Surveillance 101: Big Brother goes to Campus

[HERVEPA]

Check out this article from THE NATION magazine on the government's activities on College Campuses


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/gould-wartofsky


"Seven Steps to a Homeland Security Campus"

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FBI agents, or their campus stand-ins, don't have to do all the work themselves. Administrators often do it for them, setting up "free speech zones," which actually constrain speech, and punishing those who step outside them. Last year, protests were typically forced into "free assembly areas" at the University of Central Florida and Clemson University; while students at Hampton and Pace Universities faced expulsion for handing out antiwar flyers, aka "unauthorized materials."...
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Lock and load: Many campus police departments are morphing into heavily armed garrisons, equipped with a wide array of weaponry from Taser stun guns and pepper guns to shotguns and semiautomatic rifles...
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Take over the curriculum, the classroom, and the laboratory: Needless to say, not every student is considered a homeland security threat. Quite the opposite. Many students and faculty members are seen as potential assets. To exploit these assets, the Department of Homeland Security has launched its own curriculum under its Office of University Programs (OUP), intended, it says, to "foster a homeland security culture within the academic community."...
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[shance]

1. They have infiltrated our campuses for some time. If they have nothing to hide,

then why do they have to infiltrate?

So funny that they act as if this is some new thing.

Of course that is what the Media Industrial complex is supposed to tell us.

[cgrindley]

2. Campus police SHOULD carry firearms but NOT tasers

Campus police officers--at least on those campuses where they are indeed honest to god peace officers--should carry sidearms and have recourse to shotguns and other firearms, but they should not carry tasers (cops get a little too taser happy in my opinion, but seldom randomly shoot people). Personally, I think that faculty should carry.

[Elspeth]

3. Amazing article: read the whole thing

:kick: