John Whitehead's Commentary
Mosaic 2000 Threatens Students' Rights and Family Privacy
Mosaic 2000 is a student profiling software program that is supposed to help school officials pick out potentially violent students. It is essentially a word processing-like program that presents a series of questions for school principals to answer. The questions probe into areas such as the student's home and social life, access to guns and unusual changes in behavior. The software then uses the answers to indicate whether a student's profile points to the potential for violent behavior.
When the new program was introduced, civil libertarians and other privacy experts--including myself--warned of the potential dangers. Now, just a few months later, even traditional law enforcement groups are raising concerns about the system.
A recent headline in USA Today summed up the concerns: "Secret Service [says] School Shooters Defy 'Profiling.'" It turns out that even the top security force in the world doesn't think that potentially violent students can be accurately targeted.
Secret Service experts studied 40 cases of school violence over the past 20 years. However, they could not find a common demographic profile. As USA Today reported, "[L]ike political assassins, there is no single profile of a school shooter."
Mosaic 2000 and its proponents ignore a simple life lesson: you can't judge people by outward appearances. Human beings are complex and complicated. They simply cannot be profiled as if they were machines.
These concerns about profiling are only the beginning. There are serious issues involving the Mosaic program that go beyond judging children by their covers.
First, what will happen to the data compiled by school officials? The software's producers claim that schools will keep independent records. Such a claim, however, ignores the real-life interaction between educational administrators who would be compelled to share the data among themselves. And, in a world where the Internet links everyone, there's no reason to believe that this data won't become part of an online database. In fact, it is now commonplace for school officials to report students to the police, who would then have access to such records.
Second, exactly what are the questions in the Mosaic profile? So far, the specific queries have been kept under wraps and only the vague, general subject matter of the questions has been made public. This veil of secrecy has disturbed some observers. There is also the issue that Mosaic 2000 refuses to address the concerns of experts in school safety. The designers won't submit their methods to scientific review, and they simply refuse to admit that the software could make a serious problem even worse.
Third, many agencies that should be protecting our constitutional rights, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, are themselves under continuing investigation for civil liberties violations. Another example is Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles County district attorney who is one of the main proponents of Mosaic 2000. Garcetti's office has worked with the Los Angeles Police Department for years--the same department where some of the most egregious violations of civil rights ever have recently been uncovered.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Mosaic 2000 appears to be paving the way for an intrusive therapeutic state that could pose a serious threat to family autonomy. The questions in the software are only the beginning. Once school officials have targeted a specific student, either because he or she dresses differently or appears withdrawn, the door is opened for further intrusion. In fact, any concerned parent who takes any kind of action to protect his child at school--such as speaking out at school board meetings or complaining to school officials--will probably be targeted. In some cases, this will mean police investigations of parents and, thus, state intrusion into families and their home life. The only question is how far the Mosaic police will go to gather information.
At such a point, the possibilities are endless and would be justified under the guise of school safety. The student could be forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation. State officials could insert themselves into the student's home, gathering "data" on parents and siblings. And this intrusive behavior would all be based on a myth--that potentially violent students could be picked out through feeding sterile data into word processing software.
The truth is that people cannot be categorized as if they were digital chips in a machine. Each student is a unique individual. Neither the students nor their parents should have their rights threatened by intrusive social science.
When the new program was introduced, civil libertarians and other privacy experts--including myself--warned of the potential dangers. Now, just a few months later, even traditional law enforcement groups are raising concerns about the system.
A recent headline in USA Today summed up the concerns: "Secret Service [says] School Shooters Defy 'Profiling.'" It turns out that even the top security force in the world doesn't think that potentially violent students can be accurately targeted.
Secret Service experts studied 40 cases of school violence over the past 20 years. However, they could not find a common demographic profile. As USA Today reported, "[L]ike political assassins, there is no single profile of a school shooter."
Mosaic 2000 and its proponents ignore a simple life lesson: you can't judge people by outward appearances. Human beings are complex and complicated. They simply cannot be profiled as if they were machines.
These concerns about profiling are only the beginning. There are serious issues involving the Mosaic program that go beyond judging children by their covers.
First, what will happen to the data compiled by school officials? The software's producers claim that schools will keep independent records. Such a claim, however, ignores the real-life interaction between educational administrators who would be compelled to share the data among themselves. And, in a world where the Internet links everyone, there's no reason to believe that this data won't become part of an online database. In fact, it is now commonplace for school officials to report students to the police, who would then have access to such records.
Second, exactly what are the questions in the Mosaic profile? So far, the specific queries have been kept under wraps and only the vague, general subject matter of the questions has been made public. This veil of secrecy has disturbed some observers. There is also the issue that Mosaic 2000 refuses to address the concerns of experts in school safety. The designers won't submit their methods to scientific review, and they simply refuse to admit that the software could make a serious problem even worse.
Third, many agencies that should be protecting our constitutional rights, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, are themselves under continuing investigation for civil liberties violations. Another example is Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles County district attorney who is one of the main proponents of Mosaic 2000. Garcetti's office has worked with the Los Angeles Police Department for years--the same department where some of the most egregious violations of civil rights ever have recently been uncovered.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Mosaic 2000 appears to be paving the way for an intrusive therapeutic state that could pose a serious threat to family autonomy. The questions in the software are only the beginning. Once school officials have targeted a specific student, either because he or she dresses differently or appears withdrawn, the door is opened for further intrusion. In fact, any concerned parent who takes any kind of action to protect his child at school--such as speaking out at school board meetings or complaining to school officials--will probably be targeted. In some cases, this will mean police investigations of parents and, thus, state intrusion into families and their home life. The only question is how far the Mosaic police will go to gather information.
At such a point, the possibilities are endless and would be justified under the guise of school safety. The student could be forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation. State officials could insert themselves into the student's home, gathering "data" on parents and siblings. And this intrusive behavior would all be based on a myth--that potentially violent students could be picked out through feeding sterile data into word processing software.
The truth is that people cannot be categorized as if they were digital chips in a machine. Each student is a unique individual. Neither the students nor their parents should have their rights threatened by intrusive social science.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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