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Predatory teachers may use this to get some background details on their targets or to identify potential targets for grooming. Luckily those kinds of teachers a

Predatory teachers may use this to get some background details on their targets or to identify potential targets for grooming. Luckily those kinds of teachers are rare, but not unknown. Also, some police are known to be racist, so if a certain officer gets it in their head to harass a nationality or ethnic group, then their unsubstantiated accusations would be entered into the database and this could then affect the families' chances of getting a decent education or indeed, the teachers may decide to not enter them into certain exams if they've been prejudiced by the data.

RajT88 3y ago
> Also, some police are known to be racist Worse yet, most police are at least classist. Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. What happens when there's already heavy policing of poorer neighborhoods, and police are trained to "get the bad ones off the streets"? They look for any excuse to arrest and prosecute people in those neighborhoods. Once you have a felony conviction on your record, you're basically unemployable for 10 years (in the US at least). Thus continuing the cycle of poverty. And of course, minorities tend to be disproportionately poor. This makes that cycle worse. Anyone in the proximity of such a felon due to this data collection and aggregation now becomes a target by the police, raising their chances of getting caught up in the legal system and experiencing life-long consequences because of it.
- adolph 3y ago
  > Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. I see this sentiment often. If this were true it would represent a criminal opportunity to victimize "wealthier neighborhoods." As far as I can tell: that does not seem to be the case very often; and victimization rates are higher in "poor neighborhoods." I can see the logic of an argument that excessive legal criminalization induces cycles of harmful involvement in law enforcement and legal systems. However, using the language "policed far more heavily" as opposed to "criminalized far more heavily" places the blame on a convenient-to-scapegoat blue-collar occupation rather than directly upon the powerful people who compose the ever-expanding encyclopedia of laws and regulations.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    Police already have discretion to enforce the law on whomever, and however they wish. It is inappropriate to try and shift blame entirely to lawmakers, when (obviously) the police have culpability here because of the choices they make regarding the enforcement of those laws. That's why the sentiment is so common. Obviously. Come on.
    - adolph 3y ago
      I still don't get it--not being obtuse, it isn't obvious to me. Is the claim that differences in policing are due to discretion in law enforcement and not because victimization rates are different in neighborhoods of different socio-economic statuses? Discretion in enforcement is either lawful or not. If discretion is the key problem and lawmakers do not address it, then yes, the responsibility is on lawmakers and ultimately on voters.
      - RajT88 3y ago
        Discretion is not the key problem. Discretion is a necessary part of the job. Let me address victimization rates - because yes, they are higher in poorer communities. That does not justify in any way the behavior of police in those communities, which is to randomly pull over/stop and search/etc. people on the street who "look" like bad guys. If somebody kills someone, sure, arrest them and put them in prison. Most "bad guys" sent to prison are not violent offenders (drugs, theft, homelessness, child support, etc.) with drug possession being a huge chunk of it. https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/incarceration-and-poverty-in-the-united-states/ https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/incarceration-a... The culture of policing is the key problem, which is created by a confluence of training, recruiting practices, general societal attitudes, and the political leadership of elected officials. It's not one problem, as you can see - it's many contributing factors. A local town near me was praised some years back for drastically reducing violence by shifting towards community-based outreach policing. The local news actually called out Chicago for not following its example, you should definitely read about it: https://www.aurora-il.org/1637/Community-Oriented-Policing-COP-Unit https://www.aurora-il.org/1637/Community-Oriented-Policing-C... Critics of community oriented policing typically view it as "being soft on crime" instead of a systems problem. The "put bad guys in prison" model has the effect of continuing the cycle of poverty, and measures such as mostly doing away with pre-trial detention (i.e. bond) for non-violent offenders are intended as a systemic fix for the poverty cycle.
notahacker 3y ago
If the safeguarding lead at a school is a predatory teacher looking for grooming targets, the existence of databases is the least of kids' problems. Particularly if the database is mainly flagging up kids that might already be at risk of abuse. Predatory individuals who are not safeguarding leads benefit much more from people campaigning to silo any records that suggest/confirm they might be a threat.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Unfortunately, child predators are likely to get themselves into as strong a position of trust as possible - coaches, church leaders etc, so I would expect them to attempt to become a safeguarding lead. They could then also use the data to explain why they were taking certain kids into one-on-one sessions.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    I do feel like I'm conversing with an LLM that has never attended a school but is tuned to contradict me regardless here! Senior leaders at schools don't need "data" to justify talking one on one to students or to figure out which students seem vulnerable. On the other hand, data is useful for people with actual welfare concerns about a child in establishing if there might be some underlying reason behind the child's weird behaviour or expressed fear of going home or visible bruising that's "just an accident". Ensuring nobody can share threats data is a massive net boon to people that harm kids.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      > I do feel like I'm conversing with an LLM that has never attended a school but is tuned to contradict me regardless here! I very much enjoyed my time at an ordinary human child school and attended the mandatory educational lessons very promptly. There's a balance between using data to identify problems and collecting data which is open to abuse. What concerns me is the apparent indiscriminate use of the data by teachers who are typically not the most privacy focussed people. The predatory teacher example is an outlier, but it demonstrates how there can be unintended consequences. What's more likely is that there will be unconscious bias by the teachers against the disadvantaged children from poorer backgrounds. To my mind, teachers should only function as a backup social service for those kids that slip through the net (admittedly, not a good net) and should be focussed primarily on education. What set my alarm bells ringing is the lack of openness about the database and whether families can correct false records (assuming they even know that the data exists).

RajT88 3y ago

> Also, some police are known to be racist Worse yet, most police are at least classist. Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. What happens when there's already heavy policing of poorer neighborhoods, and police are trained to "get the bad ones off the streets"? They look for any excuse to arrest and prosecute people in those neighborhoods. Once you have a felony conviction on your record, you're basically unemployable for 10 years (in the US at least). Thus continuing the cycle of poverty. And of course, minorities tend to be disproportionately poor. This makes that cycle worse. Anyone in the proximity of such a felon due to this data collection and aggregation now becomes a target by the police, raising their chances of getting caught up in the legal system and experiencing life-long consequences because of it.

adolph 3y ago
> Poor neighborhoods are policed far more heavily than wealthier neighborhoods. I see this sentiment often. If this were true it would represent a criminal opportunity to victimize "wealthier neighborhoods." As far as I can tell: that does not seem to be the case very often; and victimization rates are higher in "poor neighborhoods." I can see the logic of an argument that excessive legal criminalization induces cycles of harmful involvement in law enforcement and legal systems. However, using the language "policed far more heavily" as opposed to "criminalized far more heavily" places the blame on a convenient-to-scapegoat blue-collar occupation rather than directly upon the powerful people who compose the ever-expanding encyclopedia of laws and regulations.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Police already have discretion to enforce the law on whomever, and however they wish. It is inappropriate to try and shift blame entirely to lawmakers, when (obviously) the police have culpability here because of the choices they make regarding the enforcement of those laws. That's why the sentiment is so common. Obviously. Come on.
  - adolph 3y ago
    I still don't get it--not being obtuse, it isn't obvious to me. Is the claim that differences in policing are due to discretion in law enforcement and not because victimization rates are different in neighborhoods of different socio-economic statuses? Discretion in enforcement is either lawful or not. If discretion is the key problem and lawmakers do not address it, then yes, the responsibility is on lawmakers and ultimately on voters.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      Discretion is not the key problem. Discretion is a necessary part of the job. Let me address victimization rates - because yes, they are higher in poorer communities. That does not justify in any way the behavior of police in those communities, which is to randomly pull over/stop and search/etc. people on the street who "look" like bad guys. If somebody kills someone, sure, arrest them and put them in prison. Most "bad guys" sent to prison are not violent offenders (drugs, theft, homelessness, child support, etc.) with drug possession being a huge chunk of it. https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/incarceration-and-poverty-in-the-united-states/ https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/incarceration-a... The culture of policing is the key problem, which is created by a confluence of training, recruiting practices, general societal attitudes, and the political leadership of elected officials. It's not one problem, as you can see - it's many contributing factors. A local town near me was praised some years back for drastically reducing violence by shifting towards community-based outreach policing. The local news actually called out Chicago for not following its example, you should definitely read about it: https://www.aurora-il.org/1637/Community-Oriented-Policing-COP-Unit https://www.aurora-il.org/1637/Community-Oriented-Policing-C... Critics of community oriented policing typically view it as "being soft on crime" instead of a systems problem. The "put bad guys in prison" model has the effect of continuing the cycle of poverty, and measures such as mostly doing away with pre-trial detention (i.e. bond) for non-violent offenders are intended as a systemic fix for the poverty cycle.

notahacker 3y ago

If the safeguarding lead at a school is a predatory teacher looking for grooming targets, the existence of databases is the least of kids' problems. Particularly if the database is mainly flagging up kids that might already be at risk of abuse. Predatory individuals who are not safeguarding leads benefit much more from people campaigning to silo any records that suggest/confirm they might be a threat.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Unfortunately, child predators are likely to get themselves into as strong a position of trust as possible - coaches, church leaders etc, so I would expect them to attempt to become a safeguarding lead. They could then also use the data to explain why they were taking certain kids into one-on-one sessions.
- notahacker 3y ago
  I do feel like I'm conversing with an LLM that has never attended a school but is tuned to contradict me regardless here! Senior leaders at schools don't need "data" to justify talking one on one to students or to figure out which students seem vulnerable. On the other hand, data is useful for people with actual welfare concerns about a child in establishing if there might be some underlying reason behind the child's weird behaviour or expressed fear of going home or visible bruising that's "just an accident". Ensuring nobody can share threats data is a massive net boon to people that harm kids.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    > I do feel like I'm conversing with an LLM that has never attended a school but is tuned to contradict me regardless here! I very much enjoyed my time at an ordinary human child school and attended the mandatory educational lessons very promptly. There's a balance between using data to identify problems and collecting data which is open to abuse. What concerns me is the apparent indiscriminate use of the data by teachers who are typically not the most privacy focussed people. The predatory teacher example is an outlier, but it demonstrates how there can be unintended consequences. What's more likely is that there will be unconscious bias by the teachers against the disadvantaged children from poorer backgrounds. To my mind, teachers should only function as a backup social service for those kids that slip through the net (admittedly, not a good net) and should be focussed primarily on education. What set my alarm bells ringing is the lack of openness about the database and whether families can correct false records (assuming they even know that the data exists).