Stop! Police!

USA Today reports that 1 in 3 young people in the US will be arrested before the age of 23.

Wow.

First effect: Constricting job pools. Constricting job choices.

I worked for many years for an agency in social services that I saw "gentrified" over time for the sake of insurance premiums. If I'm feeling resentful of the process, it comes to mind as the agency choosing to use a standard of "no arrest record, no exceptions" for the sake of a lower premium. If I'm feeling more generous, I have to admit that it's likely that the difference in insurance premium between the agency choosing that strategy and the agency choosing to go with the Department of Social Services standard was probably a make-or-break difference, financially.

That doesn't excuse the situation. The effects of being removed from family and neighborhood are intense enough for a child whose family has fallen apart, being simultaneously separated from his or her own culture is a double injury.

How is this a cultural issue? Cities call it "gang management." Step 1: Arrest every young man in the inner city. Arrest them for loitering if necessary; arrest them for jaywalking. This is to establish a record of the person in the police database. This alone will not follow the person forever. If it remains the only arrest on the person's record, it will probably disappear at 18. However. If that person gets into a fight, punches someone for insulting his sister, or has a lapse in judgment as so many young people do, the first thing the Judge looks at is whether or not the person already has an arrest record. Often as not, the paper arrest magnifies the mistakes of youth.

Time was, when young people tipped cows, got into fights, did a little vandalism, took the police chief's car for a joyride--the police drove you home to your parents and that was the end of it. If you stole something from the store, you did a few hours of chores, and that was the end of it. How many judges today kept their noses clean all the time as kids? I'd bet a very, very few (and those are probably a little nuts, cuz let's face it, it's not normal).

Does criminalization of youth mean that only people with super-clean noses will be able to have certain jobs in the future? No. If it did, I would complain less.

It means only people with super-clean noses who got them by any means available will be able to have those jobs. People from the smallest towns and the richest families will be the only ones standing.

Another effect: Normalization of arrest.

OK I admit it, I was never arrested as a kid. (And no, I'm not even remotely normal.) I lived in the country in the middle of absolutely no where; there was no "legal" trouble to get into, really. There was more than one time the police would have been in my home if we'd had neighbors one wall away. But we didn't. And when I was a little older, I was afraid of the police and getting arrested. So much so that it kept me more or less in line until I was even older and my brain finished developing. I didn't know anyone (that I knew of) who had been arrested. Not even for political protest. It was a very sheltered upbringing. The whole idea was so foreign to me that it was too terrifying to contemplate.

At 1 in 3 young people being arrested, that's simply gone. Every city youth knows people who have been arrested. No big deal; it's just part of life. What then is the deterrent for youthful indiscretions?

Gone.

Sadly, I don't have any packaged answers. The US has fallen into a vicious cycle of incarceration trumping education which leads to further incarceration. In California, as in most states, roughly 5x as much is budgeted for Education as for Corrections, yet these two seem to be inextricably linked.

Answers? Anyone? (Preferred answers do not include the assumption that people who do relatively well in this mess deserve it. They might. But statistical probability has more impact overall than individual character. It's easy to get lost in individual examples that don't explain how to fix the overall problem.)

Checked Banking on Your Smartphone?

Attention Americans! Have a smartphone with AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint? Change every single password that you have and don't do it on your phone!

DemocracyNow.org reports the following (with emphasis added):

The Federal Trade Commission launched the probe following the disclosure smartphones with Carrier IQ software captured every keystroke and text message and sent the data to the user’s cell phone provider. Three of the four major cellular providers — AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — say they use Carrier IQ software. Apple says its Carrier IQ will be removed in future software updates. Meanwhile, Carrier IQ is also engulfed in another controversy over its suspected ties to law enforcement surveillance. The controversy erupted after the FBI denied a journalist’s Freedom of Information Act request for documents on data analysis that were gathered with Carrier IQ software. The FBI confirmed it has pertinent information, but denied to release it on the grounds it falls under "law enforcement records." The FBI so far has refused to deny whether it is using Carrier IQ for surveillance activities.

That the companies involved would take advantage of such software to spy on their customers is not even remotely surprising. The most valuable information any company can have is information on what you do. They want to know who your friends are (to market to them), where you spend your money (to compete or profit through advertising), what interests you (to offer you products and services you're more likely to be interested in acquiring), etc.

That it was probably legal for them to do so is sadly not surprising either. Fine. I'll admit it. I didn't read the Terms of Service. >.< Don't even think about it, HUMANCENTiPAD. (Sorry for the caps, I didn't make up the name.)

What's even more disturbing is that the FBI then apparently acquired this information from these companies. Thanks to Dubya, the FBI doesn't need to actually collect evidence, make a case against you and get a judge to issue a subpoena in order to obtain documents about you. They just need to write a letter. It's called a "national-security" letter. They just need to say that they need whatever they want to know for the purpose of national security. Even when it's not.

The New York Times reported on April 15, 2007:

In March, a report by the inspector general of the Justice Department described "widespread and serious misuse" of national-security letters after the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 significantly expanded the F.B.I.'s authority to issue them: between 2003 and 2005, he concluded, the F.B.I. issued more than 140,000 national-security letters, many involving people with no obvious connections to terrorism.

So here's the $64k question: Are you more disturbed with your private information, passwords, love letters, naked pictures and friends' phone numbers residing in a database of a private computer company where Ricky the pimple-faced freshman works or are you more disturbed having all of it in the hands of the FBI on a whim?