16-03-10

ED Balls has condemned children's commissioner Dr Maggie Atkinson for using her years of professional experience in forming an opinion. Jo Frost knows more stuff because she's on the telly The schools secretary has called for an inquiry into how a qualified person with qualifications qualifying them to do their job could qualify their statements on matters they are qualified to comment on. Balls said: "Responsible governance is not about taking the advice of proper experts, it's about Jamie Oliver making a nice salad or asking that large television nanny to dictate childcare policy even though she does seem to limit herself to houses with steps." Julian Cook, professor of public policy at Reading University, said: "The public is often caught between highly trained experts who have studied a subject in depth and actually know what they are talking about and the bastard, son of a bitch whores we call politicians who spend their entire lives with the throbbing penis of the editor of the Daily Mail lodged firmly inside their filthy, lying mouths. "It's difficult to know who to trust."  Meanwhile Dr Atkinson's statement - that children are qualitatively different from adults and should perhaps be treated as such - was condemned by members of the public who did not understand most of the words in it. Nikki Hollis, a female thing from Carlisle, said: "This woman is basically saying that all children under 12 who are possessed by the devil should be given a loaded machine gun. "If I see her round here I'll set my evil dog on her."

Read the Boing Boing interview with Die Antwoord

Schools 'break law' to spy on pupils

Pupils are monitored by CCTV cameras as frequently as inmates in prisons and passengers at airports, research shows

• Jessica Shepherd
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 March 2010 14.19 GMT
• Article history

Young people ae being stripped of basic liberties, says researcher. Photograph: Alamy

 

Most schools in the UK are probably breaking the law by failing to alert students to the scores of cameras capturing their conversations and movements in playgrounds and classrooms, a study has claimed.

Pupils in schools are as frequently monitored by CCTV cameras as inmates in prisons and customers at airports, the report by Salford University says. Most secondary schools have at least 20 cameras.

Schools have installed cameras to improve teaching, as well as detect vandalism, intruders and bad behaviour. At least one school has put cameras with microphones in classrooms and corridors, and given staff earpieces to listen in on what the cameras pick up.. It is now common for secondary schools to fingerprint pupils.

Researcher Emmeline Taylor examined surveillance practices in 24 comprehensives in north-west England and analysed the law governing CCTV use in schools as part of her PhD thesis.

Under the Data Protection Act, schools are required to tell pupils where cameras have been installed and for what purpose the images and sounds captured on them are being used. But Taylor found schools were not aware of this requirement and did not make it clear to pupils where cameras were located.

Schools do not have to ask pupils for their consent to capture images or sounds of them, she discovered. They must notify the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) that they are using surveillance practices, but they don't have to say what these are.

The act states that the data being captured "should be adequate, relevant and not excessive". This vague wording has allowed schools to become testbeds for the latest surveillance technologies, Taylor says, and is "habituating young people to accept a heightened level of scrutiny for increasingly mundane activities, such as borrowing a book from the school library".

Parents in a Philadelphia suburb filed a lawsuit recently claiming that the Lower Merion school district had "spied" on their families. It had given 1,800 students at two high schools laptops which allowed them to view school materials at home through webcams. But the webcams worked both ways, and allowed the local authority to see what was happening in the pupils' homes.

Young people are being stripped of basic liberties, Taylor said. "There is this idea that CCTV is a panacea to a lot of society's ills, but there is nothing to suggest that this is the case," she said. "We need specific guidance for pupils on how far schools can monitor them.

"The dearth of concrete legislation permits ever more invasive surveillance practices to be introduced in schools. Pupils are definitely the most surveilled non-criminal population."

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights campaign group Liberty, questioned how pupils would learn to respect themselves and others if their own privacy and dignity were taken away.

"How do you teach kids about good behaviour if its only basis is the fear of being caught?" she said. "How will they learn to respect themselves and other people if their privacy and dignity are traded for administrative convenience? It's a sad state indeed if children grow up to expect prison-type monitoring. By over-watching young people, with cameras and computers, we may be overlooking our real duties to respect and protect them."

Angus Drever, managing director of Classwatch, which installs CCTV cameras in schools so that teachers can be shown "good practice" and to improve pupils' behaviour, said the ICO and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) should ensure schools are up to date with the law.

He said: "Schools use CCTV because they are under enormous pressure to meet their obligations to protect the children in their care, and to safeguard their assets. Classwatch has always taken the issues of data protection and respecting the privacy of children very seriously, which is why we approached the ICO for advice."

A spokesman from the DCSF said: "There are no grounds for suggesting that schools are being used as testbeds for surveillance."

He said clear guidance had been issued by the ICO and the government's information technology arm, Becta.

Taylor's research – I Spy With My Little Eye: Exploring the Use of Surveillance and CCTV in Schools – will be published in journals later this year.

Cory Doctorow at 10:26 AM March 15, 2010

In this two-year-old classified Army Counterintelligence Center report (hosted on wikileaks.org, where else?), American spooks set out to destroy Wikileaks by intimidating its sources. They cite as justification for this the fact that Wikileaks has outed American embarrassments and crimes including "US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."

The governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and several other countries have blocked access to Wikileaks.org-type Web sites, claimed they have the right to investigate and prosecute Wikileaks.org and associated whistleblowers, or insisted they remove false, sensitive, or classified government information, propaganda, or malicious content from the Internet. The governments of China, Israel, and Russia claim the right to remove objectionable content from, block access to, and investigate crimes related to the posting of documents or comments to Web sites such as Wikileaks.org. The governments of these countries most likely have the technical skills to take such action should they choose to do so

Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the Web site that they will remain anonymous. The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from using Wikileaks.org to make such information public.

Wikileaks.org - An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, Or Terrorist Groups?

Miami Man who Practices Traditional African Religion told Followers to Ingest Mucus

Got snail? Devotees of a Miami man claiming to practice a traditional African religion say they had to ingest the mucus of a Giant African Snail that sickened them.  (massnrc.org)

(AP)  Devotees of a Miami man claiming to practice a traditional African religion say they had to ingest the mucus of a Giant African Snail that sickened them.

Federal authorities in January raided Charles L. Stewart's home after receiving complaints. Stewart has not been criminally charged, but prosecutors and state and federal wildlife agencies are investigating. The Giant African Snail is prohibited in the U.S. without special approval.

Experts say it devastates new ecosystems. The snail grows up to 10 inches long, can reproduce on its own and even can even eat plaster.

Stewart says he means no harm, and his religion uses the snails in healing ceremonies.

Followers said they got violently ill, losing weight and developing strange lumps in their stomachs.

Praise the lard!

By GUY PATRICK

Published: 12 Mar 2010

DOZY Toby Elles cheated death in a pan fire as he tried to fry bacon - then found the face of JESUS burned in the cooking fat.

Relief ... Toby shows off his pan

Caters News Agency

Toby, 22, put on the rasher for a late snack, but fell asleep on the couch.

Holy toast ... this image drew lots of attention when first reported in 2005

He woke up an hour later after smelling Holy smoke and saw the meat was ablaze. When he moved the charred bacon, he spotted the Lord's face in his frying pan.

Bank worker Tony, of Salford, Gtr Manchester, said: "It's a miracle. But for the smoke, it could have been a very bad situation.

"I'll never clean the pan, I'll keep it forever."

Dutch nurses: Care does not include sex

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.

The union, NU'91, is calling the campaign "I Draw The Line Here," with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.

The union said in a statement Thursday that the campaign follows a complaint it had received in the last week from a 24-year-old woman who said a 42-year-old disabled man asked her to provide sexual services as part of his care at home.

The young woman witnessed some of the man's other nurses offering him sexual gratification, the union said. When she refused to do the same, he tried to dismiss her on the grounds that she was unfit to provide care.

"This type of action is not part of the job responsibilities of carers and nurses," NU'91 said.

The case has been reported to police, the union added.

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz, editing by Paul Taylor)

Sundown, Friday, March 19 to Sundown, Saturday, March 20

Join us in fighting back against the tidal wave of technology taking over society and our lives. Are you sick of having conversations with people with their noses buried in an iPhone? Are you that person?

Put down the cell phone, stop the status updates on Facebook, shut down Twitter, sign out of e-mail and relax, as part of our National Day of Unplugging.

People across the nation will tune out to reclaim time to slow life down and reconnect with friends, family, the community and themselves for 24 hours, starting at sundown, Friday, March 19. The Sabbath Manifesto’s principles were created for individual styling, but for one day we are asking you to take on the challenge of Principle Number 1: AVOID TECHNOLOGY. Let us know how you interpreted this Principle.

Focus your attention, and find peace.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Awhile back I (a bit ironically perhaps) tweeted this message:

Consider what you give your attention to each day. It’s a precious resource, & determines the shape of your life.

This seemed to strike a chord with many people, who I think are feeling overwhelmed these days. Our attention is being pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus.

There are a million blogs, people, services, media, competing for our attention. Our attention is limited, and valuable, making it one of the most precious resources we have.

The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.

And it does determine the shape of your life: what you pay attention to becomes your reality. If you watch and read the news all the time, you will become obsessed with the latest crises. If you watch and read about celebrities, your life will revolve around them. If you socialize on social networks all day long, this will become your world.

If instead, you choose to give your attention to work you’re passionate about, that you feel is important, that will change your life and the world in some small way … this will become your life.

If you choose to give your attention to your friends, family and other loved ones — really give your attention to them instead of only half-heartedly while also checking text messages and emails and other updates — your life will be rich in many ways.

And so I urge you to reclaim your attention.

Here’s how: 

1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential. Read more.
2. Limit your feeds. Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.
3. Limit your communication time. Going into your email inbox? Just give yourself 10 minutes to read, reply, delete, and get out. Going to do Twitter? Give yourself 5 minutes. Seriously, set up a timer. Don’t let these things take up all your attention.
4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto. Read more.
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
7. Become conscious of your distractions. Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.
8. Surround yourself with the positive. If you want your life to be positive, let the positive have your attention. This applies to blogs, people, projects, and more.

For more, read my new book, focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction.

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