The media is scaring them into accepting these measures, which is standard practice in totalitarian states, by the way. Create a climate of fear, and introduce draconian measures which the public will then accept. And that is how a democratic society slowly becomes authoritarian, it plays out very slowly over decades.
In the Netherlands, "the Media" and "far right" are often direct opposites, at least, that's how the far right wants it to look. Data shows that "far right" gets more media time than many other parts of the political spectrum, yet they keep saying this media "censors" them.
When I was a teenager I would pour Coca-Cola into the school computers after seeing a fellow student get into trouble for similar stuff. Never got caught for that. It's acid and worked especially well against powered up electronic equipment.
I wouldn't be surprised nowadays they would just start a rumor about the teacher's sexual misconduct or grooming of the students, in response, instead. And the accusation could spread and escalate, completely destroying the life of the teacher.
A certain percentage of the population will just make stuff up if they have the opportunity to do so, and "juicy" gossip can spread virally. So if they ask for "witnesses" to come forward, they will. Sex offenders are hated so much in society, they get beaten and abused in prison all the time, so it's essentially torture in the end.
It might be legal for them to call the cops, but it still does not absolve them from moral responsibility for their actions. Including all the distress it would cause the child's family, and the likely ongoing PTSD from the incident.
And so do reinforced concrete walls, they block the signal and thus prevent emergency services from being contacted too. And so many other things. Radio communications are unreliable by default. Someone's prank should not result in criminal charges unless tangible harm has occurred.
Intent, not the act is 99 percent etc etc. Wether or not harm took place does not matter, if it did, the entire basis of our legal system would rely upon only direct evidence of violent acts.
This is why attempted murder, kidnapping, etc is a charge. We do not yet have a charge of "attempted mass personal device disablement". and there is no reasonable case for......"manslaughter" of a device.
Being "realistic"/less analagous; Your mobile device is the most important inanimate object to you in every single category imaginable. And this is the case for most of humanity for some time now.
If someone knowingly removed my access to my personal device maliciously, I would suddenly start caring very much about seeing that persons freedoms taken away.
Edit: after rambling I wanna reiterate my first bit....intent is 99 percent. In this case, it's a kid. The law has context, and I think they should of course be lenient.
Yes, and if the intent was to prevent access to emergency services, then yes that would rightfully be a crime. But if the intent was to pull a stupid prank that would temporarily disable someone's iPhone for 5 minutes, then that should not be a crime, if only done once.
The kid should be told not to do it again. And no law enforcement should have ever been involved in the first place. Otherwise we are teaching those children to distrust authorities, that authorities are unjust and unfair. Thus undermining the rule of law.
All their classmates are also involved and watching the outcome of the situation. Some might end up seeing the "system" as being unfair and are not going to think twice before stealing or committing some other crime, e.g. fraud.
I wonder if law enforcement have access to the camera footage? This makes it every car a mobile CCTV on wheels?
How difficult would it be for Tesla to implement ANPR and upload every number plate spotted together with GPS coordinates, to a central server? The chances of them doing it are very low, but it's still interesting to consider such possibilities.
Maybe 20 years from now they could implement facial recognition? That would be an absolute nightmare scenario. If every car has that many cameras, essentially privacy is finished, it's worse than Orwell's 1984 book.
> How difficult would it be for Tesla to implement ANPR and upload every number plate spotted together with GPS coordinates, to a central server?
Realistically, probably not hard at all. Car already has "enough" (debatable) processing power to run FSD on it, and afaik ANPR would be a much lighter load than that. Built in cell connectivity that you can't kill without some hardware work is another aspect.
"A mum whose kids attended a school where a protest was held after claims that a boy was punished for wearing a Palestine flag badge, says the school threatened to contact Prevent if they heard of parents sharing info on the war in private WhatsApp groups."
Those are the actions of a police state. You can thank Tony Blair's government way back in 2000 for starting this. The laws enabling this should be repealed.
