Category: children

The macabre truth of gun control in the US is that toddlers kill more people than terrorists do

Last week, a Florida gun rights activist was shot in the back by her four-year-old son. How much longer will we keep participating in the collective lie that deadly weapons keep us safe?

The Guardian

This is how the government is catching people who use child porn sites

As criminals become more savvy about using technology such as Tor to hide their tracks, investigators are turning to hacking tools to thwart them. In some cases, members of law enforcement agencies are placing malware on sites that might have thousands of users. Some privacy advocates and analysts worry that in doing so, investigators may also wind up hacking and identifying the computers of law-abiding people who are seeking to remain anonymous, people who can also include political dissidents and journalists.

“As the hacking techniques become more ambitious, failure in execution can lead to large-scale privacy and civil liberties abuses at home and abroad,” said Ahmed Ghappour, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. “It’s imperative that Congress step in to regulate exactly who and how law enforcement may hack.”

But Justice Department officials said that the government investigates crimes based on evidence of illegal activities. “When we obtain a warrant, it’s because we have convinced a judge that there is probable cause that we’ll be able to find evidence in a particular location,” said a senior department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the department.

Washington Post

DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked

If you went to grade school in the 1980s or 90s, chances are good you were publicly offered drugs at school by a uniformed police officer.

“Hey,” he might have said, “Want to meet up behind the gym after school and get high?”

Luckily for you, you were savvy enough to understand that this wasn’t an earnest offer. It was an exercise in resistance.

“No thanks!” you’d say. “I have homework to go do.”

“Come on,” he’d retort. Impressed with your delivery, he’d decided to step up the simulated peer pressure. “I thought you were cool.”

“Not doing drugs is cool,” was your reply.

Your classmates might have applauded, at the officer/teacher’s prompting. Then you went back to your seat, and the officer would go over the things you did well in the exercise, so the class could learn by your example. In addition to teaching the other students, the officer was also building up your self esteem.

Self esteem and resistance were two major cornerstones of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program, also known as DARE. Through the 1980s and the 1990s, DARE swelled from a tiny local program to a massive, and massively expensive, national campaign against drugs in schools. At its peak, DARE was practiced in 75% of American schools, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run. It had spiffy, 90s branded swag, and a baritone-voiced mascot, “Daren the Lion.”

There was just one problem: DARE didn’t work.

Priceonomics