Good morning, everyone...
Here's a tasty tidbit to put the Libertarian faction on notice:
Stolen without mercy from Educause, which appears frequently in
used_kharma.tech:
DEFENSE DEPARTMENT TO CREATE VAST STUDENT DATABASE
Officials at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have proposed the
creation of a database containing information on virtually every
college student in the country, as well as many high school students.
Intended as a tool to aid recruitment efforts, the database would
include names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth
dates, ethnicities, grade point averages, and other data. The DoD's
database bears similarities to another database proposed by the
Department of Education. That database would track individual students
through their college careers, providing a clearer picture of
graduation rates than current records, which track only aggregate rates
from institutions. The Education Department's proposed database has
drawn criticism from privacy advocates, who see it as a potential risk
to privacy. The DoD proposal has similarly elicited complaints from
groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
According to EPIC, the database would be a "bad idea," putting tools of
direct marketers in the hands of government officials but without
affording consumers the same protections from government that they
enjoy from marketers. Inside Higher Ed, 23 June 2005
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/23/database
...a potential risk to privacy? How about a glaring violation of anyone's
right to privacy? Given the number of repeated instances where government
databases and the information contained therein have been compromised,
bootlegged or simply stolen, the day might be coming sooner than people
realize when students will gleefully hire a hacker with impeccable
credentials to see what the government databases say about them.
This is a bullshit idea! However, in an era when personal privacy and
genuine concerns for our constitutionally-guaranteed rights are falling by
the wayside almost on a daily basis, hardly anyone anymore seems to be
bothered. Of course, if you ask a typical high school student these days
about the principles of freedom as set forth in the Constitution, few of
them can remember the majority of the principles involved.
Thank gawd my kids are grown and gone. Otherwise the government would have
one hell of a fight on its hand...ULP... and I would be home schooling my
kids, the very thing the government fears the most about educational
reform.
Wake up Libertarians! The bastards are at the door!
Dave
--
Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 05/01/2005
Usenet News server: news.kharma.net
Musicians Calendar and Database access: http://www.kharma.net/calendar.html
An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment --
but many other things ceased as well. Woman was God's second mistake.
-- Nietzsche
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