Blocking has been standard in some workplaces, and stricter blocking has been standard in schools, but monitoring isn't. Small and medium businesses and academia often have little or no blocking.

No-one gets any alert if I write "I want to kill myself or maybe the president" here (over TLS), nor will they when you download this page. For some children, this does generate an alert -- even on a secure site.

There hasn't been a company of any size I've worked for in the last at least 25 years which didn't require signing an acceptable use agreement which includes notification that all activities may be monitored.

What country are you talking about? Honest question, just curious. I am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet (block parts, sure, but not monitor) and 10 years ago even large companies did not do it.

Every URL accessed via a proxy will be logged, even no one is actively reviewing those logs regularly

Monitoring is done everywhere and has been done for a long time. Whether or not they check it depends on how lazy IT is.

The Levandowski incident at Google revealed that they had VERY extensive logs. They appear not to look at them routinely, but the logs are there when needed.

- 2 FA

- geofencing at VPN level (you can't take work laptop to Russia, India, China, etc)

- everything is whitelisted. Some employees can only access x.theirBank.com, everything is else blocked. This is the case with tellers, folks in the retail banking

- even for IT/dev, one should get explicit permission to get access to youtube, github

- every work laptop comes with an agent like ZScalar, which enforces these policies by coordinating with a central server.

Monitoring work or school internet use without specific prior suspicion is illegal in the entire EU; so this level of surveillance may be "standard" in some countries, but hardly globally.

> In China,

Not exactly the reference I was looking for, though from this perspective any level of surveillance is normal.

Monitoring usually means logging all activity and then automatically or manually sifting through the logs to look for things, possibly much later, and possibly in response to other subsequent events.

Monitoring is considered by most people to be worse, and may come with more legal liabilities.

Schools have started constant CCTV surveillance. Often with flawed AI systems in place. Clear bags and all these practices condition them to value their privacy less, which is a very bad thing.

> Kids in the west wouldn't think twice about accepting the Ts and C's for Snapchat or IG or anything else that includes face scanning tech.

Surely you understand why that's bad, right? What they're taught hasn't been updated in decades, whereas the world around them has changed so much. They're taught as kids not to trust strangers. Why are they not taught to not trust random apps?

Furthermore, children can't actually accept T&C's as a matter of binding law. The fact they just push the button notwithstanding.

What has been normalized is legal predation (something parents should be paying attention to and warning children about as they get older), and apathy toward actively slapping down abusive corporate business models. This is showing indications of turning around, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

In terms of monitoring Internet usage at schools; it may be done to a point, but I'm far more concerned with the trend toward omnipresent physical surveillance through facial recognition or device fingerprinting. It's one thing to try to police content to appropriate subject matter for a school; it's completely different to start holding a child accountable to having a digital footprint to manage all the time. Adults can't even manage that responsibly, and I don't think forcing them to do it while they are young will play well with ensuring they understand how to navigate the physical world well.

Given the adversarial objectives of most technology companies, I can't see the sense in putting in the effort to basically manufacture "trained consumers" for big tech. I'd rather see them taught computing in general and gradually introduce them to software creation and program awareness so they can make their own decisions. Of course, that seems to end up the kind of thing you get at vocational schools instead of primary Ed nowadays.

To me the upsetting part is that these kids must feel unsafe / monitored. Which is exactly what they shouldn't go through in school, it's far from a good start in life.

But then again with all the school shootings I don't blame the security companies, it's a deep cultural/societal issue. It's similar to what happened in Europe in the last few years, now it's business as usual when soldiers in full gear + assault rifles patrol the streets in major cities or during big public events. It sucks but there isn't a perfect answer to the problem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-...

Nothing drives an economy like fear.

The Culture of Fear - Barry Glassner

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fear-Americans-Minorities-Mic...

Perhaps we should. Companies exploiting peoples' irrational fears and inability to do math are huge part of the problem. It would be less bad (but still bad) if they only scammed people, selling school shooting protection charms or other magical items. But instead, they're selling ineffective solutions with bad side effects, taking away freedoms, creating stress and feelings of insecurity.

Few things irk me as much as people making money from hurting other people.

I've not seen a lot of that.. More at US Christmas markets.

At any rate, I view policing events in that fashion or China adding security guards for their knife attack problem as not actually the same as US schools. In most cases the perpetrator is an adult that is dropping out and hard to reach. The US is worried about youth going through their social integration system who become violent as a result and that it apparently doesn't catch deteriorating preemptively as much as other societies. Many arguments can be made as to why, i.e. a litigious society leads to little personal risk to address abnormal problems.

A child who goes to a US school and observes the precautions should become paranoid about trusting themselves and their friends not to go on a killing spree. A child going to a Chinese school should mostly be more afraid of a scarier world.

Many larger schools have their own police officers, because they have to. My fiance is a high school teacher and just out of her classes in the past 2 months she's had one student arrested and expelled for bringing a firearm to school and another for bringing nearly a pound of marijuana (in a state where it is illegal at the state level) to school. Earlier this year they had two students expelled for having sex in a classroom after school while filming part of it with one of their phones.

Even from 1998-2002 we had school police. We had multiple people dealing marijuana, MDMA, LSD, and probably other stuff I wasn't aware about. We had several students investigated pre 9/11 for threatening to deploy pipe bombs at the school, we had more than one overdose (all MDMA I think), I'd watch a girl in study center once or twice a month sit there and rub her face the desk or her binder with pupils the size of saucers, we had students drinking on school property in the middle of the day. We had at least one student that I know of on an ankle monitor for most of high school. If you went out for a sport you would be drug tested regularly, without notice, pulled out of class at random and people would occasionally fail. While we had students doing FFA and being volunteer junior firefighters after school we also had people with extensive juvenile records and children.

When I was in middle/high school 16-21 years ago you could buy drugs/pornography/bootleg cdr movies/alcohol/other things that were age restricted like ephedrine (we abused ephedrine so much I have no idea how I didn't have heart failure) in the hall or bathroom between classes just by walking up to any number of people. I've found talking to people this is not a unique experience and most of the same is still occurring in high schools right now.

Many schools across the country simply are not utopian dream lands. If I had kids, I'd be 100% fine with them being forced to have clear backpacks and I'd go a step further and suggest they only be allowed to and from their locker upon arrival/departure and not allowed between classes. It's one small step that considerably reduces the risk of a kid lugging a weapon, explosive device, non-personal use amounts of drugs. Sure, I could have hidden a small arsenal and a large quantity of drugs on my person between my hoodie and jnco jeans in high school but a clear (or no) backpack drastically reduces the likelihood of these things being taken to school.

Maybe the schools need to change, and kids need to be integrated into the real world, instead of being retained in relatively pretty prisons with bad food until they're adults.

In Pakistan the gender segregation is almost certainly a religious thing given Islam is the religion of 96% of the country. Segregation by gender is also found in masjids/mosques, this is a normal part of Islamic culture.

Comparing a religious custom in a predominately Islamic country to clear backpacks in American schools is wholly irrelevant.

Also, I find this part highly disturbing: “They don’t really give you a list of things not to do,” he said. “Once you’re in trouble, they act like you knew.”

This is eerily close to a typical oppressive state. See a troublemaker, make up a rule that you can prove they broke, punish them. Not a similar scale, of course, but it's still pretty bad.

No. If you are using a school/employer provided email account you should be using them for school/work stuff. If you are using a school/employer device, you should be using them for school/employer stuff.

If you want to tell Jack or Jane that they fuel your fire and you want to do sexy time or that you violently soiled your pants and wondered if they could bring you their gym shorts to the upstairs bathroom then use your own device on your own service.

Clear backpacks is such an absurd thing that I still find it difficult to believe that adult human beings came up with such an idea in the name of security. It's something I'd only ever expect to encounter in a novel about a dystopian future.

I think you'll find the opposite effect. Kids are being taught to hide things far better than before. Increasing their privacy skills for their adult lives :D

Is it not possible to buy a used phone there? I got my last several phones on Ebay; like cars, they depreciate a lot in the first year or two, so getting a 1-2 year old model will save you a ton.

My fiance is a high school teacher, in the past two months they've had a student come to school with a handgun and be expelled and handed over to the police and another expelled for having legit dealer quantities (nearly a pound) of marijuana (packed and placed in mason jars in her backpack) in a state where it isn't legal at a state level.

I can see why some might want clear backpacks.