Battleangel

Today’s privacy infringement courtesy of the United States of America.

Fearing their wireless freedom may be in jeopardy, students at Framingham High School were fuming over a new school policy that allows administrators to seize cell phones and search their contents.

The policy, administrators say, is to improve security and stop the sale of drugs and stolen goods, but students said that the edict is an invasion of privacy.

“It’s not anyone’s business what is in students’ cell phones,” said Demitriy Kozlov, who will be a senior in September. “If they think someone’s dealing a pound of coke or pot, then there is a reason to, but that doesn’t happen here.”

So, once again, the curtailing of civil liberties are happening under the guise of greater security and crime fighting. In the meantime, ID tags, camera surveillance and curfews are on the march elsewhere. Well, at least they still get military recruiters on campus. Oh well.

Now, one shouldn’t be complacent. This disease will invariably spread beyond America’s shores. Fear seems to be on the march all over the world these days. Elites and shadowy players everywhere struggle to regain the control they lost in the silent, digital revolution that for the most part passed them (and their cronies in the corporate sphere) by. Predictably then, the focus is usually on wireless forms of communication, the ability to move freely and depict the surrounding world (take digital cameras for instance) and the curtailing of the anarchic internet democracy model.