Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I've written about this in more detail for the Michigan Messenger, but here's the Cliff's notes version: the ACLU of Michigan is threatening to sue Ann Arbor Pioneer high school because they are refusing to grant recognition to a student club formed to oppose the school's plan to put 53 surveillance cameras around the campus. The club is called Students Against Surveillance and the school principal is refusing to give them recognition as an official student club.
The school principal says he doesn't want "political clubs" at the school, but the school already recognizes such student groups as the Society for Stem Cell Research and the World Crises Awareness Club. The Equal Access Act is quite clear on this: if you allow any non-curricular clubs to form, you cannot refuse to treat them equally "on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings."
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Comments
If the kids were smart, they'd use surveillance gear -- audio and video -- to get dirt on the entire faculty and then blackmail them into doing their bidding. They could call themselves Junior FBI.
Posted by: Bill the Cat | March 27, 2008 10:05 AM
Apparently the principal there subscribes to the Shrub administration's view on surviellance...we can do it, but if you oppose us, you are bad by definition.
This should be a fun one to watch.
An interesting (at least to me) tangentially related note: In Canada, they have put surviellance cameras (and I think photo radar) at many stop lights to stop red light running and speeding. It's worked so well (as in: reduced speeding and red light running), that the police are taking them down because thier revenue is decreasing....
Cheers.
Posted by: FastLane | March 27, 2008 10:19 AM
Apparently the principal there subscribes to the Shrub administration's view on surviellance...we can do it, but if you oppose us, you are bad by definition.
This should be a fun one to watch.
An interesting (at least to me) tangentially related note: In Canada, they have put surviellance cameras (and I think photo radar) at many stop lights to stop red light running and speeding. It's worked so well (as in: reduced speeding and red light running), that the police are taking them down because thier revenue is decreasing....
Cheers.
Posted by: FastLane | March 27, 2008 10:20 AM
I've not got a tinfoil hat but when they are putting up a surveillance camera in your street that (amongst other things) will record every time I go in and out of my apartment you've got to start to think that we've already lost... :-(
Posted by: David Durant | March 27, 2008 10:33 AM
Update: the administration folded and agreed to recognize the group. That was inevitable, but I'm surprised it happened so quickly.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 27, 2008 11:41 AM
FastLane, do you have a cite for that? Because I was reading in the paper just last week (http://metronews.ca/story_local.aspx?id=111210&searchtype=1&fragment=False) that the red-light cameras were working well in Toronto and have dropped collisions causing death or injury by 18.2%.
Of course the property damage caused by people slamming on the breaks so as not to get a tickey has increased by a similar amount when you look Ontario-wide.
Which shows that there are unintended consequences of every action I guess. Let's hope the administration at this highschool gets a snootful of theirs when the club forms as permitted by law and protests by every legal means possible the surveillance of their corridors.
Posted by: kodiak | March 27, 2008 11:47 AM
"I've not got a tinfoil hat but when they are putting up a surveillance camera in your street that (amongst other things) will record every time I go in and out of my apartment you've got to start to think that we've already lost... :-( "
You probably don't want to move to the UK, then.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 27, 2008 3:07 PM
It doesn't matter. The school will get tired of replacing cameras after the kids destroy them for the tenth time.
Posted by: tehghey | March 27, 2008 6:04 PM
> You probably don't want to move to the UK, then.
I live in the UK...
Until I moved offices recently I would be camera from my front door to the train station, on the train platform, on the train, on the tube platform, on the tube, on the street to my work and then all day at work.
This just for an average day at work...
Posted by: David Durant | March 27, 2008 8:22 PM
Totally OT, but pretty damn weird:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5654702.html
Posted by: Tex | March 27, 2008 11:55 PM
Holy exploding boob-job, Tex, OT yes, but certainly "cruel AND unusual". Americans are crazy, crazy I tells ya! :) -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 28, 2008 12:38 AM
"Of course the property damage caused by people slamming on the breaks so as not to get a tickey has increased by a similar amount when you look Ontario-wide."
There is evidence that these cameras may cause more accidents than they prevent:
http://drx.typepad.com/psychotherapyblog/2008/03/police-cameras.html
Posted by: Dr X | March 28, 2008 7:51 AM
We already have cameras everywhere...and RFID chips are going into credit cards, passport and I'm sure Student IDs! We are all going to be tracked so we need to block those pesky RFID chips...use wallets or passport cases that block RFID signals. I got mine at http://www.RFIDBlockr.com - No need for a duct tape wallet anymore!
Posted by: Ian Fleming | March 28, 2008 10:28 AM
re the off topic - TSA policy can require one to REMOVE a body piercing? What?
I have several friends who have body jewelry. They live in fricking holes in the body, often in tender flesh. Removing them can be painful, can cause irritation or even infection. Removing a standard externally-threaded nipple ring means pulling the screw threads back out through the piercing, and that can cut or abrade the flesh. Removing the jewelry from a fresh healing piercing can damage the healing process - and the healing often takes months. This is a medically dangerous requirement.
But don't we all feel so much safer knowing that TSA is protecting us from nipple rings on our aircraft?
Posted by: Lee | March 28, 2008 12:32 PM
The key thing about red-light cameras and collisions is that they are causing low-speed rear-end collisions, while reducing high-speed head-on and T-bone collisions.
Guess which kind tends to send people to the hospital or morgue, and which only sends them to a collision reporting centre.
Posted by: Rick Pikul | March 28, 2008 2:23 PM