Study Of 11K Children: Video Games Probably Don't Alter Behavior

from the welcome-results dept

As humanity continues to grapple with the question of how video games impact behavior in children, we find ourselves with no shortage of studies. From the Macbeth Effect, to the studies themselves causing aggression, to studies directly looking at a potential link between violent games and real-life violence, we have plenty of data points, yet the results tend to range from ambiguous to non-existent. That tends to be a problem for everyone involved, because it creates an intelligence vacuum ripe to be filled with supposition and grand-standing. What we really need is more studies of a longer nature and with a greater sample size that go further in demonstrating a concrete answer.

Here to provide a study of a longer nature and with a greater sample size to demonstrate a concrete answer is the University of Glasgow, who used Great Britain's enormous ten-year Millenium Cohort Study to study the link or absence of a link between playing video games and real-life behavior. Their findings were a resounding affirmation for all of us who believe in common sense.

TV is generally thought of as more harmless than video games when it comes to the emotional health of kids but the Glasgow study found that "watching TV for 3 h or more daily at 5 years predicted increasing conduct problems between the ages of 5 years and 7 years." No corollary effect was found with video games, likely because parents are more likely to monitor or regulate video game screen time than TV screen time.

This indicates a couple of things. First, parents are likely way too wary of video games compared to television. And second, while one might suggest that the vigilance shown to games by parents is a mitigating factor, the fact remains that the study showed a minor correlation in television and none in games. So, whatever your quibbles, the practical reality of video games in society is one that has no discernible effect on child behavior.

That said, because this is science, we wouldn't want to suggest that this ends the debate entirely.

As with any study, there are caveats. This isn't a be-all, end-all set of findings. The authors themselves say that "the study highlights the need for more detailed data to explore risks of various forms of screen time, including exposure to screen violence." Nevertheless, given the breadth of data drawn from 10 years and more than 10,000 participants, this could be an important cornerstone for future research and conversations about how video games do—or do not—affect behavior.

In other words, also because this is science, it should be noted that it is incumbent upon those claiming there is a link to show their evidence for that position. Studies like this are going to be a problem for that side of the debate moving forward. While it may be very hard to prove a negative, it's not as difficult to show a void of evidence for the position that behavior and video games are linked.

Filed Under: behavior, children, video games

TSA Security Theater Makes Unwilling Co-Star Out Of 3-Year-Old With Rare Medical Condition

from the learning-from-your-mistakes-not-permitted-by-governing-TSA-bylaws dept

It seems the TSA is unable to learn from its mistakes. When your entire operation is continually scrutinized and criticized by the public and policy makers, you'd think there would be a concerted effort to minimize these sorts of embarrassing incidents.

The TSA hasn't met a medical condition it can't treat as threat. Anything physically unusual is subjected to additional patdowns, harassment and detainment. Err on the side of caution, I suppose, but it's doing itself no favors by refusing to up its level of understanding past "aggressively mystified."

A disabled child was harassed by government agents and his family was caused to miss their flight, all because inept security screeners thought that his medical equipment may have been a bomb. Even children with debilitating medical conditions set off paranoiac ideations and inhumane treatment from the Transportation Security Administration.

3-year-old Apollo, who was born with a cardiovascular abnormality that affects his ability to eat, was suspected of harboring an explosive device after TSA employees believed they had detected residue on the medical supplies that help keep him alive.

Yes, Apollo's condition is unusual and yes, for whatever reason, his very essential formula set off the explosive residue testing equipment, but the entire system leading up to this point is incredibly fallible. The TSA's boilerplate response ignores a great many facts in its hurry to offload the blame on Apollo's parents.

The TSA looked into Bergeron’s complaint for Yahoo Shine on Friday before issuing the following statement: “We regret that the family did not have a positive screening experience. We strongly encourage passengers with medical conditions to arrive at the checkpoint with ample time for screening. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect.”

Thanks for the "arrive early" tip, but Apollo's mother (Renee Bergeron) did everything she could do to expedite this process and it still went wrong.

“I walked right up to the first agent and told her, ‘My son is tube-fed and this cooler has formula and medical supplies in it,’” Bergeron said, explaining that she had hoped that being direct would be a helpful approach and that it would have prompted a TSA agent to do a thorough search and swab of the items before sending them through to their gate.

No such luck. The responding (ha!) TSA agent told her to put it on the belt with the rest of luggage and made no attempt to inform the screeners up ahead that something unusual might be on the way. The formula cooler triggered the "bomb residue" alarm and Bergeron's (and Apollo's) day went from merely difficult to something much worse.

They were escorted to a restroom then, as Apollo had to go, but Bergeron was not allowed to take him alone. Then the two were ushered to a private room where agents gave Bergeron a thorough pat-down and where a nervous Apollo began to cry and beg his mom to hold him. Bergeron was told she couldn’t touch her son because she could “contaminate” him. “It was horribly traumatic for him,” she said.

“To make a long story short, the flight left without us,” she wrote in her blog. “As it turns out, they don’t hold flights for people suspected of carrying explosives onto the plane.”

Somewhat ironically, Bergeron and her son were on their way to an "Everybody Plays" event, which celebrates and encourages active lives for children with different health issues and disabilities. To be subjected to additional hassle and attention because of his condition isn't going to help Apollo learn to live a fuller life.

Now, it may seem a bit churlish to criticize the agency for following its own policies regarding explosive residue, but it's not as if Bergeron didn't try to let agents know something unusual was headed their way, in terms of both luggage and human beings. But this was ignored and the usual panic ensued when the machine decided the formula was actually explosives. And it's not as if the agency doesn't have any previous experience with this exact flier.

Bergeron said she is considering filing a complaint with the TSA. It’s not the first time they have experienced harassment at the hands of the agency.

Last year they were mistreated on their way to Texas for Apollo’s medical treatment. In that instance, a TSA employee attempted to pour out all four of Apollo’s bottles of formula before he found it in himself to spare all but one. “It was so blown out of proportion and ridiculous” Bergeron said.

The policies constantly override any innate logic TSA agents might possess and continue unimpeded even when the agency itself admits it doesn't think airplanes are terrorist targets. The underlying problem with these policies and the security theater they anchor is that they're unable to be overridden by agents' intuition or better judgement. Because of this, no one learns anything from these experiences. The TSA just copy-pastes another boilerplate "just policy" non-apology and moves on to the next debacle.

Even worse, the TSA itself provides absolutely no assistance for travelers in terms of prepping for unusual situations, other than tell them to "arrive early." Arriving early is completely useless when agents are free to detain fliers for nearly any reason and for indefinite periods of time. A spokesperson spoke to Yahoo and pointed to this post on the TSA's blog as "answering" questions about how bomb residue tests work. But what's contained in that post doesn't address Bergeron's situation at all. Furthermore, it doesn't really explain the system. It spends most of the post telling people TSA agents will be using swabs to detect bomb residue. No information is given as to what common (or uncommon) items/chemicals/household products might cause a false positive. There's no info on failure rates or anything detailing the technology involved. It's just "we'll be using these so don't be worried." In terms of dealing with Bergeron's multiple experiences with the TSA, it's about as useless as a 404 page.

I understand that too much information might give someone an idea of how to bypass these tests, but when you're dealing with the possibility of throwing out the only food a child with a rare medical condition can eat simply because of policies and faulty machinery, you need to be willing to disseminate more info than a canned response and a worthless "we're the good guys" blog post.

Filed Under: children, medical conditions, search, tsa

DailyDirt: Children Are The Future, Engineer Them Well, & Let Them Lead The Way

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The movie GATTACA came out back in 1997, but the technology to breed better people is just now starting to become more practical. We've been able (through in vitro fertilization) to select a desired baby gender for years, so selecting other traits doesn't seem that far off -- even though gene expression is a pretty complicated process. Here are just a few more projects that could lead to designing our kids' genes with more fine tuning.

• Zhao Bowen heads up a genetic research project at BGI Shenzhen that aims to crack the genetic code for intelligence by sequencing the genes of thousands of intelligent people around the world. The project boldly claims that it could boost the IQ of unborn children by 20 points. [url]
• Genetic research is finding possible links between genetic markers and some forms of autism, suggesting that there could be genetic therapies in the future. Mapping genetic mutations to particular brain traits isn't a simple task, but with more data, brain research has the potential to make significant changes to society. [url]
• Professor Julian Savulescu argues that screening babies for genetic defects is simply responsible parenting. The debate over designer babies is far from over.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: autism, babies, children, designer babies, dna sequencing, eugenics, gattaca, gene therapy, genetic engineering, intelligence, iq, julian savulescu, parenting, zhao bowen
Companies: bgi shenzhen

Latest 'Think Of The Children' Scaremongering: Pirated Films Might 'Disturb' Them

from the don't-look-now dept

Just last week we heard how Russia has extended its "think of the children" law to include copyright infringement. That was a classic case of function creep, but here's a more direct invocation of "the children" in order to attack unauthorized downloads of files, this time in the UK:

One in five young film fans (18%) admit they have been disturbed by the movies they have watched on pirate websites and two thirds (65%) wish they had checked the film's official age rating first.

While almost half of children and teens (42%) admit to being aware of rules in place at home designed to restrict what they can and can't look at on the internet, the research commissioned by The Industry Trust for IP Awareness, in partnership with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), shows a quarter (25%) download or stream movies from unofficial sources, which offer no guidance on age ratings.

Now, there are a heap of issues with this. For example, what exactly does "disturbed" mean in this context? Some films are deeply disturbing, but in a good sense ("Schinder's List", for example, rated "15"), because they bring new but troubling knowledge: does "disturbing" include those? Or only the "bad" ones -- in which case, how is "bad" defined? Unfortunately, I can't find the original research to explore that, or even to see how the questions were framed (always a critical issue for such surveys.)

But leaving aside all those methodological questions, there is a key flaw with this "for the children" argument, which is that we don't know what percentage of children who watch legal downloads and DVDs are "disturbed" by what they see. That's a key number, because it needs to be lower than the one pertaining to pirate sites if the latter is to have any relevance. It might be, for example, that children are more disturbed by their parents' cinematic library than by what they search out for themselves online; after all, such searches are likely to be based on recommendations from their friends, or on what children read on other sites -- in other words, an informed choice with plenty of context.

What's interesting here is how the currently-fashionable "think of the children" trope is being deployed as part of a campaign against piracy. As such, it's part of a long tradition of trying to frighten people away from unauthorized downloads by suggesting that they fund terrorism, are packed with malware or make your hair fall out (OK, I made up that last one.)

So here's a suggestion. Instead of resorting to scaremongering, which never works anyway, why doesn't the British film industry try offering a range of good online products at fair prices? After all, it seems to be working elsewhere....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: children, copyright, downloading, infringement, think of the children

FBI Has Used Drones On Americans To Save A Child... And The Rest Is Secret

from the for-the-children! dept

You may recall a few weeks ago that FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted to using drones to spy on Americans (and that there were no rules about using those drones). In response, Senator Rand Paul asked Mueller for details and those have now been sent, saying that the drones have been used 10 times, though they're very, very, very quick to play down the significance of this (and to highlight how they were used to recover a kidnapped 5-year-old -- "for the children!").

The FBI uses UAVS in very limited circumstances to conduct surveillance when there is a specific, operational need. UAVs have been used for surveillance to support missions related to kidnappings, search and rescue operations, drug interdictions, and fugitive investigations. Since late 2006, the FBI has conducted surveillance using UAVs in eight criminal cases and two national security cases. For example, earlier this year in Alabama, the FBI used UAV surveillance to support the successful rescue of the 5-year-old child who was being held hostage in an underground bunker by Jimmy Lee Dykes. None of the UAVS used by the FBI are armed with either lethal or non--lethal weapons, and the FBI has no plans to use weapons with UAVs. The FBI does not use UAVs to conduct "bulk" surveillance or to conduct general surveillance not related to an investigation or assessment.

Of course, they follow that up by also saying they can't really talk about how they use drones, because, you know, that's secret.

While we share your interest in transparency concerning the use of law enforcement and national security tools, we are not in a position to disclose publicly more detailed information concerning the Bureau's specific use of UAVS. Such additional information is "Law Enforcement Sensitive" or, in some cases, classified, based on the need to protect the effectiveness of this capability in law enforcement and national security matters. We have enclosed a classified addendum that provides more detailed information in response to your inquiry. We request that you not disseminate the information in the addendum without prior consultation with the FBI.

Yeah. So, they use drones "to save the kidnapped hostage children!" and [REDACTED]. That's not particularly comforting.

Filed Under: america, children, drones, fbi, rand paul, robert mueller, surveillance

7-Year-Old Student Suspended For Waving Around A 'Gun' Made From A Pastry

from the 'always-be-a-good-boy/don't-ever-play-with-buns' dept

So, it's come to this. Oh, wait. I've already used that opening, back when I thought the pinnacle of guns-n-schools overreaction had been approached, if not actually surmounted. Let's start again.

So, NOW it's come to this. A seven-year-old suspended from school for crudely fashioning his breakfast pastry into a gun-like shape and brandishing it in the most menacing fashion a gun-shaped pastry can be wielded.

A 7-year-old Anne Arundel County boy was suspended for two days for chewing a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, “Bang, bang”— an offense the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family.

The pastry “gun” was a rectangular strawberry-filled bar, akin to a Pop-Tart, that the second-grader had tried to nibble into the shape of a mountain Friday morning, but then found it looked more like a gun, said his father, William “B.J.” Welch.

Yes. A Pop Tart knockoff makes a handy makeshift weapon, perhaps explaining why pastries are no longer served in prisons. When I say "it's come to this," it really has, but it's been a long time coming and there's plenty of precedent.

- Feb. 5, 2013 - A ten-year-old Virginia student was suspended for bringing an orange-tipped toy gun on a bus.

- Feb. 1, 2013 - A 9-year-old student was suspended for bringing a 2-inch toy gun on a key fob to school.

- Jan. 29, 2013 - A 5-year-old student could be suspended for crafting a Lego gun during an after-school program. Not only that, but he'd crafted his fingers into a gun mere weeks earlier.

- Jan. 22, 2013 - A 5-year-old is suspended for discussing her Hello Kitty bubble gun, saying, "I'll shoot you, you'll shoot me and we'll all play together."

- Jan. 2, 2013 - A 6-year-old in a Washington D.C. school was suspended for making a gun gesture with his hands.

- August 28, 2012 - A deaf 3-year-old preschooler is asked to change the sign he uses for his name -- Hunter -- which he signs by forming a gun with his hands. Apparently, "saying" his name violates the school's weapon policy.

- Feb. 24, 2012 - A drawing of a gun by a four-year-old resulted in the arrest of her father when he came to pick her up from school. He was detained by police and strip-searched while his children were questioned by social services. The gun his child depicted? A plastic toy that belonged to his kids.

That's just a sampling. There are many more stories like these out there. There are many that are underreported or never reported, where parents just deal with the ridiculous outcome of zero-tolerance policies. For some reason, many schools still labor under the delusion that "zero tolerance" equals "tough, but fair." It's neither, and utilizing zero tolerance policies simply prunes the whole process back to a disfigured stump devoid of logic, perspective or context.

So, a child eats something and starts playing with his food because it resembles something other than the RDA-approved Pop Tart knockoff. And his school responds by twisting its own weapons policy into a parody of itself. The actual wording pertaining to prohibited items, courtesy of Lowering the Bar, reads like this:

Any gun of any kind, loaded or unloaded, operable or inoperable, including any object other than a firearm which is a look-a-like of a gun. This shall include, but is not limited to, pellet gun, paintball gun, stun gun, taser, BB gun, flare gun, nail gun, and air soft gun.

How does this policy apply to the pastry? That's a great question, and Lowering the Bar doesn't have an answer:

Josh's gun was not a firearm, because it was a pastry, and it seems highly unlikely that it qualified as a gun "look-a-like," again because it was a pastry. It certainly is nothing like any of the "look-a-like" items set forth in the list, largely because those items are not pastries.

The school's logic apparently is that if it vaguely resembles a gun and someone is pretending it's a gun, then it's a gun look-a-like. Case closed.

This, in and of itself, would be pathetic enough. But it gets worse. The school sent home a letter regarding the (non) incident, which hilariously offers the assistance of staff counselors for anyone "troubled" by the weaponized pastry.

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I am writing to let you know about an incident that occurred this morning in one of our classrooms and encourage you to discuss this matter with your child in a manner you deem most appropriate.

During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one [was] harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.

* * *

As you are aware, the ... Code of Student Conduct and appropriate consequences related to violations of the code are clearly spelled out in the Student Handbook, which was sent home during the first week of school and can be found on our website, www.aacps.org....
If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.

Kevin Underhill at LTB adds:

Pretty sure that if your children are "troubled" by another kid biting a pastry into something that looks sort of like a gun and waving said pastry around, you have already failed as a parent.

And I'd add that if you've done even a merely passable job as a parent, the only "feeling" your children might want to "share" is that their school is run by officious asshats, even if they haven't quite developed the vocabulary to say that in so many words. (Don't kid yourselves, parents: they're quite capable of swearing well above their grade level.)

This is the nadir of the education system's zero tolerance weapon policies. Zero tolerance does nothing more than relieve the administrative staff from the possibility of having blood on their hands. No situtation is too ridiculous to be taken seriously -- and punished harshly. Reducing every incident to binary ensures that no school employee can ever be held responsible for overreacting to any perceived "threat," no matter how innocuous. In many ways, the education system is a reflection of our current "homeland security" ecosystem where the endless pursuit of "safety" has become the impetus for thousands of terrible policies, all enforced inflexibly.

There's a way to pull out of this nosedive but it involves many, many people being willing to make judgement calls on the fly and able to face the heat should their judgement falter. Unfortunately for many in the system, the risk is much higher than the reward. For many in these positions, the possibility of being wrong is incapacitating and zero tolerance policies relieve this pressure. Trying to steer the system back towards a greater reliance on common sense won't be easy, but continuing to let it drift in its current direction will do nothing to improve the safety and security of our schools, much less our country.

Filed Under: children, guns, overreaction, pastries, schools, zero tolerance

Proposed California Bill Would Require Sites To Hand Over Private Info On Kids To Their Parents

from the no,-that-won't-backfire-at-all... dept

It really is stunning how rarely it appears that politicians who introduce bills "for the children" think through the obvious consequences of those bills. For years, we've discussed how COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, has had massive unintended consequences, mainly cutting off lots of useful sites from any kids under the age of 13. It's also led to parents encouraging their kids to lie about their age, when they realize that all their friends are on sites like Facebook. Also, many people point out that COPPA is really an attack on kid's free speech rights. California has passed its own Online Privacy Protection Act that goes a bit further, but apparently, at least one California politician wants to take things even further, and is doing so with a plan that seems incredibly poorly thought out.

California Assemblywoman Nora Campos proposed a bill a few weeks ago, AB 319, that would expand things so much that any sites that collect any information about anyone under the age of 18 would be required under law to reveal that personal information to parents if requested.

Now, think about that for a second. Since this is for any kids up to 18, we're talking about most of the teenage years for most kids. These are the years in which many teens rebel against their parents, which is, in many ways, a natural part of growing up and becoming an independent adult. To think that parents should be able to find out information directly from various sites about their kids' use of those sites seems incredibly problematic. There may be sites where the teens have tried to keep information private from their parents. And maybe that's because, say, the parents are anti-gay, and the child is gay. Do we really want parents to have easy access to that material? Or... what if it's a site for abused kids, and they are signing up to get help and to report that abuse? Under this law, it would appear that parents can check up on their kids on those sites.

What this bill would mean is that, in California, minors can get an abortion without parental notification, but they can't use Facebook. Also, under California law, teenagers may be emancipated as of age 14. But their parents can still spy on their online activities?

Oh yeah, and the parents can order those sites to no longer allow their children to use the sites any more. For troubled kids, seeking to connect with others who can help them at the point when they're struggling the most with their parents, it would seem like a situation that could have disastrous consequences.

An operator shall provide to a parent whose minor dependent has provided personal information to an Internet Web site or online service, upon request of the parent and proper identification, a description of the specific types of personal information collected from the minor by the operator, the opportunity at any time to refuse to permit the operator’s further use or maintenance in retrievable form, or future online collection, of personal information from the minor, and a means that is reasonable under the circumstances for the parent to obtain personal information collected from the minor.

I'm sure Campos is thinking that this is one of those "protect the children" bills that makes for nice headlines. But shouldn't someone actually think about the actual impact of these bills before they get introduced?

Filed Under: california, children, parents, privacy, protect the children

FTC's Overzealous Attempts To 'Protect The Children' May Do Serious Harm To The Internet

from the we-don't-need-the-ftc-to-act-as-our-parents dept

Earlier this year, we were reasonably worried about the FTC's plan to expand COPPA. COPPA -- the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act -- is one of those laws that appears to have the best of intentions. Who doesn't want to protect the privacy of children, right? But as with so many things, the unintended consequences of overprotection often outweigh the benefits. In practice, the existing COPPA, which puts significant additional burdens on sites that target children under 13, has meant that lots of websites simply ban children under 13 entirely. The end result isn't that children under 13 are more protected, but that parents teach their kids it's okay to lie and to sign up for sites when they're "underage." At the same time, this drives away lots of services that could be really helpful to children -- especially educational sites.

And yet... the FTC wants to expand COPPA, rather than fix its problems. While the new proposals are not as bad as some ideas that had originally been floated, there are still some significant problems with them. As CDT notes, the unintended consequences of the broad definitions could raise significant First Amendment issues:

...we are concerned that the updated definition of when a website is “directed to children” could expand COPPA's reach to general audience sites and confuse website owners as to whether these new rules apply to them. This uncertainty will likely prompt more sites to take advantage of the Commission’s new age-screening safe harbor, which could lead to many more sites demanding age or identifying information from all users before allowing access. Requiring age verification from every user runs counter to the First Amendment right to access information anonymously and increases the collection of potentially sensitive information generally. The new rule's uncertainty is magnified for third party plug-in operators, who may now be liable for the decisions of publishers to embed their plug-in on sites directed to children

Similarly, TechFreedom notes some related potential problems with the new rules.

To start, by deeming persistent identifiers as personal information per se, the FTC's new rule runs contrary to established U.S. privacy law: federal courts have unanimously decided that IP addresses do not allow the contacting of a specific individual.

Further, as Commissioner Ohlhausen's dissent notes, the COPPA statute does not allow the FTC to impose liability on sites that do not collect children's information merely because the operator may somehow benefit from an ad network or plug-in operator collecting information—provided the third party neither targets children nor shares information with the site operator.

If a third party becomes liable once a single employee "recognizes the child-directed nature" of a website—whatever that means—COPPA will become the worst kind of notice-and-takedown system: Would a single complaint—or tweet—from a parent or activist group create "knowledge?" Faced with the impossible task of predicting how the FTC might characterize each of the millions of sites on which ads or plug-ins might appear, operators will have to try to block advertising or plug-ins on sites that appears to be child-oriented. If they can't do that effectively, this potential liability may effectively kill behavioral advertising on any site that can't prove it isn't child-oriented—in other words, on small sites.

Thus, COPPA will now impact adult sites, denying publishers revenue and adult users the functionality that is increasingly provided by embeds. Thus, the FTC invites not only a statutory challenge but also a constitutional challenge similar to that which led the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) to be struck down.

Finally, we've got law professor Eric Goldman, who doesn't hold back his thoughts:

Yesterday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (the FTC) promulgated new rules (effectively July 1, 2013) interpreting the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and the new rules are a real mess. They are riddled with innumerable ambiguities and questionable policy choices, and I could spend a decade or two trying to figure out how the new rules apply to different factual situations.

That's not a good thing -- unless you're a lawyer. As he notes, once again, the intentions may have been good, but the implementation is a disaster:

The FTC wanted to crack down on these COPPA workarounds, but in typical FTC fashion, it did so in a ham-fisted and marble-mouthed way.

Basically, we're talking about the usual "unintended consequences" of going overboard in trying to "protect the children!" It's a noble goal, obviously. But, speaking as a parent as well as someone who's aware of how these kinds of rules tend to limit innovation, I'd much prefer that the FTC actually stay out of the parenting business and leave that to me.

Filed Under: children, coppa, ftc, overprotection

Child With Brittle Bone Disease Detained By TSA For An Hour

from the if-you're-going-to-be-oppressive-at-least-do-your-job-right dept

It's no secret that I don't think much of the TSA. In addition to a long list of pieces we've done on what I consider one of the most useless government agencies, there's also the more recent story I covered discussing whether or not the agency's operations have resulted in more deaths in the past decade than all the terrorism against American's combined. Still, there is some discussion over whether all of this freedom-taking and death is worth the fuzzy feeling we all suposedly get when boarding a plane, knowing that at least all of this asshat-ery is making us safer.

But then you hear the story of someone like Shelbi Walser, a twelve year old girl from Texas who suffers brittle bone disease and also apparently has to suffer with over-zealous federal employees that don't have enough common sense to fill a thimble.

Shelbi Walser, 12, has brittle bone disease, and was flying to Tampa, Fla., to receive treatment on Sunday when she was randomly selected for an explosives screening on her way through security. Tammy Daniels, Walser's mother, said that her daughter tested positive for explosives when a screener swabbed Walser's palms and fingers.

Speaking with ABC affiliate WFAA, Walser said that she has no idea how the traces of explosive got on her. "It could have come off fertilizer, because we have chickens. I could have run through something from them," she said. "It could have just come off the ground, because I roll through everything."

Here's the thing. Even if you believe that the threat of terrorism via explosives on airplanes is everything that the government would have you believe (and I don't), and even if you think that the methods used by the TSA can help make us safer (and I don't), we're still left with a federal agency that is given so much leeway in curtailing our liberty that they at least should get their damned jobs right. There can be such a thing as common sense in airport security, where you understand that the 12 year old Texan with brittle bone disease probably isn't going 'splode a jetliner. Certainly it seems unlikely that it would take an hour for the TSA to come to this determination.

"I am by no means undermining our safety in the air. After 9/11, by no means am I doing that," Daniels told WFAA. "But when it comes to children, common sense is not in a textbook."

This has always been the problem with the TSA: in the absence of common sense there is such a thing as the paralysis of bureaucracy, and when that paralysis comes to the people in the form of handbook-style security, then that's a win for the very people we're supposed to be protected against.

Filed Under: children, detention, failures, security theater, tsa

Recording Industry Rep Suggests Parents Should Slap Their Children To Stop Piracy

from the mask-is-slipping dept

One of the many problems with the "guilty until proven innocent" approach to tackling unauthorized filesharing is that it's not clear exactly who should get the punishment. For example, in France, we saw someone convicted not for infringement that he had committed, but something his then-wife had done and even admitted. And it's not just spousal activity that is problematic, as TorrentFreak reports in this interesting case from Germany:

A ruling handed down yesterday by Germany's highest court represents a blow to rightsholders in their quest to clamp down on illicit file-sharing. The court ruled that the parents of a teenager who had made available more than 1,100 songs on file-sharing networks can not be held responsible for their son's infringements, nor be required to monitor or hinder his online activities.

What's particularly interesting here is that Germany's top court not only threw out the original fine, but did so without imposing any unreasonable conditions on the parents, for example by requiring them to spy on their child:

The Court ruled that the parents had met their parental obligations when they informed their child of "basic do's and don'ts" including that file-sharing copyrighted content online is illegal.

Furthermore, the Court ruled that the parents were not required to monitor their child's online activities nor install special software to restrict his online behavior. This would only be required should the parents have "reasonable grounds" to presume that their child would engage in infringing activities online.

Of course, not everyone was happy with this result, which could have major implications for imposing fines in Germany, since it seems likely that much unauthorized file sharing there as elsewhere is carried out by teenagers in their family homes. The Netzpolitik.org blog pointed us to an interesting comment made by a representative of the music industry (original in German):

The case shines "a harsh light" on the fact that, for many parents, the concept of upbringing has become a foreign word, the legal representative of the music industry complained, according to the AFP news agency at the hearing before the federal court in Karlsruhe. While before "an occasional slap didn't hurt", today children are kept on a loose leash.

This hankering after the good old days when parents could hit children to cow them into submission is hardly surprising: it's the physical equivalent of the disproportionate legal punishment the music industry would like to see meted out to all those caught doing naughty things online like sharing files without permission.

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Filed Under: children, germany, liability, parents