of jealousy, envy, insult. A new word was needed for all these new victims as a class -- and it was born. By this time it had no 'social' or 'economic' content whatsoever, but it had a marvelous sound: podkulachnik -- 'a person aiding the kulaks.' In other words, I consider you an accomplice of the enemy. And that finishes you!'"
I confess to being buoyed by these smart, eloquent messages and citations, which I read and re-read on the flight to North Carolina. I was especially happy to be writing for a site where so many people -- hundreds -- could send such messages, and had such passionate perspective on what freedom really means, in a culture where it's constantly trampled and manipulated for profit, ratings, political gain or cultural power. Somewhere deep in my consciousness was the naive (or just plain dumb, maybe) belief that the Pinkerton execs would hear these messages, experience an epiphany and abandon WAVE America on the spot.
What emerged instead was as strange a cultural stand-off as one might imagine, a mix of the fascinating -- it was amazing to have a face-to-face confrontation with executives of the storied Pinkerton company (the writer Dashiell Hammett was a Pinkerton man, and the company had a bloody history of strike-breaking around the turn of the century) yet it was innately futile, and we all soon knew it. Over the sandwiches and iced tea, which hardly any of us touched, we each epitomized our distinctly opposite sides of a cultural chasm. Shannon and Dawn (given the volume of hostile e-mail Pinkerton was getting, I've decided not to use their full names) let Jim do the policy talking.
If there was any comfort to be drawn from the encounter, I suspect it would have to be from the fact that it was taking place. Voices on the Net had reached deep into a company that wasn't exactly famous for being interactive. That was something new.
These were pleasant, articulate, reasonable sounding -- and profoundly intractable -- people. We weren't speaking from the same sensibility or history or even using the same language. We butted heads all afternoon, but it was an odd argument in that scrapping WAVE America was never really on the table, and it was clear the company wasn't particularly interested in refuting any of my arguments, or those of the people who had e-mailed me theirs. I wouldn't swear that they disagreed. It simply didn't matter. The point was, there was a market for school-safety programs like this, and if Pinkerton didn't pursue them, somebody else would. The corporatist ethic doesn't allow for relinquihing potentially lucrative markets to competitors, any more than it does for conventional notions of right or wrong. In that sense, the meeting was exhausting and, probably, largely pointless. If there was leverage, it was in the fact that Pinkerton clearly wanted to go forward with its program in the least controversial way -- another corporatist hallmark.
I argued that WAVE America was simply wrong. That it was neither necessary, since the amount of school violence had been insanely exaggerated, nor effective -- kids could hardly be expected to accurately gauge the emotional or mental states of their classmates. I also argued that it was dangerous, that anonymous reporting was one of the primary tools of every evil political system in modern times. I reminded them that some of the smartest, most interesting and ultimately successful kids often experienced extreme and systematic harassment and brutality for being different, alienated or otherwise non-normal. That if educators, politicians or private corporations like Pinkerton really cared about school safety, they would do something to protect these outcasts.
The experience, in many respects, resembled talking to an affable stone wall. I did encounter more flexibility than I expected. Yes, my hosts acknowledged, they knew that school violence was dropping sharply (more about this later), but so what? It was still a problem, politicians like those in North Carolina were demanding some action, and so were parents, journalists and educators. Schools didn't have the resources or security skills to police themselves. Somebody had to respond, and Pinkerton was in the "secure environment" business, so why not step up to the plate?
Jim told me something I hadn't quite grasped: the anonymous reporting culture is a growing business, now deeply entrenched in the United States, a result of the victimization movement and lawsuit epidemic rampant for nearly a generation. Encouraged by federal and local governments, and many corporate and educational institutions, hotlines operate all over the country to report date rape, sexual harassment, abuse, and other forms of brutality and insensitivity. Since so many institutions in the United States are now presumed to be unresponsive to the needs of one group or another, privately-administered anonymous reporting hotlines are spreading. Pinkerton itself runs more than 800 such lines. It was inevitable, said Jim, that they would move into schools, and that Pinkerton would extend its security expertise and set them up. I found this amazing, which made Jim shake his head and shrug. I was transfixed by the idea of a democratic country whose response to social problems was to create an entire new tradition of informing. It had been happening for some time, he told me.
Yes, my hosts further acknowledged, they were aware that anonymous reporting was a staple ingredient of some of the world's most repressive regimes. Until the Wave America flap, however, Pinkerton had received no complaints about its hotlines. Privacy and security are the company's cornerstone marketing values, Jim insisted, and it's very careful about screening and disseminating the information it receives. Pinkerton's credibility depends on it.
Basically, the Pinkerton people spouted the now-familiar rationale for behavior like this: "Hey, don't blame us. A North Carolina Task Force came up with this, got the governor's blessing, and somebody is going to run it.Why not us? We know how, and if we don't do it, somebody else will."
Fine, I countered, but what about the schools that receive these forwarded anonymous tips. What about their privacy rules? Their security? Do these reports stay in files forever, or go into computerized law enforcement agency files? Are they destroyed after a given time, especially if they prove false or unfounded? Couldn't a kid be wrongly -- and anonymously -- on file, never know it, yet find this information in government or corporate files years later? Here, the Pinkerton people just shrugged. That was the school's problem. But, I persisted, didn't they just say that schools didn't have the resources to run such programs, which is why Pinkerton was involved in the first place? More shrugs.
Reports will be carefully screened and analyzed by professionals, I was assured.Only the most serious calls, involving serious violence -- rape, assault, possible crimes with guns -- were forwarded to school officials; the rest were not passed along at all. What happened to the not-passed-along reports? Nothing; they stay within Pinkerton's secure walls. For how long? Nobody knew.
Pinkerton was unhappy with some of the media portrayal of some of WAVE America's more controversial features.
Initially, the press reported (and I passed along) that kids were being offered cash and other gifts as incentives to turn in their angry, depressed or trouble classmates. But although the site clearly did offer gifts -- a computer, CD's -- the Pinkerton execs denied that they had or would offer cash or other goodies as a direct incentive for reporting their peers.
Things get a bit murky here, as the site has been hurriedly altered and re-designed in the past week or so. Under "Fun Stuff," the web site now has a message that simply says: "Coming Soon." Clearly, gifts will be used as incentives to draw kids onto the site, and reward them for participating, even if kids can get them without reporting anyone. But Pinkerton explained, there may be marketing tie-ins with companies promoting school safety in the future. Let's see: no direct reward for turning in a classmate, but gifts and prizes encouraging kids to use a site that offers anonymous reporting. A fine line.
The execs seized somewhat obsessively on this point as an example of how the program's goals -- to promote respect and school safety, and to provide a last-resort outlet for reporting of serious crimes in a country where schools are overwhelmed, underfunded and rattled by recurring media and political hysterias -- had been distorted by people like me.
"We understand that you disagree with the program," Jim said, "but we expect you to be responsible and accurate." Fair enough. But I pointed out repeatedly that the goodie give-aways were incidental, never the main issue.
The central question, I argued, was that the Net culture included, even embraced, kids who are brainy, individualistic, sometimes-alienated and rebellious, and often outside the norm in their values, attitudes and behavior. These kids suffer enormously at the hands of hostile peers, unknowing teachers, clueless parents, journalists and politicians. It's hard to imagine how WAVE America would benefit them in any way, but simple to foresee how it might still provide another forum in which they'd be branded -- anonymously, no less -- dangerous.
Pinkerton conceded that the "symptoms" of dangerous behavior its site had listed earlier were too vague. These initial "early signs of violence" included: Suddenly has bad grades or little interest in school; Expresses uncontrolled anger; Has excessive feelings of isolation and/or rejection; Is easily angered by minor things. Dawn and Shannon showed me their new, improved criteria, still under consideration and design and not yet up on the Web site. These new "warning signs," says Pinkerton, were provided by the American Psychological Association.
"If you see these immediate warning signs," WAVE America will announce, "violence is a serious possibility":
- loss of temper on a daily basis
- frequent physical fighting
- significant vandalism or property damage
- increase in use of drugs or alchohol
- increasing risk-taking behavior
- detailed plans to commit acts of violence.
- announcing threats or plans for hurting others
- enjoying hurting animals
- carrying a weapon
My response was that these symptoms were still awfully vague, and in any case that school kids weren't psychologists and shouldn't be asked to evaulate their peers emotional lives, or to try and differentiate between transitional depression or alienation and being potentially violent. What kind of risk-taking behavior? Agressive skateboarding? I still didn't understand why these weren't school or parental problems, rather than Pinkerton ones, or why the monitoring of emotional disturbance was being handed off to children. I still believed it was offensive and disturbing to put schoolkids in the position of anonymously turning in their classmates, enemies, and friends to an anonymous hotline run by a profit-making corporation with a vested interest -- and a classic conflict-of-interest -- in promoting the notion that schools were dangerous. This didn't promote safety, it subverted responsibility and democracy.
Besides, I added, many knowledgeable Constitutional scholars believe that the Supreme Court will eventually overturn police or other administrative actions based solely on anonymous reporting of crimes or potential crimes without supporting evidence. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court overturned the arrest of a Florida man who was searched because of an anonymous tip and found to have a gun. This, the court said, violated Fourth Amendment strictures against unreasonable search and seizure; the police needed evidence beyond an anonymous report. Though kids are stripped of Constitutional rights in most American schools, it's hard to believe courts will ultimately uphold educational or police actions taken on the basis of anonymous calls. If they do, though, Pinkerton and its Web site will have succeeded in undermining a fundamental freedom.
The Pinkerton people did say they'd consider refining their "symptoms" still further. And they made the inevitable co-opting gesture: Would I be interested in working with Pinkertons on WAVE America, or in writing for the site? Would Rob Malda perhaps like to contribute something? I said "No" on my behalf, and giggled a bit at the idea of Cmdr Taco or his partner in crime, Hemos, as columnists for WAVE America. But if the site were going forward, I suggested, Pinkerton could at least set-up an e-mail account to receive and consider feedback from people involved in the issue. It might even consider assembling some sort of advisory panel to help safeguard the interests of the kids it affects.
I found WAVE America too exploitive, offensive and disturbing to participate in, but others can make their own decisions.
Still, I left the meeting discouraged by the spectre of a country where the emotional welfare of schoolkids, and the potential violence that emotionally disturbed kids might wreak, seem to have been turned over to profit-making security corporations rather than to teachers, guidance counselors, therapists, and parents. The Task Force in North Carolina that came up with this dunderheaded response to a complex social problem is the first candidate that should be reported on that hotline.
Last Sunday, nearly a year after the Columbine massacre, the New York Times finally got around to publishing an exhaustive look at "Rampage Killers." The paper profiled 102 killers in 100 rampage attacks in a computer-assisted study looking back more than 50 years and including the shootings at Littleton in l999. Four hundred and twenty-five people were killed and 510 people were injured in the attacks. The newspaper found -- and convincingly detailed -- what should have been obvious from the first. The most common thread in these horrific sprees isn't media, technology or culture, but mental illness: at least half of the killers shown signs of seriousl mental health problems. Also this week, the National Association of Attorneys General reported that the most important factor in preventing youth violence was a "stable, loving home." The group also reported numerous instances of bullying and harassment of schoolkids all across America because students wore unusual clothing or were taller, shorter or heavier than other kids. This rare outburst of sanity was almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. But since unstable and unloving parents have now been identified as a child safety issue, perhaps we need a new anonymous hotline so that kids can turn in their unstable or unloving moms and dads -- or their neighbor's mom and dad -- along with the angry classmate in the next row. It would seem to follow. And it would seem inevitable.
The Times' series is detailed and impressive. But it comes after years of hysterical media reporting linking violence among the young to pop culture and new media technologies -- TV, movies, computer gaming, the Net. More than 80% of all Americans, reported the Washington Post last year, believed the Internet was at least partly responsible for the killings at Columbine. The very idea that programs like WAVE America will alter this horrific reality is itself a mental health problem.
Was the trip worth it? I don't honestly know. I appreciated the Pinkerton people meeting with me, though it didn't cost them anything, other than a few hours and some sandwiches. (Slashdot paid my traveling expenses.) I made some points directly to the people who needed to hear it. They are well aware that thousands of people are watching them; that's a strong stimulus to behave. They're tightening up vague criteria and dropping the idea of of rewarding tipsters with cash, gifts or caps. They seemed to understand that abuse of the different is a safety issue, along with guns and assaults.
But the meeting also reinforced my growing belief that corporations like Pinkerton are inherently amoral. I'm sure their workers are kind to their spouses, pets and kids. But the Pinkerton people don't see morality as their concern, which, in a sane society, might be one reason not to turn issues like school safety and violence among the young over to private corporations. Theirs is a simple equation, a statement right from the contemporary corporatist heart: they perceive a profitable opportunity in the security market, one created not by them but by irresponsible journalists, lazy educators and exploitive politicians. Someone will fill it. Might as well be them.
Sunday, I received this e-mail from the head of Pinkerton's WAVE America Web Development team:
"Jon,
It was very nice to meet you in person the other day. From that meeting we have made several changes to the WAVE website. The changes include clarifying that there are no prizes, cash, or other rewards for submitting a report via the website or phone. We also made clear that only reports which contain safety concerns should be submitted to WAVE. Our privacy policy, while not yet in it's final form, is much more complete now than the last time you saw it.
While here, you also suggested we get some input from the readers of slashdot to help us with the WAVE project. If you would be so kind, please include the email address [suggestions@waveamerica.com] in your article. We hope the WAVE website will be used not only as a tool to aid in preventing school violence, but also as an educational hub where students, teachers and parents can go to collaborate. Any suggestions or constructive criticism about how to make the website better would be greatly appreciated.
The WAVE website is now, and probably always will be, a work in progress. We hope that with the help and suggestions of you and your readers, we will be able to build a website that will empower the students and give them a voice.
I know that you didn't agree with everything about the WAVE project, but hopefully when you left here, you were able to see that this isn't a "big brother" program, but rather an educational program that hopes to prevent school violence by teaching Resolve, Respect, and Responsibility."
The King of Denmark and the Star of David, (Score:3)
When they got back to Denmark they found their houses and stores largly intact.
I View the people of Denmark as some of the greatest heros of the 20th century.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Re:warning signs (Score:3)
Nor, in my books, is there any difference between deer hunting, whale hunting, hare coursing, fox hunting, badger baiting or any other similar pursuits. There's no "challange", no uncertainty in the results, no respect for the life you're about to erase, no compassion for the animal or anything dependent on it.
As for American Football, it's just Rugby with armour and some glamour girls on the sidelines. Like modern hunting, all the reality is removed and you're left with an empty shell. Desensitised and meaningless.
Personally, if I were running something like Pinkerton's program, I'd have those two activities as the two strongest indicators of a sociopath.
If ever there was a need for a DOS attack... (Score:3)
Step one: Get a list of students in your local high schools.
Step two: Set up a lot of web proxies on machines across the U.S.
Step three: Use each web proxy to report at least two or three students at random from your list.
Step four: Watch Big Brother^w^wPinkerton get sued by several thousand parents of cheerleaders and football players whose children have been labelled "dangerous".
Step five: Repeat as needed.
Folks, I'm not kidding. They appear dead-set against listening to rational discussion, and this calls for drastic measures. We can't stand by and let this happen to our children and friends. Remember how badly you were treated in high school? Can you really sit back and watch it get worse? This system must be shut down.
Re:One answer is to sep. the State from education (Score:3)
When talking about local school districts, the chance of having intelligent people elected to sit on them, especially in a rural area similar to where I grew up, is slim to none. And yet these people are the ones who choose many specific policies, fund allocation, and the hiring of teachers.
In many cases, these people are parents, but that doesn't make them able to provide education for their children. For example, in the school district I survived, the school board hired new secondary teachers from the local state university, despite the fact that the existing faculty had published a statement to the district that they would no longer accept student teachers from that school because they were not qualified to student teach, let alone be hired as teachers.
Holding schools and teachers to higher national standards will only become more important as communications technology continues to shrink the distance between people. We have almost reached the point (in the Rust Belt, anyway) where there are too few regionally-dependent jobs (manufacturing, agribusiness) to support the claims that the national government doesn't need to be involved in steering education in a beneficial, forwarding-thinking direction.
That's just my thoughts. I grew up in a community more concerned with the football team than promoting literacy, and my high school still graduates people who can't read well enough to fill out applications to work at the grocery store.
--mandi
Re:YASI (Score:3)
The "state" IS the citizens.
"The state" educating our children is merely a convenient and efficient way for us to educate our children. It may not work as well as it would individually, but it's cheaper and less time-consuming than on an individual level. If you don't want to make that tradeoff, then homeschool your kids or send them to private school.
The system of mandatory schooling in the US is despicably corrupt.
Why is this? It's probably not as good as it could be, but then again few people participate in school board meetings, where the decisions are made. But that doesn't make it corrupt, just not as representative as it could (should) be.
Re:Is it just me or... (Score:3)
-russ
Re:One answer is to sep. the State from education (Score:3)
What this ad for this group has to do with a company setting up a snitch line for kids to tell on each other, I have no clue. Sounds more to me like this is an example of why most companies should stay out of education, if anything - most have no business being so involved with the lives of kids as Pinkerton intends to with WAVE America.
Who, Me Responsible? (Score:3)
If the school system is going to claim to act in loco parentis, it cannot palm off these responsibilities, any more than parents can.
politicians like those in North Carolina were demanding some action, and so were parents, journalists and educators
Political logic:
We know how, and if we don't do it, somebody else will.
I will not invoke Godwin's Law.... I will not invoke Godwin's Law.... I will not invoke Godwin's Law....
Pinkerton was unhappy with some of the media portrayal of some of WAVE America's more controversial features.
I'll just bet they were.
Let's see: no direct reward for turning in a classmate, but gifts and prizes encouraging kids to use a site that offers anonymous reporting. A fine line.
I haven't seen such a fine line drawn since Clinton's quibblings over the definitions of the words "alone", "sex", and "is".
/.
Re:One answer is to sep. the State from education (Score:3)
You exemplify the problem in a nutshell!
These things are (sorry) obviously connected. Schools need security because of they way they are stuctured -- in a thousand ways. Start with policies which forbid violent students from being expelled. Or with 30+ children being "supervised" by one adult who is primarily responsible for keeping them quiet and controled. Or with policies about violence which turn the other cheek when one class of people (whites, jocks, etc.) assault another class.
There's been shooting in workplaces, but nobody's crying out for more police among the cubicles or hotlines to report dangerous co-workers. No, schools are different, and we all know the reality of schools yet we, as a culture, persist in denying that they are the savage, oppressive, unjust, violence-breeding places they are.
It is schools administrators and teachers who are the customers of Pinkerton, crying out for WAVE. They WANT these measures in their schools. What Pinkerton kept saying, and you all keep refusing to hear is:
It's all well and good to flame Pinkerton for implementing this abomination against rights and liberty. But who commissioned it? Who ordered and paid for it? Who embraced it?
If you don't like it, who is going to make you/your kids -- with the force of law -- submit anyway? The schools are a government organ. The government is getting Pinkerton to do its dirty work for them.
If you don't like what's going on in schools, well, bad news: you're up against The Law. Many states have loopholes through which you can get your kid out of mandatory schooling. But if you don't like the fact that the electorate of tomorrow is going to arrive at the age of majority acculturated to fascism and totalitarianism... What are you going to do? Schools are necessarily fascistic and totalitarian by their design. Maybe the government shouldn't be in the business of running them.
Is Pinkerton evil for doing this? Sure.
But really, folks, why is there no outcry against the schools/governments which use it?
They're the one's with the lion's share of the blame.
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Re:YASI (Score:3)
Yes. Sorry to contradict your religion, but the (all liberal) h.s.ers I know are vastly more resistent to the pressure of others and don't seem to have any need to press others to conform. I've observed what they're talking about: it's one of the reasons a lot of liberals who pull their kids from school do so. They don't want their kids to grow up to be morally vacuous consumer-suits.
And, yes, I believe that conformism is actively encouraged in schools by the choices and policies of the people who work there. Every time a teacher exploits humiliation to control a class or a student, they're really exploiting peer-pressure. It makes a god of conformity.
There will always be a pressure to conformity, but it is greatly exagerated and enforced by the nature of schools and schooling.
Wrong. Factually incorrect. Propaganda of the system. Go read some books on the history of education. Literacy was at a higher rate in the US before mandatory schooling. And I point out to you that al-Andalus under Muslim rule had a higher rate of literacy than we do in the US.
Dude, I don't know how to say this more clearly: You've been lied to. The state has a vested interest in having you believe they're doing a wonderful job. They certainly aren't going to teach you a history which portrays them in a bad light, no matter how true.
Books to read: Lies My Teacher Told Me by Lowen; How Children Learn by Holt; Whatdjaget by Kirschbaum et al.
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Thoughts on the whole mess (Score:3)
This whole thing is insane to say the least. Pinkerton is going to take the line that credit bureaus take. "We just give the information, what the company (school) does with it is their business." It's a cop out and a way to avoid responsibility in the matter while making money. As for keeping the information themselves I have this supsicion they won't purge this stuff. It's too valuable. They can use it when conducting background checks for employers to make them look as if they are being thorough. "Well his criminal record is clear, credit looks good but he did have several people call in about him in high school about dangerous behaviour." Pinkerton is not stupid. You don't stay a profit making corporation for long if you're stupid. This has been thought through and responses have been scripted from the beginning I imagine. For all we know this was filed under "Internet Pundits Attack Program: Counters to same."
Taking the incentive program out only made sense. Maybe they never had full intention of implementing it. It would cost them time and money. After all if this was really anonymously reported how would they know where to send the rewards, etc? It might have been included in the original proposal as something to ax when it went to the bargaining table.
This whole thing will either be scrapped because it's swamped with bogus calls or scorched to the ground from lawsuits. Of course it could also work out that the thing is implemented, teenagers ignore it and never use it and it slips away into the shadows as another failed program. Then again it could work just like they think it will with tremendous success, lower school violence, and make everyones lives a little better because it existed... and maybe some Arab oil sheik's checking account will be transfered to my on accident.
Re:warning signs (Score:3)
As to the certainty of a kill -- you have clearly never hunted deer or rabbit. Finding the critters and getting a clear shot is not easy. Taking a bad shot is dangerous and a waste of ammunition. If you only wound the animal, you run the risk of being attacked by it, or having it run off to die someplace where you are unable to retrieve the meat from the carcase. I don't know what you would consider a fair fight -- but I'm not interested in a fair fight. I want to feed my family.
I can say nothing about fox hunting or badger baiting -- they don't make good food, AFAIK. I've never hunted whale -- I don't live by the sea. So I will say nothing about those as activities.
Perhaps you would do well to live in the wilderness for a year or so before condemning those of us who live that life. Being faced with a choice between feeding your family, and killing a deer, the choice is easy, if you are human.
I think you need to look much deeper for the roots of what you apparently consider sadistic behaviour. I doubt that any simple measure will reveal those who enjoy hurting other people, which is (IMHO) the root problem anyway.
As I see things, this is precisely the problem with WAVE -- they use these simple indicators.
As to me being an improbable individual -- well I am. I hunt. I garden. I live in the country. I make furniture. I hack computers. Don't make generalizations and expect them to hold everwhere.
Re:warning signs (Score:3)
Nor, in my books, is there any difference between deer hunting, whale hunting, hare coursing, fox hunting, badger baiting or any other similar pursuits. There's no "challange", no uncertainty in the results, no respect for the life you're about to erase, no compassion for the animal or anything dependent on it.
As for American Football, it's just Rugby with armour and some glamour girls on the sidelines. Like modern hunting, all the reality is removed and you're left with an empty shell. Desensitised and meaningless.
Personally, if I were running something like Pinkerton's program, I'd have those two activities as the two strongest indicators of a sociopath.
Do you group the slaughtering of a few thousand cows and pigs by repeated blows to the skull in with the hunting pursuits? Or would that make it harder to eat your Double Quarter pounder with cheese? How much respect and compassion did you have for that bacon you ate for breakfast? Unless you are a complete vegan you are being unbelievably hypocritical. I AM NOT a vegan, or a vegitarian, I have been hunting, I have spent 4 hours stalking a herd of deer through the woods, silently. I have carefully lined up a shot and taken down a deer. I have cleaned that deer, gutted it, tanned the hide and eaten the meat. It was NOT easy. The Deer are hard as hell to get close enough to to shoot. They blend in with the forest extremely well. Most hunters DO have respect for the animals they hunt, not all, but most. So don't bitch about hunting unless you are also going to bitch about cattle farms and things like that. And doubly, don't bitch about them unless you are Vegan.
Kintanon
Spam will never be the answer! (Score:3)
I've seen several posts here today, suggesting that the way to "turn around" Pinkerton's WAVE America plans, is to bury them with false random reports.
Remember, that's your cheerleader daughter that you're reporting at random. That's your chess-club son who will be labeled as dangerous by false reports. That's your best friend whose life will be changed for the worse because somebody sent a false tip to the authorities. These are innocent kids out there, and you'd be making the problem worse, not turning around peoples' opinions.
The analogy would be exactly what was depicted in the movie and book, the Wave: let's make a bunch of neonazis, to show that the Reich was a bad thing. Let's put people on death row falsely, to show the death penalty has problems in judicial review. Let's kill a bunch of people of race X, to show that genocide isn't what we're looking for.
Spam will never be the answer . Sing along, it's a mantra. Never attack another person's computer. Never scrawl "j0o r 0wnd!" on another company's website. Never flood some email box just because you disagree with them.
Read the Linux Advocacy HOWTO. Learn to debate ethically, instead of hiding in the shadows showing off l33t skills. Show reason in the face of unreason; in time, you will be respected.
Send polite letters to each of your congressional representatives, and to each of your local school board members. State that you're very concerned that programs like WAVE America are moving in exactly the opposite direction from the one that YOU want YOUR school system to take.
(Spam will never be the answer! =anagram>New interval-blasphemers, we.
Embellish new WAVE partners.)
Poisoning the well - WAVEcrack (Score:3)
What happens when the folks WAVE harrassed or their friends (who might be a good distance away such that school/city correlation will be utterly meaningless) strike back and hack WAVE by doing they're own 'reporting'? What have they to lose? Nothing. That's beauty (or danger) of anonymous reporting accusations. It can work both ways.
"Hey, we've gotten a dozen reports of FirstName LastName doing BadThing1, BadThing2 and BadThing3 at ThisSchool. Maybe we better..."
Can 'die Welle', er, WAVE filter this out? Will they be swamped with having to filter it? Or will they not filter this (WAVE's victims will know what triggers to use, so it won't be easily skimmed away the false positives they manage to lob back) and the crumbled under the weight? And thus lose credibility.. and thereby get bad publicity (from traditional press) and then have to deal with that?
Is such a 'crack' at WAVE honest and ethical? I very much doubt it. Even WAVE being dishonest and unethical (though perhaps well intentioned.. mmm pave that road!) doesn't make it right. But they better expect it for a simple reason: people will fight as dirty as they have to survive.
Re:YASI (Score:3)
> poor are honestly incapable of affording
> private institutions.
I agree tottally here. However, even now in many
ways it is. I have been to both public and
private schools. The private schools are so much
better than the public that it isn't even funny.
I actually know people who have graduated from
public High Schools without EVER taking a single
class in simple Algerbra! Never mind that in the
private High School that I wennt to, Algerbra was
taught to all students as a requirement Freshman
year.
It has been said that "Government, while it does
small things badly, does large things badly too".
I propose spinning off the "Public Schools". Not
to be run by a For-Profit, but rather by
Non-Profit organizations. I seriously think that
a real non-profit where school funds are no
longer controlled by political interests, but
rather by charitable donations and fund raisers
would be optimal.
Make every dollar that a person donates to schools
completely tax dectutable to 100% with no cap.
protection of the innocent? (Score:3)
i find this particular article/activism very compelling, good job katz!
alas, there are problems... i designed military electronic systems, and had to justify my livelihood ethically and morally to *myself*. nice and balanced how katz provides the obvious surface facts (you would expect any real journalist to provide), the wave system can lead to oppression-abuse and gosh-darn-it, the principles are nice people who just have different priorities, maybe lack some moral refinement or ethical reasoning, but not *bad*.
the piece walks these three pinkerton employees out onto the plank to hover above the vast inky void of being culpable in "harassing innocent people" and akin to *nazi collaborators*, but accepts just *shrugs* with mightily damning conclusion the organization is *inherently amoral*.
i wonder if katz even recognizes his own culpability?
####
Shannon and Dawn (given the volume of hostile e-mail Pinkerton was getting, I've decided not to use their full names) let Jim do the policy talking.
####
how stupid is this, anybody think we cannot find these people? let me be the one to risk my own reputation and plainly state facts, these fucking assholes are mere millimeters from being guilty of discrimination, manslaughter and conspiracy to commit murder.
remember judge bork? if your video rental preferences are news, just think what political opponents could do with a transcript of the pinkerton wave report on you...
just image how traumatic wave-inspired "intervention" could be, how many "dangerous" people will be driven to suicide out of despair, fear, or shame...
those are potential consequences reports made in good-faith (although quite probably deluded or otherwise inappropriate), now step this way to the area of stupid adolescent pranks, cruelty, community-based cultural conflicts (a ripe area for murderous episodes since the salem witch trials)... voila, thinks me you are in the realm of collaborating in harassment which will escalate to murder. of course, such disputes escalated to mayhem before pinkerton, and if they didn't get involved in this abuse, some other opportunistic sod would.
i do not believe this is conjecture, but actually common sense, a program like this, if "successful" (oh, for the love of marketing) *will* result in more people harmed than spared harm. i have a very strict sense of justice, and would not dream of retribution without *concrete* evidence of culpability--but what about someone related to a future victim of pinkerton?
once the anecdotal, personal horror stories start rolling in, a few more people at pinkerton will probably have to wear bulletproof vests home at night, and when the statistics (gotta love those) pile up about pinkerton victims getting thrown in jail (having no criminal history *before* becoming a target) and winding up in the morgue, well, if you work at pinkerton, stock up on narcotics now, you might have trouble sleeping at night.
so shannon and dawn, how do you justify yourselves? the systems i designed protect people, can you truly say the same thing?
Re:One answer is to sep. the State from education (Score:3)
Nice sentiment, but it doesn't "scale" well.
What you're saying, in essence, is that since you don't like the decisions made locally, you'd prefer to see those decisions overridden by a larger, more powerful, more remote force -- in this case, the US Federal Government.
So not only are you willing to give up the extra local control you can (and should) exert over your local officials to a more faceless, less accountable (to you and your local community) organization...
You make this decision because you don't agree with how the "dumb local folk" ran things.
What will you do when the Feds don't run things right? Campaign for One World Government?
When you succeed at that, what will you do when that fails you?
The answer: at that point, there will be nothing left that you can do. You will no longer have the option of moving to a community filled with "more enlightened" people, because the OWG you promoted rules over them with the same tight-fisted self-assurance as it did over your previous community.
So go ahead, push your "bigger is always better/smarter/faster" agenda, but keep in mind that there are many of us out here who truly understand what a delusion that is, and we're willing to do whatever it takes to preserve our freedoms, even if that happens to, on occasion, inconvenience you by also preserving yours.
It already happens - Read This real life account (Score:3)
I got this back from a very dear friend of mine, who is one of the quietest, smartest, most respected people i know.
response as follows:
the rest is the katz article.
Make no mistake, this is REAL.
~zero
insert clever line here
No, there IS something we can do, now! (Score:3)
Well, firstly, considering the fact that such anonymous reporting hotlines have existed for a long time, I think it's reasonable to say that we're already at the toddler-burning-his-hand-stage.
But more importantly, there is something we can do. Let's not despair; it is clear to me that despite the myriad differences between us, most of us have this cause in common. We are numerous, intelligent, and capable. We can easily overcome this obstacle. How? Jon Katz himself told us how:
In a sense, the Pinkertons are even more naive than we are for believing that we could change their minds about the business -- because they are naive enough to think that if they address some of our concerns, that we'll just go away. That was their goal with the meeting -- to address the concerns so that we wouldn't affect their bottom line. Our response should be obvious: Attack their bottom line.
Controversy is our ally. Our outrage is our ally. You know how much we despise FUD when it's used against us? Well, consider the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt that WAVE brings us, and let's share our fears with the world! American media loves nothing more than bad news -- and WAVE, from our perspective, is wonderfully, awfully, fear-inspiringly, paper-and-tv-ad-sellingly BAD news!
Here are some things worth considering. First, most people are not normal. Normal is abnormal. The reason Revenge of the Nerds was such a great movie for most people is more people can relate to being outcasts than can relate to being popular. How many `popular' kids were there in your entire High School? Maybe 1% of the entire school population? The rest of us were outcasts.
Begin by asking the public, "What does WAVE want with our children?" Immediately, the question does several things: One, it demands attention. Everyone gets concerned when their children are involved, and especially when there is the hint of a threat. Of course, we know that it's more than just a HINT of a threat. Two, it makes WAVE the center of the issue. Three, it demands an answer.
Some of us reading and posting here are the oddest of the odd, the most ostracized of the outcasts; however, realize that when it comes to being oddballs or outcasts MOST people relate better with this than they do with being the Prom Queen.
This is our advantage, our controversy, and our defense.
So, if you're lurking, it's time to talk. If you are a regular poster, get moving! Start posting on other websites you visit about this. Call a town meeting where you live. Make posters and put them up around campus and around town advertising anti-WAVE websites. Oh yeah, make an anti-WAVE website, too. If you're a student, form a political action group (you'd be amazed how easy these are to form!) and begin protest marches on campus. Talk to anyone you know personally who has a child who is in high school or about to be in high school about this! Anyone you can talk to, any message you can send, send it. Get the word out beyond the confines of the slashdot.org domain. Speak to people!
I'm going to start by talking with my supervisor at work, who has three kids in high school. I'm going to tell him how if other kids decide they don't like his kids, they can just call up and make up whatever stories they want anonymously...and get a pat on the back for being ``good citizens'' while his kids' names get passed along to the authorities for the suspicion of crimes they didn't commit. I'm going to tell him about the atmosphere in public school administrations since Columbine, and how anonymously-given lies will be taken seriously. I'm going to point him to slashdot to read more about it. I'm going to make HIM concerned. I'm going to do this with my boss, too. I'm going to make connections to the novel of the same name to make sure he has the same connotations in mind. Then I'm going to move to the next person, and to the next. Whenever I get into conversations with people who have children, I'm going to bring up the subject..."Have you heard about this WAVE program that's starting in North Carolina, and is going national? It's a lot like this book I heard about..."
Arm yourself with knowledge, and fight with words. The pen (and the tongue) really is mightier than the sword.
No, the problem IS that Pinkerton is a corp... (Score:3)
Corporations are their own life forms. The individual motivations of all the people making up Pinkerton are essentially irrelevant. The corporation is its own justification and operates according to its own overwhelming drives -- to survive, to expand, to make a profit. Its competitors aren't people -- the competitors are other corporations. Slashdot matters to Pinkerton only because it fitfully mistakes us for another corporation.
Freedom cannot matter to a corporation because freedom (as usually connotated) involves the rights of the individual, and corporations are not individuals. Individuals don't even activate their radar. Only if individuals organize into quasi-corporation-like organisms -- the Blue Ribbon Campaign, slashdot, etc. -- can a corporation notices them.
One of the images I have had lately -- admittedly biased and comforting -- is that corporations are dinosaurs, huge and overpowering. A dinorsaur would never be able to understand if a little mammal said, "But wait. We know you want to get dinner, but don't step on us -- that would be wrong." The dinosaur would wonder what the hell it even means to step on someone -- because to the dinosaur, if you are "someone", you are automatically too big to be stepped on. But of course, to the mammal, the world looks different.
This picture is self-indulgent and incomplete -- it's nice to think of myself as part of the evolutionarily-favored ones -- but it's got some aptness. Jon Katz' problem, as far as I could see, is that he saw people and assumed he was talking to individuals. But in fact he had been summoned by Pinkerton, not by its employees, and he failed to speak directly to it.
Re:You were talking to the wrong people, Jon (Score:4)
"If I don't kill these Jews, somebody else will. I have to make a living somehow, so why not this?"
"If I don't build these chemical weapons, somebody else will. I have to make a living somehow, so why not this?"
"If I don't help alienate these kids, somebody else will. I have to make a living somehow, so why not this?"
Do we see a pattern?
Re:This still stinks. (Score:4)
The only problem with the whole thing was that the girls had made the whole thing up.
Before charges were filed, the "usual experts" evaluated them. The girls' allegations were accepted at face value (at first) by cops, the Montgomery County school system, and local prosecutors.
Does anyone remember Tawana Brawley up in New York a decade or so back? A crackhead girl made up a tale of kidnapping and rape, with major racial implications, to cover up the fact that she had skipped school for several days to hang around with an idjit boyfriend and get stoned.
Now we're going to have anonymous accusations, eh?
I suppose this is going to be a great boon to companies that do background and general private investigating, companies like
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
Change from within (Score:4)
--
Nonsense? (Score:4)
And you think privatized education would be any different? Businesses would do just the same thing. Worse, actually; a democracy has to preserve at least some capacity for thought in its citizens (elections and all). Businesses don't even have to do that; it's more profitable to squash even those last vestiges of independence.
The admission that large percentages of our population would be in severe financial crisis if the state did not pay for the daily supervision of their children is more an indictment of our economy than an argument for that system's virtue.
Correct. Now, how do you propose to fix the economy such that this is not so?
If it is the state which is educating your children, you have already abdicated your responsibility.
Please explain. Far better to have a child taught by a trained professional than by someone who, in the end, may well not know much more than the student.
The system of mandatory schooling in the US is despicably corrupt. It must end.
Again, please explain. While I have seen more than my share of corruption in individual school administrations, I don't see where the corruption is in the system itself.
But having a propaganda organ to indoctinate the entirety of society is the One Ring of our culture -- it it utterly addictive and utterly corrupting.
You know, you've been using the word "corrupt" and derivations thereof quite a lot. Without giving a single shred of evidence as to where the corruption lies, no less. I do like the Tolkien reference, however.
One last note on this: I have yet to see a kid who is truly addicted to school. The few who even approach that level tend to have problems at home (note that I'm not talking about people who simply like school; addiction is something more, a desperate need to be there).
So-called liberals -- who would otherwise staunchly support freedom of speach and diversity of creed -- have become enamoured with the possibility of mandating their beliefs by means of this tool. They have become just as fascist as the religious right -- both sides wrestling over control of this power over the populace.
When schools become used as a political tool, it is a Bad Thing. But I'd like to see your evidence that school has become a propaganda tool. Oh, that's right, you don't provide any. And thus, no reason for anyone to believe you.
It is left-wing secular homeschooling which has been the fastest-growing form of homeschooling for the last decade. For a reason.
Indeed it has. Mainly because it's a hell of a lot safer than our schools at the moment. But that's a problem with the schools, not the system.
The state-run state-mandated system of schooling must be destroyed before it destroys us.
State-run, perhaps. But to destroy the idea of state-mandated schooling in whatever form? That will destroy us more surely than the current system will. I suppose it merits pointing out that the nations which are starting to catch up to our lead and even pull ahead all run mandatory schooling programs, most even more restrictive and "fascist" than the ones you find in the U.S.
So the only way to fight this is.. (Score:4)
Re:what next? Injunctive Relief? (Score:4)
Katz says that this may not apply since the courts have given schools a lot of leeway as far as kids' Fourth Amendment [cornell.edu] rights are concerned (allowing locker searches and drug tests for example) however, it is not the schools that are the tippers here. If a school employee (or other agent of the school, like a crossing guard) has a suspicion, they are free (perhaps even obligated) to act on it.
WAVE is for young citizens to report on other young citizens, and though WAVE itself maybe an agent of the school, the tipper is not. Therefore, I think the findings of Florida v J.L. [cornell.edu] would hold in determining that an anonymously reported tip of a mere suspicion that another person may be possible of commiting some undefined crime, is not sufficient to arrest/question/harrass the implicated individual.
IANAL, but given that the system seems unconstitutional by its very nature, I think an attorney, perhaps the ACLU [aclu.org], could easily shut down the program, or force it to ignore any reports that don't indicate an actual crime has taken place (example: bringing a weapon to a public school is crime in itself, so these types of reports would be allowed; wears a black trenchcoat is not a crime, so reporting it wouldn't be allowed.)
Great Job, Katz! (Score:4)
1) He LISTENED
2) He came with facts, not just hyperbole and urban legends
3) He didn't denigrate the opposite side
Regardless of whether we believe Pinkerton, or anyone else we disagree wtih, is wrong, they are people and they have an equal right to have differing opinions. Reasonable people can get together and discuss things. This is what separates us from animals. Let's remember that.
Their view... (Score:4)
As Jefferson said, "those who would trade Freedom in order to find Security shall not have, nor do they deserve either one." Too bad no one listens to Jefferson anymore.
Re:Anonymous Cowards vs. Anonymous Reporting (Score:4)
I think the difference is twofold: first, on /., AC postings are public. Everyone can read them (moderation permitting), and anyone can rebut them. Accusations made to WAVE are not necessarily passed on to anyone at all, and certainly the victim of the accusation is kept unaware.
Secondly, by being filtered through a high-profile, "respectable" third party like Pinkertons, more credence is attached to the report. It becomes "Bob Ince is potentially violent" instead of "An anonymous coward thinks Bob Ince may be potentially violent".
I'd be happier if schools treated WAVE America with the same level of credulity as /. users treat Anonymous Coward.
This is a great article which deserves wider coverage outside of slashdot. My favourite quote:
Well move over Sherlock.
--
This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Re:Predictable. (Score:4)
if you are in high school, grab a list of all the jocks and football players
Please don't do that. It's no less biased than Pinkerton's own scheme.
If you're going to Spam it to death, then do it fairly and evenly. Report everyone (yourself included), without exception and favouritism. Naturally you'll need to munge the source addresses
Re:YASI (Score:4)
Do you think that the societal pressures to conform would go away if the schools were abolished?
I agree that the single most important determinant of success in education is the involvement of parents in the process. Schools are not and can not be a substitute for the involvement of parents in their children's education.
But the fact remains that universal, state-mandated and state-funded education has brought historically unprecedented levels of literacy. Ditching the educational system is not the answer to the educational problems that we have. It is quite literally the stupidest idea I have ever heard.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
YASI (Score:4)
How could it be better to turn over a critical function of society to business or, worse yet, require parents to home school? How could it be better to put a higher financial burden on the people who can afford it the least -- single parents.
The Radical Religious Right has got issues with schools because they don't want their children exposed to dangerous ideas like Evolution which might cause them to think for themselves. Don't ruin all of society just because a few extremists can't tell the difference between myth and scientific discovery.
In a lifetime of witnessing stupid ideas, this has got to be the stupidest. Education is an important societal function. We can not abdicate it.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
What we need is an organized campaign... (Score:5)
What if there was some graphic that could be associated with this? Someone could set up a central website against anonymous reporting in general, that people would link the graphic to. Katz could tug on some of his contacts and get it in the media. Don't get me wrong -- I don't think that this will fix everything, or that everyone will share the same level of outrage -- but if we can keep up the campaign against any corporation that gets this "bright idea", it will be more injurious to them than it's worth.
The most important thing in my mind is the graphic -- lots of people work against many other issues, but a central image is what seemed to bring unity to the Blue Ribbon campaign.
How about it? I'm not artist, so I shouldn't be the one to come up with the idea for the pic, but I'd be happy to help get the ball rolling, so drop me an email.
The problem is not that Pinkerton is a corp... (Score:5)
While there may be people within the corporation that have entered it from other channels, the security field is by and large comprised of ex-jocks and those that tried for other forms of authority (Police, Military) and either couldn't hack it, or were removed from their previous position of power.
Quoth Bart Simpson, "I've got my first taste of power, and I like it" (I'm not sure if this was the 'Hall Monitor' episode, or the 'Ride in a Cop Car' episode (Or if those were in fact the same one...constant Simpson re-runs...all blurring together...)). Anyways, the point is the same. The people you are trying to sway are the very people who, if you were a geek, made HS a living hell for you. Why should they behave differently now? They simply have more latitude to get away with it.
So if all the arguements in the world will fall on deaf ears(any accomodations they make being simply placatory while the actual service remains in place), then the way to combat it is to take the fight to other fronts. Protests, alerting other media sources, etc. Linking WAVE to a swastika should manage to draw enough attention to the issue, if enough people see it. So make the Tabloids work for us. They love something conrtoversial, and seeing Deborah Norville leading with the headline "Are our highschools producing the next Hitler Youth?" on Inside Edition may make the traditional media run with the story. Heaven knows they've done it before, and knowledge and exposure is the only way to combat this thing.
Well, enough ranting here, any other suggestions?
You were talking to the wrong people, Jon (Score:5)
-russ
p.s. too bad about wasting your time. You should study economics.
Re:I agree... (Score:5)
-russ
One answer is to sep. the State from education (Score:5)
The issue is complicated, but for those interested in the argument that government-controlled, compulsory, tax-funded schooling is inherently wrong rather than only a matter of bad execution, you might be interested in the Alliance for the Separation of School and State [sepschool.org], who take their cue from the phrase "separation of church and state" and in a sense for the same reasons.
Efforts like WAVE America expose the danger of trusting a bureaucracy to "care" for children in other than a cursory, bean-counting way. "Care" as euphemism, that is.
[Note: I am not endorsing -- nor do I agree with, so far as I know -- any or all religious beliefs of the founders of this organization. =) ]
timothy
You Screwed up big time (Score:5)
You tried to argue ethics to a businessman. Eric Raymond pointed this out at one of his talks. While he was explaining how best to advocat Open Source, the same methods apply to arguing to businesses. "You have to learn how to convince someone who doesn't give a shit about ehtics." (I can't say that's an exact quote but it's close).
All they care about is the bottom line. ESR pointed out that the way to convince them to switch to Linux is to point out that it is better a better deal.
The Plinkerton group responded very predictably to ethical arguments. "If we don't do it, someone else will", and "We have put our company on the line, we can't pull out now. Instead let's change it to make it more pallatable."
The better thing would thave been to point out that there were more who fit the profile of 'dangerous' than didn't. They won't be happy. Advertisers aren't going to be very entheuastic about advertising through a company that is pissing off most of their target demographic. (ESR also pointed out that it's a good idea to throw in a couple of 'business' words:> )
Then there are the possible lawsuits. The Plinkertons are opening themselves up for major lawsuits if they persue this and ANYONE gets screwed over injustly. Admittedly those likely to to sue will be conspicuously absent from any school diciplinary action no matter the offense.
Arguments such as this are more likely to shake their confidence. Comparing them to Hitler isn't likely to convince them. After all they believe that facism is about hating Jews, not about controlling ideas. For that many marketing people actually study Hitler's technique, after all he was the most brilliant mass manipultor in recent history, and what is marketing besides mass manipulation.
There was nothing unpredictable in the meeting. Most 'geeks' are quite concerned with ethics, and have a rather finely developed sense of what is right and wrong.
What we generally fail to realize is that so do businessmen. It is just that their view of right and wrong is directly tied to how much money is made. After all, they have a "responsibility to the shareholders."
The first step in convincing a copratist is to learn to think like him, then construct arguments that will appeal to that sense. Remember, power and money seem to make up the ethical landscape in that world, and your arguments must show that.
If you want to point out ethics, point out that the target demographic feels this way, and will respond accordingly.
warning signs (Score:5)
"frequent physical fighting", member of the football team.
"increasing risk-taking behavior", wide receiver.
"detailed plans to commit acts of violence" given to them by the coach.
"announcing threats or plans for hurting others" 'we're gonna kill West High at the game!'
"enjoying hurting animals" 'I'm going after a buck this year!
"carrying a weapon" With my 30-.06!
So, most of my neighbors in Utah are dangerous people who should be tracked for life.
Re:YASI (Score:5)
Nonsense.
The so-called "education" system of the US is a State-run propaganda organ mated to a state-subsidized day-care program. It has nothing to do with "thinking for yourself". Schools exist to promulgate conformity as practice and as virtue.
The admission that large percentages of our population would be in severe financial crisis if the state did not pay for the daily supervision of their children is more an indictment of our economy than an argument for that system's virtue.
The idea that it's the state's job -- even the state's prerogative -- to advance every social good is the very pretext by which they usurp the rights of citizens.
If it is the state which is educating your children, you have already abdicated your responsibility.
The system of mandatory schooling in the US is despicably corrupt. It must end.
But having a propaganda organ to indoctinate the entirety of society is the One Ring of our culture -- it it utterly addictive and utterly corrupting.
So-called liberals -- who would otherwise staunchly support freedom of speach and diversity of creed -- have become enamoured with the possibility of mandating their beliefs by means of this tool. They have become just as fascist as the religious right -- both sides wrestling over control of this power over the populace.
It is left-wing secular homeschooling which has been the fastest-growing form of homeschooling for the last decade. For a reason.
The state-run state-mandated system of schooling must be destroyed before it destroys us.
----------------------------------------------
Predictable. (Score:5)
However, the recourse seems obvious: spam! Imagine what is going to happen if a system receives thousands of provably false denunciations...
I even encourage geeks and nerds, goths and punks to launch a (nation-wide?) pre-emptive strike: if you are in high school, grab a list of all the jocks and football players and denounce them as punks, goths, malcontent, depressed, drug-addicted and violent characters. Throw in a few white-power/aryan nations jerks as well. Rat on your teachers. Report on your class president, on the Prom Queen, on the cheerleaders!!
Then, step back and watch in amazement as all these guys are dragged into detention by the principals.
How much money is Pinkerton going to lose over this? Ah, the sweet giant sucking sound of cash registers being emptied as more and more schools bail out of Wave... =)
Just my US$ 0.02, of course.
Suspicious justification (Score:5)
It seems to me that a fundamental argument of Pinkerton's was flawed. Yes, there is an existing 'anonymous reporting culture' But the area this falls into is in the category of existing crimes or malfeasance of some kind, ie rape, abuse, et.c.
The extension of this into attempting to pre-empt criminal behaviour is what is so dangerous, and Jon Katz would have done well to draw that distinction. There is a world of difference between an anonymous phonecall to some relevant body about suspected child abuse, and an anonymous phonecall because a young adult is behaving 'differently'.
In fact, in this case, it would be possible to extend this particular example and say that with the likely psychological repercussions of abuse, it would be more likely victim would be reported to an organisation like Wave America than the perpetrator... So who's being protected then?
Sad, but not suprising (Score:5)
While I can appreciate Jon's frustration about Pinkerton's apathy toward the points he raised, I have to say I'm not even slightly suprised that this was what happened. A sad fact of modern corporate culture is that they need to be ruthless in order to prosper - if the majority of companies are ruthless then their competitors also have to be ruthless to compete. And this is what breeds the amoral attitude that corporations have. They are required to make money for their shareholders, and this requires them to go for anything which can make money legally.
No, the real issue here is education. In recent years we have seen the culture of hysteria grow from the Weekly World News [weeklyworldnews.com] to encompass practically all mainstream media. People often aren't educated enough, or educated wrongly, and as such don't possess the necessary scepticism to see that the media is always biased towards getting a good story, whether it bears any relation to the real issues or not.
The trouble is, once the hysteria has set in it is almost impossible to stop. Rational arguments and facts have little impact, especially in a society where most of the populace lack the education to understand or apply them. The government, or whichever body is appropriate to the hysteria, is then forced to give in to this hysteria, since if they are up for election they require public support. This is probably one of the major failings of democracy, but the only real way around it is to have a well-educated populace who can consider issues rather than being force-fed opinions from the media.
Will this ever happen? Not for a long time in my opinion. Education is a slow process, and changes in society seem to be running ahead of people's ability to encompass and adapt to them. That's what we really need - the ability to adapt to new circumstances without holding back or fearing the future.
What did you expect, truly? (Score:5)
They are using this to break into a new area - an area where they can police (because they are a security company) without having to employ security guards. Where they can pass on information that they receive, regardless of the source, with no liability at all to them. Whatever service agreement they make with the school system will project them from any legal backlashes.
What it is going to end up taking is a court case - a court case where some poor kid (given the statistics) has had his or her life turned upside down and backwards by some anonymous report because he/she listens to NiN or Ministry, runs a counterstrike server at home, and realizes that black is cool cause it goes with *everything.*
And the above will only happen IF the PARENTS of that kid decide to back him/her and go to bat for them. Many parents are just as scared of the school system as the kid is -- or honestly believe what the school is telling them, because they dont understand their child's motivation either.
The worst part is that once again people are going to have to be hurt by something before they realize its bad - much like a toddler burning their hand on a stove to find out that its hot.
Just my 2 cents.
Why I don't like WAVE. (Score:5)
First off, one needs to know what my situation was.
April of last year, I was told I had a brain tumor, specifically a Pilocytic Astrocytoma ( horrible spelling, sorry). Because of that tumor, my senior year had been hell, I couldn't get any work done, I'd sit in the bath at 3 am, wondering why my neck hurt. My junior year wasn't as bad. I had been put in the night school, because I wouldn't get out of bed before noon. I dropped out of that also.
I had been to a psychologist, psychiatrist and a chiropractor. I was given Prozac and a few other drugs, but nothing helped.
Everyone though I was crazy.
What would have happened to me if WAVE was in my school in my Junior year, when I was still in school? I had many signs that would warrant someone turning me in ( hence, why my parents took me to a Psychologist..).
I don't have an answer, but at least I know the question.
DanteAliegri.
A Bigger Reason to Pay Attention to School Boards (Score:5)
As if extremists on school boards banning the teaching of evolution wasn't enough, this WAVE thing points out how important it is to check out what's going in local school boards. The local school board is one of the most ignored public decison making entities in the entire US system of government. This is where decisons like implementing WAVE are being made and affirmed. I think we all need to locate our school board reps and write them some letters expressing our concerns. Sitting in on the open meetings is a darned good idea too. Running for school board is another really good idea. In a lot of cities and counties, board members often run unopposed due to the overall lack of interest. Great place for a concenred geek looking to get into politics to start. At the same time, this lack of interest is dangerous. Decisons to implement programs like WAVE often happen without any attention being paid. We're lucky it got noticed this time. At the same time, we have an opportunity to make a real difference here. Due to the scale involved here, your input as a citizen has a big impact, and if you should decide to run, you might get elected. It'd be good to have some technically savvy people resident in these decision making bodies. It'd be even better to have level headed, analyical people making good decisons.