Download Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance

Student Congress First Wave
2015-16
Student Congress Legislation & Evidence
Student Congress Legislation & Evidence.................................................................................................................................................... 1
LEGISLATION
A Bill to Restore the Fourth Amendment with the SSRA ............................................................................................................................ 3
A Resolution to End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance .................................................................................................. 4
A Bill to End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented ..................................................................................................................... 5
A Resolution to Enact Consequences for Bystanders ................................................................................................................................... 6
A Resolution to Ban School Monitoring of Social Media ............................................................................................................................ 7
A Resolution to Increase the Minimum Wage .............................................................................................................................................. 8
RESEARCH
Pro Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA........................................................................................................................................... 9
Pro Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA......................................................................................................................................... 10
Pro Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA......................................................................................................................................... 11
Con Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Con Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA ....................................................................................................................................... 13
Con Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA ....................................................................................................................................... 14
Con Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA ....................................................................................................................................... 15
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance .................................................................................................................... 16
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance .................................................................................................................... 17
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance .................................................................................................................... 18
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance .................................................................................................................... 19
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance.................................................................................................................... 20
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance................................................................................................................... 21
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance................................................................................................................... 22
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance................................................................................................................... 23
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance................................................................................................................... 24
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance................................................................................................................... 25
Pro End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented ........................................................................................................................... 26
Pro End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented ........................................................................................................................... 27
Pro End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented ........................................................................................................................... 28
Pro End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented ........................................................................................................................... 29
Con End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented .......................................................................................................................... 30
Con End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented .......................................................................................................................... 31
Con End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented .......................................................................................................................... 32
Con End Surveillance for Deportation of Undocumented .......................................................................................................................... 33
Pro Consequences for Bystanders............................................................................................................................................................... 34
Pro Consequences for Bystanders............................................................................................................................................................... 35
Pro Consequences for Bystanders............................................................................................................................................................... 36
Con Consequences for Bystanders ............................................................................................................................................................. 37
Con Consequences for Bystanders ............................................................................................................................................................. 38
Con Consequences for Bystanders ............................................................................................................................................................. 39
Pro Minimum Wage Increase ..................................................................................................................................................................... 40
Pro Minimum Wage Increase ..................................................................................................................................................................... 41
Pro Minimum Wage Increase ..................................................................................................................................................................... 42
Con Minimum Wage Increase .................................................................................................................................................................... 43
Con Minimum Wage Increase .................................................................................................................................................................... 44
Con Minimum Wage Increase .................................................................................................................................................................... 45
Pro Ban School Social Media Monitoring .................................................................................................................................................. 46
Pro Ban School Social Media Monitoring .................................................................................................................................................. 47
Pro Ban School Social Media Monitoring .................................................................................................................................................. 48
Con Ban School Social Media Monitoring ................................................................................................................................................. 49
Con Ban School Social Media Monitoring ................................................................................................................................................. 50
Con Ban School Social Media Monitoring ................................................................................................................................................. 51
Speech Outline............................................................................................................................................................................................ 52
Speech Outline............................................................................................................................................................................................ 53
Speech Flow Chart ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 54
Speech – Flow Combo ................................................................................................................................................................................ 55
Speech – Flow Combo ................................................................................................................................................................................ 56
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A Bill to Restore the Fourth Amendment with the SSRA
1. BE IT ENACTED BY THE STUDENT CONGRESS HERE ASSEMBLED THAT:
2. Section 1. The United States federal government will pass “The Surveillance State
3. Repeal Act”, HR 1466 to end mass surveillance of American citizens and restore the fourth
4. Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
5. Section 2. This law will terminate the entirety of the Patriot Act and the 2008 FISA amendments.
6. Section 3. The NSA and other relevant agencies will provide transparency reports and
7. uninhibited access to their databases and computer systems to ensure that mass surveillance has
8. ended. No exceptions, not even in the name of “national security” will be accepted.
9. Section 4. This bill will be enacted immediately upon passage.
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A Resolution to End the War on Drugs by
Ending Domestic Surveillance
1. Whereas, the vast majority of domestic surveillance conducted is directly related to the War on
2. Drugs; and
3. Whereas, at best the War on Drugs has been a failed policy that has wasted billions in public
4. dollars; and
5. Whereas, the War on Drugs at worst is a moral that failure that has contributed to racism, classism
6. and the loss of total freedom for millions of Americans jailed for drug crimes; and
7. Whereas, jail time increase the likelihood that drug users will become life-long criminals when
8. they are locked-up with inmates that are often more violent and devious; and
9. Whereas, the War on Drugs is a component of institutional racism that devalues black life.
10. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States
11. federal should the end War on Drugs by dismantling its domestic surveillance operations.
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A Bill to End Surveillance for Deportation of the Undocumented
1. BE IT ENACTED BY THE STUDENT CONGRESS HERE ASSEMBLED THAT:
2. Section 1. The United States federal government should end its surveillance of
3. undocumented immigrants intended for deportation.
4. Section 2. This law will not change the legal status of undocumented peoples. Should an
5. undocumented person be located by a proper authority they will be subject to the current
6. deportation process.
7. Section 3. All federal, state and local agencies are prohibited from using any federal
8. resources for surveillance of the undocumented.
9. Section 4. This bill will be enacted immediately upon passages.
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A Resolution to Enact Consequences for Bystanders
1. Whereas, as a society and a nation we are better off when we look out for another, and;
2. Whereas, today it seems more and more people are only looking out for themselves, and;
3. Whereas, bullying has become an epidemic that causes pain, suffering and depression that can
4. even lead to suicide, and;
5. Whereas, just as bad as the bullies are the bystanders that could act but choose not, and;
6. Whereas, not just bullying, but other crimes, including theft, assault, rape and murder could be
7. stopped in many cases if a bystander simply took action.
8. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States
9. federal government should encourage localities and schools to create bystander laws that provide
10. real consequences for those who watch a crime or bullying occur and do nothing when they have
11. the ability to stop the crime or bullying without causing themselves to become a victim. This
12. should always include, at the minimum, reporting the crime or bullying the police or other public
13. official, such as a school administrator.
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A Resolution to Ban School Monitoring of Social Media
1. Whereas, social media has become a critical tool for expression and communication, and;
2. Whereas, many schools feel compelled to extend their reach to social media and are using
3. resources to monitor the social media activity of their students and;
4. Whereas, some schools have taken the drastic steps of requiring students to provide their social
5. media passwords, and;
6. Whereas, students should not lose their rights when they enter the school building and putting
7. them under social media surveillance is a violation of their privacy that can easily be abused, and;
8. Whereas, what a child writes or posts on their personal social media is not a school’s concern
9. the same way that what a child says in their backyard is not of concern to a school, and;
10. Whereas, when schools’ monitor the social media of their students they are wasting time
11. and resources similar to looking for a needle in a haystack.
12. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States
13. federal government should ban all schools from actively monitoring the social media accounts of
14. their students and under no circumstance can they request user names or passwords.
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A Resolution to Increase the Minimum Wage
1. Whereas, the minimum wage is not a living wage and people who work full-time are living in
2. poverty, and;
3. Whereas, corporate profits and CEO wages have been soaring for decades, meanwhile the
4. minimum wage has not even kept pace with inflation, and;
5. Whereas, an increase in the minimum wage would increase economic activity because workers
6. would have more money to spend, and;
7. Whereas, millions of Americans would lead better lives if their wages were increased and raising
8. the minimum wage is simply the right thing to do.
9. THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States
10. federal government should substantially increase the minimum wage.
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Pro Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA
The Surveillance State Repeal Act (SSRA) would only end warrantless mass surveillance. It would only allow for
targeted surveillance while removing the legal justifications for mass surveillance.
Shahid Buttar, Executive Director. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee. 2015. Efforts to restore civil liberties, constitutional
rights, and rule of law principles undermined by law enforcement and intelligence agencies within the United States. 4-18-15. http://www.occupy.com/article/cansurveillance-state-repeal-act-shift-course-spying)
Eager to reset the debate and anchor it in long overdue transparency, a bipartisan block of representatives have
introduced a bill to restore civil liberties, privacy, and freedom of thought. The Surveillance State Repeal Act, HR
1466, would do this by repealing the twin pillars of the NSA dragnet: the PATRIOT Act (not only the three expiring
provisions) and the 2008 FISA amendments. On multiple occasions, executive officials have lied under oath to
congressional oversight committees about the scope of domestic surveillance. Yet the very same officials still appear in
oversight hearings as if they maintained any credibility. It took whistleblowers resigning their careers to prove that senior
government officials’ blithe assurances to Congress were in fact self-serving lies. Some members of Congress paid
attention: the authors of the PATRIOT Act moved to curtail their own legislative opus, and have encouraged their
colleagues not to reauthorize the expiring provisions unless they are first curtailed. HR 1466 (the SSRA) represents a
profound challenge by members of Congress from across the political spectrum fed up with the national security
establishment and its continuing assault on our Constitution. By repealing the twin pillars of the surveillance
dragnet, the SSRA would essentially shift the burden of proof, forcing intelligence agencies like the NSA and FBI
to justify the expansion of their powers from a constitutional baseline, rather then the illegitimate status quo.
Most policymakers forget the 9/11 commission’s most crucial finding: the intelligence community's failures that enabled
the 9/11 attacks were not failures of limited data collection, but rather failures of data sharing and analysis.
Over the last 15 years, Congress has allowed the agencies to expand their collection capacities, solving an
imaginary problem while creating a host of real threats to U.S. national security far worse than any act of rogue
violence: the specter of state omniscience, immune from oversight and accountability, and thus vulnerable to
politicization. This was among the fears of which President Eisenhower warned us in his last speech as President.
Meanwhile, the SSRA would preserve what the PATRIOT Act’s authors have said they meant to authorize:
targeted investigations of particular people suspected by authorities to present potential threats. HR 1466 would
also advance transparency, both by protecting conscientious whistleblowers from the corrupt retaliation of agencies and
careerists, and by giving judges on the secret FISA court access to technical expertise they have been denied.
Finally, the bill would directly address disturbing government duplicity, prohibiting agencies from hacking
encryption hardware and software, and from using an executive order authorizing foreign surveillance as a basis
to monitor Americans.
National Security Agency (NSA) ssurveillance erodes privacy rights, violates the constitution and sets a horrible
example for the rest of the world.
Alex Sinha, Fellow at Human Rights Watch, 2014 (G. Alex July 2014 “With Liberty to Monitor All How Large-Scale US Surveillance
is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy” Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/node/127364)
The government has an obligation to protect national security, and in some cases, it is legitimate for government to restrict
certain rights to that end. At the same time, international human rights and constitutional law set limits on the state’s
authority to engage in activities like surveillance, which have the potential to undermine so many other rights. The
current, large-scale, often indiscriminate US approach to surveillance carries enormous costs. It erodes global
digital privacy and sets a terrible example for other countries like India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and others that are in
the process of expanding their surveillance capabilities. It also damages US credibility in advocating internationally for
internet freedom, which the US has listed as an important foreign policy objective since at least 2010.As this report
documents, US surveillance programs are also doing damage to some of the values the United States claims to hold
most dear. These include freedoms of expression and association, press freedom, and the right to counsel, which
are all protected by both international human rights law and the US Constitution.
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Privacy violations are more dangerous than any risk of terrorism, which is magnified by the fact that surveillance
fails to prevent attacks.
Schneier, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School,2014
Bruce 1-6-2014, "Essays: How the NSA Threatens National Security," Schneier On Security,
https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2014/01/how_the_nsa_threaten.html
We have no evidence that any of this surveillance makes us safer. NSA Director General Keith Alexander responded
to these stories in June by claiming that he disrupted 54 terrorist plots. In October, he revised that number downward to
13, and then to "one or two." At this point, the only "plot" prevented was that of a San Diego man sending $8,500 to
support a Somali militant group. We have been repeatedly told that these surveillance programs would have been able
to stop 9/11, yet the NSA didn't detect the Boston bombings—even though one of the two terrorists was on the watch
list and the other had a sloppy social media trail. Bulk collection of data and metadata is an ineffective
counterterrorism tool. Not only is ubiquitous surveillance ineffective, it is extraordinarily costly. I don't mean just
the budgets, which will continue to skyrocket. Or the diplomatic costs, as country after country learns of our surveillance
programs against their citizens. I'm also talking about the cost to our society. It breaks so much of what our society has
built. It breaks our political systems, as Congress is unable to provide any meaningful oversight and citizens are kept in
the dark about what government does. It breaks our legal systems, as laws are ignored or reinterpreted, and people are
unable to challenge government actions in court. It breaks our commercial systems, as U.S. computer products and
services are no longer trusted worldwide. It breaks our technical systems, as the very protocols of the Internet become
untrusted. And it breaks our social systems; the loss of privacy, freedom, and liberty is much more damaging to our
society than the occasional act of random violence. And finally, these systems are susceptible to abuse. This is not
just a hypothetical problem. Recent history illustrates many episodes where this information was, or would have been,
abused: Hoover and his FBI spying, McCarthy, Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, anti-war Vietnam
protesters, and—more recently—the Occupy movement. Outside the U.S., there are even more extreme examples.
Building the surveillance state makes it too easy for people and organizations to slip over the line into abuse.
Government surveillance is much more important than private surveillance, like when users let Facebook or
Google have their data because it has a greater reach and far more powerful consequences attached.
Heymann, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, 2015 (Philip B, “An Essay On Domestic Surveillance” Lawfare
Research Paper Series Vol 3.2, http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Lawfare-Philip-HeymannSURVEILLANCE-for-publ-10-May-2015.pdf)
Is Government Surveillance Particularly Important? Why should we care particularly about government
surveillance in a world where private surveillance on the internet and the information and predictions that can be
derived from a mass of such information are driving much of the economy of the internet as companies seek
knowledge useful for developing and selling new products? Government surveillance has far greater reach. FBI and
other law enforcement agents can – without any need of a predicate or judicial warrant – do whatever private
individuals are allowed to do to discover information, using one of the “not-a-search” exceptions. But they can do
much more. They can demand, with the assistance of a federal prosecutor, any records that “might” be useful to a grand
jury – a standard much more far-reaching than probable cause or reasonable suspicion. The government can be, and is,
empowered to demand access to any records kept by third parties, including the vast array of electronic records
now kept by businesses about their customers. What private businesses can obtain by requiring a waiver of privacy
rights as a condition of access to their goods or services, the government can also obtain without even that strained
form of consent and without the alerting knowledge that consent gives to the individual being monitored.
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Mass surveillance chills investigative journalism due to fear of NSA retaliation
Human Rights Watch, 14 (“With Liberty to Monitor All: How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy,”
July. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/usnsa0714_ForUPload_0.pdf)
Numerous US-based journalists covering intelligence, national security, and law enforcement describe the current
reporting landscape as, in some respects, the most difficult they have ever faced. “This is the worst I’ve seen in terms of the
government’s efforts to control information,” acknowledged Jonathan Landay, a veteran national security and intelligence correspondent for
McClatchy Newspapers.68 “It’s a terrible time to be covering government,” agreed Tom Gjelten, who has worked with National Public Radio for
over 30 years.69 According to Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press, “We say this every time there’s a
new occupant in the White House, and it’s true every time: each is more secretive than the last.”70 Journalists are struggling harder than ever before
to protect their sources, and sources are more reluctant to speak. This environment makes reporting both slower and less fruitful. Journalists
interviewed for this report described the difficulty of obtaining sources and covering sensitive topics in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the range
and effect of the government’s power over them. Both surveillance and leak investigations loomed large in this context—especially to the extent that
there may be a relationship between the two. More specifically, many journalists see the government’s power as menacing because they know little
about when various government agencies share among themselves information collected through surveillance, and when they deploy that information
in leak investigations.71 “[Government officials have been] very squishy about what they have and [what they] will do with it,” observed James
Asher, Washington Bureau Chief for McClatchy Co., the third largest newspaper group in the country.72 One Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for a
newspaper noted that even a decrease in leak prosecutions is unlikely to help, “unless we [also] get clear lines about what is collectable and
usable.”73 Others agreed. “I’m pretty worried that NSA information will make its way into leak investigations,” said one investigative journalist for a
major outlet.74 A reporter who covers national defense expressed concern about the possibility of a “porous wall” between the NSA and the
Department of Justice, the latter of which receives referrals connected to leak investigations.75 Jonathan Landay wondered whether the
government might analyze metadata records to identify his contacts. A national security reporter summarized the
situation as follows: “Do we trust [the intelligence] portion of the government’s knowledge to be walled off from
leak investigations? That’s not a good place to be.”77 While most journalists said that their difficulties began a few years ago, particularly with
the increase in leak prosecutions, our interviews confirmed that for many journalists largescale surveillance by the US
government contributes substantially to the new challenges they encounter. The government’s large-scale
collection of metadata and communications makes it significantly more difficult for them to protect themselves and
their sources, to confirm details for their stories, and ultimately to inform the public. In the 1970s, many journalists spoke
with sources by phone, and the government already had the technological capacity to tap those calls if it so chose. But traditional forms of wiretapping
or physical surveillance were time consuming and resource intensive. Today, so many more transactions are
handled electronically that there exists a tangible, easy-tostore, easy-to-access record of a much larger proportion
of any given person’s life: banking transactions, internet browsing, driving habits (though EZ Pass records, license plate cameras,
and GPS systems), cell phone location and activity, emailing patterns, and more. Metadata can reveal intimate details about people, such as
religious affiliations, medical diagnoses, and the existence of private relationships. Meanwhile, as more transactions have become digitalized,
the government has acquired a much greater technical capacity to gather, store, analyze, and sift through
electronic data. Even with rapidly evolving techniques for conducting research and contacting sources, journalists expressed concern that
widespread government surveillance constrains their ability to investigate and report on matters of public concern,
and ultimately undermines democratic processes by hindering open, informed debate.
Mass surveillance creates too much data, undermining counterterror efforts.
Peter Maass. National security reporter for The Intercept, 2015 (Peter , 5-28-2015, "Inside NSA, Officials Privately Criticize "Collect It All" Surveillance," Intercept,
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-it-all-surveillance/)
AS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS struggle to agree on which surveillance programs to re-authorize before the Patriot Act
expires, they might consider the unusual advice of an intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency who warned about
the danger of collecting too much data. Imagine, the analyst wrote in a leaked document, that you are standing in a shopping aisle
trying to decide between jam, jelly or fruit spread, which size, sugar-free or not, generic or Smucker’s. It can be paralyzing. “We in
the agency are at risk of a similar, collective paralysis in the face of a dizzying array of choices every single day,” the analyst
wrote in 2011. “’Analysis paralysis’ isn’t only a cute rhyme. It’s the term for what happens when you spend so much time analyzing a
situation that you ultimately stymie any outcome …. It’s what happens in SIGINT [signals intelligence] when we have access to
endless possibilities, but we struggle to prioritize, narrow, and exploit the best ones.” The document is one of about a dozen in which
NSA intelligence experts express concerns usually heard from the agency’s critics: that the U.S. government’s “collect it all”
strategy can undermine the effort to fight terrorism.
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The NSA is not a rogue agency. There has been no abuse of surveillance.
Rich Lowry, Editor, the National Review, 2015 (Rich, , 5-27-2015, "Lowry: NSA data program faces death by bumper
sticker," Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com/csp/mediapool/sites/sltrib/pages/printfriendly.csp?id=2557534)
You can listen to orations on the NSA program for hours and be outraged by its violation of our liberties, inspired
by the glories of the Fourth Amendment and prepared to mount the barricades to stop the NSA in its tracks — and still
have no idea what the program actually does. That’s what the opponents leave out or distort, since their case against
the program becomes so much less compelling upon fleeting contact with reality. The program involves so-called
metadata, information about phone calls, but not the content of the calls — things like the numbers called, the time of the
call, the duration of the call. The phone companies have all this information, which the NSA acquires from them. What
happens next probably won’t shock you, and it shouldn’t. As Rachel Brand of the Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board writes, “It is stored in a database that may be searched only by a handful of trained employees,
and even they may search it only after a judge has determined that there is evidence connecting a specific phone
number to terrorism.” The charge of domestic spying is redolent of the days when J. Edgar Hoover targeted and
harassed Martin Luther King Jr. Not only is there zero evidence of any such abuse, it isn’t even possible based on the
NSA database alone. There are no names with the numbers. As former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy points out,
whitepages.com has more personal identifying information. The NSA is hardly a rogue agency. Its program is
overseen by a special panel of judges, and it has briefed Congress about its program for years.
Domestic surveillance prevents terrorist plots – since 9/11, the NSA program has stopped 50 homeland threats.
New York Times, 2013 (Charlie Savage, "N.S.A. Chief Says Surveillance Has Stopped Dozens of Plots,"
www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/politics/nsa-chief-says-surveillance-has-stopped-dozens-of-plots.html?_r=0
WASHINGTON — Top national security officials on Tuesday promoted two newly declassified examples of what
they portrayed as “potential terrorist events” disrupted by government surveillance. The cases were made public
as Congress and the Obama administration stepped up a campaign to explain and defend programs unveiled by
recent leaks from a former intelligence contractor. One case involved a group of men in San Diego convicted of
sending money to an extremist group in Somalia. The other was presented as a nascent plan to bomb the New York
Stock Exchange, although its participants were not charged with any such plot. Both were described by Sean Joyce,
deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, at a rare public oversight hearing by the House Intelligence
Committee. At the same hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said that
American surveillance had helped prevent “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” including at least
10 “homeland-based threats.” But he said that a vast majority of the others must remain secret.
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NSA surveillance uses bulk collection as key piece to the intelligence puzzle.
Lewis, CSIS Fellow, 14, "Underestimating Risk in the Surveillance Debate,"
csis.org/files/publication/141209_Lewis_UnderestimatingRisk_Web.pdf
NSA carried out two kinds of signals intelligence programs: bulk surveillance to support counterterrorism and
collection to support U.S. national security interests. The debate over surveillance unhelpfully conflated the two
programs. Domestic bulk collection for counterterrorism is politically problematic, but assertions that a collection
program is useless because it has not by itself prevented an attack reflect unfamiliarity with intelligence. Intelligence
does not work as it is portrayed in films—solitary agents do not make startling discoveries that lead to dramatic, lastminute success. Success is the product of the efforts of teams of dedicated individuals from many agencies, using
many tools and techniques, working together to assemble fragments of data from many sources into a coherent
picture. In practice, analysts must simultaneously explore many possible scenarios. A collection program
contributes by not only what it reveals, but also what it lets us reject as false. The Patriot Act Section 215 domestic
bulk telephony metadata program provided information that allowed analysts to rule out some scenarios and
suspects. The consensus view from interviews with current and former intelligence officials is that while metadata
collection is useful, it is the least useful of the collection programs available to the intelligence community. If there was
one surveillance program they had to give up, it would be 215, but this would not come without an increase in risk.
Restricting metadata collection will make it harder to identify attacks and increase the time it takes to do this.
Security is more important than privacy because if people aren’t secure the right to privacy is meaningless.
Himma, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, 2007 Kenneth Einar,. "Privacy versus security:
Why privacy is not an absolute value or right." San Diego L. Rev. 44 (2007): 857.
The last argument I wish to make in this essay will be brief because it is extremely well known and has been made in a
variety of academic and nonacademic contexts. The basic point here is that no right not involving security can be
meaningfully exercised in the absence of efficacious protection of security. The right to property means nothing if
the law fails to protect against threats to life and bodily security. Likewise, the right to privacy has little value if one
feels constrained to remain in one's home because it is so unsafe to venture away that one significantly risks death
or grievous bodily injury. This is not merely a matter of describing common subjective preferences; this is rather an
objective fact about privacy and security interests. If security interests are not adequately protected, citizens will
simply not have much by way of privacy interests to protect. While it is true, of course, that people have privacy
interests in what goes on inside the confines of their home, they also have legitimate privacy interests in a variety of
public contexts that cannot be meaningfully exercised if one is afraid to venture out into those contexts because of
significant threats to individual and collective security-such as would be the case if terrorist attacks became highly
probable in those contexts. It is true, of course, that to say that X is a prerequisite for exercising a particular right Y does
not obviously entail that X is morally more important than Y, but this is a reasonable conclusion to draw. If it is true that
Y is meaningless in the absence of X, then it seems clear that X deserves, as a moral matter, more stringent protection
than Y does. Since privacy interests lack significance in the absence of adequate protection of security interests, it
seems reasonable to infer that security interests deserve, as a moral matter, more stringent protection than privacy
interests.
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Legal regulation can't stop surveillance – it's too technical and laws aren't enforced
Julian Assange Founder of Wikki Leaks Et. al, 12 (Julian, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Andy Muller-Maguhn, specialist on computers,
telecommunications, and surveillance. Jacob Appelbaum, computer security researcher. Jeremie Zimmerman, co-founder and spokesperson for the citizen advocacy
group La Quadrature du Net. Conversation in the book “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet,” chapter titled “The Militarization of Cyberspace”)
JULIAN: But are there two approaches to dealing with mass state surveillance: the laws of physics; and the laws of man? One is to use the laws of physics by actually
building devices that prevent interception. The other is to enact democratic controls through the law to make sure people must have warrants and so on and to try to gain
strategic interception cannot be a part of that, cannot be meaningfully constrained by regulation.
Strategic interception is about intercepting everyone regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty. We must
remember that it is the core of the Establishment carrying such surveillance. There will always be a lack of political will
to expose state spying. And the technology is inherently so complex, and its use in practice so secret that there
cannot be meaningful democratic oversight. ANDY: Or you spy on your own parliament. JULIAN: But those are excuses— the mafia and foreign
some regulatory accountability. But
intelligence— they are excuses that people will accept to erect such a system. JACOB: The Four Horsemen of the Info-pocalypse: child pornography, terrorism, money
Once you have erected this surveillance, given that it is complex, given that it is
designed to operate in secret, isn’t it true that it cannot be regulated with policy? I think that except for very small
nations like Iceland, unless there are revolutionary conditions it is simply not possible to control mass interception
with legislation and policy. It is just not going to happen. It is too cheap and too easy to get around political
accountability and to actually perform interception. The Swedes got through an interception bill in 2008, known as the FRA-lagen which meant
laundering, and The War on Some Drugs. JULIAN:
the Swedish signals intelligence agency the FRA could legally intercept all communication travelling through the country in bulk, and ship it off to the United States,
with some caveats. 48 Now how can you enforce those caveats once you’ve set up the interception system and the organization doing it is a secret spy agency? It’s
impossible. And in fact cases have come out showing that the FRA had on a variety of occasions broken the law previously. Many countries simply do it off-law with
no legislative cover at all. So we’re sort of lucky if, like in the Swedish example, they decided that for their own protection from prosecution they want to go legal by
changing the law. And that’s the case for most countries— there is bulk interception occurring, and when there is a legislative proposal it is to protect the ass of those
who are doing it. This technology is very complex; for example in the debate in Australia and the UK about proposed legislation to intercept all metadata, most people
do not understand the value of metadata or even the word itself. 49 Intercepting all metadata means you have to build a system that physically intercepts all data and
There’s no way to determine whether it is in fact
intercepting and storing all data without having highly skilled engineers with authorization to go in and check out
precisely what is going on, and there’s no political will to grant access. The problem is getting worse because
complexity and secrecy are a toxic mix. Hidden by complexity. Hidden by secrecy. Unaccountability is built-in. It is
a feature. It is dangerous by design.
then throws everything but the metadata away. But such a system cannot be trusted.
Facebook and Google engage in mass surveillance – the SRRA plan doesn't effect that
Julian Assange Founder of Wikki Leaks Et. al, 12 (Julian, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Andy Muller-Maguhn, specialist on computers,
telecommunications, and surveillance. Jacob Appelbaum, computer security researcher. Jeremie Zimmerman, co-founder and spokesperson for the citizen advocacy
group La Quadrature du Net. Conversation in the book “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet,” chapter titled “The Militarization of Cyberspace”)
JÉRÉMIE: State-sponsored surveillance is indeed a major issue which challenges the very structure of all democracies
and the way they function, but there is also private surveillance and potentially private mass collection of data. Just
look at Google. If you’re a standard Google user Google knows who you’re communicating with, who you know,
what you’re researching, potentially your sexual orientation, and your religious and philosophical beliefs. ANDY:
It knows more about you than you know yourself. JÉRÉMIE: More than your mother and maybe more than yourself.
Google knows when you’re online and when you’re not. ANDY: Do you know what you looked for two years, three
days and four hours ago? You don’t know; Google knows. JÉRÉMIE: Actually, I try not to use Google anymore for
these very reasons. JACOB: It’s like the Kill Your Television of the 21st century. 55 Effective protest except the network
effect prevents your protest from working. 56 Kill your television, man. JÉRÉMIE: Well it’s not a protest, it is more my
personal way of seeing things. ANDY: I watched these beautiful movies of people throwing their televisions out of threestorey houses. JÉRÉMIE: It’s not only the state-sponsored surveillance, it’s the question of privacy, the way data is being
handled by third parties and the knowledge that people have of what is being done with the data. I don’t use Facebook so I
don’t know much about it. But now with Facebook you see the behavior of users who are very happy to hand out any
kind of personal data, and can you blame people for not knowing where the limit is between privacy and publicity?
14/56
Student Congress First Wave
2015-16
Con Restore the Fourth Amendment with SSRA
The worst rights violations will continue regardless of legal reforms to mass surveillance –
dissidents and racial minorities will inevitably be targeted
Kundnani and Kumar, 15 (Arun, former editor of the journal Race & Class, PhD from London Metropolitan University, writer on Islamophobia and
surveillance. Deepa, associate professor of media studies and Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University. 3-21-15. “Race, surveillance, and empire”
http://www.kundnani.org/2015/03/21/race-surveillance-and-empire-2/)
The argument that digital surveillance is a new form of Big Brother is, on one level, supported by the evidence. For
those in certain targeted groups—Muslims, left-wing campaigners, radical journalists—state surveillance certainly
looks Orwellian. But this level of scrutiny is not faced by the general public. The picture of surveillance today is
therefore quite different from the classic images of surveillance that we find in Orwell’s 1984, which assumes an
undifferentiated mass population subject to government control. What we have instead today in the United States
is total surveillance, not on everyone, but on very specific groups of people, defined by their race, religion, or
political ideology: people that NSA officials refer to as the “bad guys.” In March 2014, Rick Ledgett, deputy
director of the NSA, told an audience: “Contrary to some of the stuff that’s been printed, we don’t sit there and grind out metadata profiles of average
people. If you’re not connected to one of those valid intelligence targets, you are not of interest to us.”72 In the
national security world, “connected to” can be the basis for targeting a whole racial or political community so, even
assuming the accuracy of this comment, it points to the ways that national security surveillance can draw entire communities into its web, while reassuring “average
people” (code for the normative white middle class) that they are not to be troubled. In the eyes of the national security state, this average person must also express no
political views critical of the status quo. Better
oversight of the sprawling national security apparatus and greater use of
encryption in digital communication should be welcomed. But by themselves these are likely to do little more than
reassure technologists, while racialized populations and political dissenters continue to experience massive
surveillance. This is why the most effective challenges to the national security state have come not from legal
reformers or technologists but from grassroots campaigning by the racialized groups most affected.
The Affirmative’s attempt to make the apparatus of executive surveillance more accountable will fail – Constraints
on executive overreach have eroded as America has become a security state. Their Band-Aid solution deflects
attention from the real problem.
Michael Glennon, Professor of International Law at Tufts Law School, 2014 (Michael, “National Security and
Double Government,” National Security and Double Government”, Harvard National Security Journal / Vol. 5, pg 1-114)
The first set of potential remedies aspires to tone up Madisonian muscles one by one with ad hoc legislative and
judicial reforms, by, say, narrowing the scope of the state secrets privilege; permitting the recipients of national
security letters at least to make their receipt public; broadening standing requirements; improving congressional
oversight of covert operations, including drone killings and cyber operations; or strengthening statutory constraints
like FISA545 and the War Powers Resolution.546 Law reviews brim with such proposals. But their stopgap
approach has been tried repeatedly since the Trumanite network’s emergence. Its futility is now glaring. Why such
efforts would be any more fruitful in the future is hard to understand. The Trumanites are committed to the rule
of law and their sincerity is not in doubt, but the rule of law to which they are committed is largely devoid of
meaningful constraints.547 Continued focus on legalist band-aids merely buttresses the illusion that the
Madisonian institutions are alive and well—and with that illusion, an entire narrative premised on the assumption
that it is merely a matter of identifying a solution and looking to the Madisonian institutions to effect it. That frame
deflects attention from the underlying malady. What is needed, if Bagehot’s theory is correct, is a fundamental
change in the very discourse within which U.S. national security policy is made. For the question is no longer: What
should the government do? The questions now are: What should be done about the government? What can be
done about the government? What are the responsibilities not of the government but of the people?
15/56
Student Congress First Wave
2015-16
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
Drug war mass incarceration represents the predominant mode of racist social control—prison expansion
maintain racial hierarchies and prevent black self determination. Prison expansion maintains racial hierarchies
and destroys communities of color.
Michelle Alexander is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law
School 2006 , “Federalism, Race, and Criminal Justice”, Chapter pp. 219-228]
Most Americans today can look back and see slavery and Jim Crow laws for what they were-extraordinary and
immoral forms of social control used to oppress black and brown people. However, few believe that a similar form
of social control exists today. What I have come to recognize is that, contrary to popular belief, a new form of social
control does exist, as disastrous and morally indefensible as Jim Crow-the mass incarceration of people of color.
There is an important story to be told that helps explain the role of the criminal justice system in resurrecting, in a
new guise, the same policies of racial segregation, political disenfranchisement, and social stigmatization that have
long oppressed and controlled all people of color, particularly African Americans. The story begins with federalism
and its evolving methods of maintaining white supremacy. A recent twist has been added; one that the civil rights
community has failed to explain to those who do not read reports issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics or Supreme
Court decisions. In 1980, 330,000 people were incarcerated in federal and state prisons7 - the vast majority of whom were
people of color. 8 Since then, the number has more than quadrupled to over 1.3 million.9 When prison and jail
populations are combined, the number jumps to over two million. 10 Although African American men comprise less
than seven percent of the population, they comprise half of the prison and jail population.11 Today, one out of
three African American men is either in prison, on probation, or on parole.l2 Latinos are not far behind. They are
the fastest growing racial group being imprisoned, comprising 10.9 percent of all state and federal inmates in 1985, and
nineteen percent in 2003.13 We know how this happened. In 1980, the Reagan administration ushered in the War on
Drugs, another major backlash against civil rights. Although we typically think of the Reagan era backlash as
attacking affirmative action and civil rights laws, the War on Drugs is perhaps the most sweeping and damaging
manifestation of deliberate indifference-or downright hostility-to communities of color.
Federal surveillance is overwhelmingly targeted at drug policing – It’s the cornerstone of the war on drugs. 88% of
wiretaps are from the war on drugs
Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for WIRED, April 10, 2015, “Want to See Domestic Spying’s Future? Follow the
Drug War” http://www.wired.com/2015/04/want-see-domestic-spyings-future-follow-drug-war/
The DEA’s newly revealed bulk collection of billions of American phone records on calls to 116 countries preceded the
NSA’s similar program by years and may have even helped to inspire it, as reported in USA Today’s story Wednesday.
And the program serves as a reminder that most of the legal battles between government surveillance efforts and
the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections over the last decades have played out first on the front lines of
America’s War on Drugs. Every surveillance test case in recent history, from beepers to cell phones to GPS
tracking to drones—and now the feds’ attempts to puncture the bubble of cryptographic anonymity around Dark
Web sites like the Silk Road—began with a narcotics investigation. “If you asked me last week who was doing this
[kind of mass surveillance] other than the NSA, the DEA would be my first guess,” says Chris Soghoian, the lead
technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The War on Drugs and the surveillance state are joined at the
hip.” It’s no secret that drug cases overwhelmingly dominate American law enforcement’s use of surveillance
techniques. The Department of Justice annually reports to the judiciary how many wiretaps it seeks warrants for, broken
down by the type of crime being investigated. In 2013, the last such report, a staggering 88 percent of the 3,576
reported wiretaps were for narcotics. That’s compared to just 132 wiretaps for homicide and assault combined, for
instance, and a mere eight for corruption cases.
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Student Congress First Wave
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Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
The War on Drugs is simply the latest structure of Black surveillance motivated by fear of the black body. This
surveillance comes in multiple forms of violence to Black communities.
Arun Kundnani teaches at New York University and Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and
Middle East Studies at Rutgers University 2015 “Race, surveillance, and empire” in International Socialist Review
http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
The War on Drugs—launched by President Reagan in 1982—dramatically accelerated the process of racial securitization.
Michelle Alexander notes that At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed
drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset
had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug
users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others”—the undeserving.52
Operation Hammer, carried out by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1988, illustrates how racialized surveillance was
central to the War on Drugs. It involved hundreds of officers in combat gear sweeping through the South Central area of
the city over a period of several weeks, making 1,453 arrests, mostly for teenage curfew violations, disorderly conduct,
and minor traffic offenses. Ninety percent were released without charge but the thousands of young Black people who
were stopped and processed in mobile booking centers had their names entered onto the “gang register” database, which
soon contained the details of half of the Black youths of Los Angeles. Entry to the database rested on such supposed
indicators of gang membership as high-five handshakes and wearing red shoelaces. Officials compared the Black gangs
they were supposedly targeting to the National Liberation Front in Vietnam and the “murderous militias of Beirut,”
signaling the blurring of boundaries between civilian policing and military force, and between domestic racism and
overseas imperialism.53 In the twelve years leading up to 1993, the rate of incarceration of Black Americans tripled,54
establishing the system of mass incarceration that Michelle Alexander refers to as the new Jim Crow.55 And yet those in
prison were only a quarter of those subject to supervision by the criminal justice system, with its attendant mechanisms of
routine surveillance and “intermediate sanctions,” such as house arrests, boot camps, intensive supervision, day reporting,
community service, and electronic tagging. Criminal records databases, which are easily accessible to potential
employers, now hold files on around one-third of the adult male population.56 Alice Goffman has written of the ways that
mass incarceration is not just a matter of imprisonment itself but also the systems of policing and surveillance that track
young Black men and label them as would-be criminals before and after their time in prison. From stops on the street to
probation meetings, these systems, she says, have transformed poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects
and fugitives.
17/56
Student Congress First Wave
2015-16
Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
The War on Drugs is nothing more than a federal surveillance program. It reaches every aspect of life in
communities of color in an attempt to maintain the racial hierarchy.
Terry Adams Fuller. Professor at Howard University. 2001. “Racial Profiling” in Institute for Public Safety &
Justice: Fact Sheet, http://www.ipsj.org/publications/RacialProfiling.pdf
In recent years racial profiling on American roadways - commonly referred to as DWB (driving while black) - has
come to the forefront of popular discourse. The phenomenon of pulling over persons of color on spurious traffic
violations based on preconceived conceptions is a common travel experience for many people of color. For years
African American and Latino/Hispanic Americans have known that their communities have been the recipients of
an inordinate amount of police surveillance. The general American public has just recently become aware of the
magnitude of this problem during the latter end of the 1990s, as the media began to increase its coverage of this
phenomenon. Although communities of color have always suffered more police surveillance than other communities, this
scrutiny has elevated during certain periods in history, often dictated by politics. The African American and
Hispanic/Latino communities increasingly became the subjects of police surveillance fol1owing President Reagan's
declaration of the nations "war on drugs" in 1982. The increased frenzy that surrounded the "war on drugs"
prompted many law enforcement agencies around the country to intensifY their inspection of supposedly
"suspicious" persons. These increased efforts have disproportionately been targeted towards communities of color
(Walker, et al. 1996). Across the country profiles are utilized by many law enforcement agents, which are often
largely based on racial or ethnic characteristics. According to a 1999 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report,
in 1986 the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launched "Operation Pipeline" a drug prohibition program that
trained over 27,000 police officers from 48 participating states to "use pretext stops in order to find drugs in
vehicles." It has been reported that some of the materials used by the DEA in Operation Pipeline "implicitly if not
explicitly" encourage police to target minority motorists (Harris, 1999). Thus the nations highest drug enforcement
agency has lent the appearance of legitimacy to the use of racial profiles.
Drug reform has been a myth since Nixon—the powerful protect it for profits.
MSNBC, September 24, 2014 “How profits help drive the war on drugs” http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/howprofits-help-drive-the-war-drugs
So why pour money into a failed system? One factor might just be profit. During the Reagan administration, the
government started incentivizing drug arrests by handing out grants to police departments fighting drug crimes.
An arrest in a state like Wisconsin could bank a city or county an extra $153. In 34 years in the Seattle Police Department,
Norm Stamper learned about those incentives first hand, and he believes they are “corrupting the system.” “What we
have seen with this drug war are insane numbers of Americans being arrested for nonviolent, very low level drug
offenses, in the tens of millions of numbers, and what do we have to show for it?” he asked on Tuesday’s
PoliticsNation. He said drugs are more readily available than when Nixon “first declared war against them.” “Make
no mistake, he was really declaring war against his fellow Americans. He was declaring war particularly against
young people, poor people, and people of color.” Stamper takes issue with the prison industry, which has seen major
growth due to low level drug offenders, compared to relatively little growth from more violent offenders. “The prison
industrial complex, the law enforcement, drug enforcement industry, the cartels themselves, heavy street
traffickers, are deeply invested in the status quo,” Stamper said. “They are very much invested in making sure, by
protecting and expanding their drug markets, often times through violent means, that they will continue to reap
the enormous, untaxed, obscene profits associated with illicit commerce.”
18/56
Student Congress First Wave
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Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
The Drug Worse is the major cause of violence in black communities—it targets African Americans and
incarcerates them at levels comparable to slavery and the Apartheid
Graham Boyd, J.D. from Yale Law School, and Director of the ACLU DRUG POLICY LITIGATION PROJECT,
2001 Graham, THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW, https://www.aclu.org/drug-war-new-jim-crow
Pervasive racial targeting provides another peculiarly U.S. stamp to the drug war. We are incarcerating AfricanAmerican men at a rate approximately four times the rate of incarceration of black men in South Africa under
apartheid.5 Worse still, we have managed to replicate-at least on a statistical level-the shame of chattel slavery in this
country: The number of black men in prison (792,000) has already equaled the number of men enslaved in 1820.
With the current momentum of the drug war fueling an ever expanding prison-industrial complex, if current trends
continue, only 15 years remain before the United States incarcerates as many African-American men as were forced into
chattel bondage at slavery's peak, in 1860. ¶ The war on drugs thus offers seamless continuity with the most shameful
episodes of our past. Slaves were bound in plantations from which they could not escape. Now, it is prisons that deprive
black men of their freedom. For African-American men between the ages of 20 and 29, almost one in three are currently
under the thumb of the criminal justice system.6¶ The drug war's uncanny revisiting of the badges and indicia of slavery
began, ironically enough, as a slogan from the Party of Lincoln: a ""war on drugs"" to outdo the Democrats' ""war on
poverty."" This rhetorical flourish outlived its use as a verbal sally in partisan skirmishes to have real and sinister effects.
A declaration of war, now as at other moments in our national history, allows us to throw out the normal rules of
conduct under the imperative of a higher goal assumed to trump all other considerations. Lincoln himself
suspended the fundamental right to the Writ of Habeas Corpus, citing the exigencies of the Civil War as rationale
for the summary imprisonment of perceived enemies. Closer to our consciousness today, and especially haunting in
its racial targeting, is the incarceration of 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. While no one would
now defend using ancestral traits as a proxy for disloyalty, in the heat of war the majority of U.S. citizens defended or
ignored the concentration camps, complacent in their trust of leaders claiming all means necessary in the paramount goal
of national security
Current War on Drugs approaches have not weakened the drug trade—comprehensive, international studies show
that supply has not been reduced and the price of drugs has only become cheaper
Science Daily, Science Research News Source, 2013 Science Daily, using material from a report published by the British Medical
Journal, Sept 30th, International 'war' on illegal drugs failing to curb supply, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130930200708.htm
The United Nations recently estimated that the illicit drug trade is worth at least US $350 billion every year. And
needle sharing is one of the key drivers of blood borne infections, including HIV. The drug trade is also linked to high
rates of violence.¶ Over the past several decades most national drug control strategies have focused on law
enforcement to curb supply, despite calls to explore approaches, such as decriminalization and strict legal regulation.¶
The researchers analysed data from seven international government-funded drug surveillance systems, which had
at least 10 years of information on the price and purity of cannabis, cocaine and opiates, including heroin.¶ They also
reviewed the number of seizures of illegal drugs in drug production regions and rates of consumption in markets where
demand for illegal drugs is high.¶ Three of the seven surveillance systems reported on international data; three reported on US
data; and one reported on data from Australia. In some cases the data went back as far as 1975, with the most recent data going back to
2001.¶ Three major trends emerged from the data analysis: the purity/potency of illegal drugs either generally remained stable or
increased between 1990 and 2010; with few exceptions, the street price generally fell; and seizures of drugs increased in both the
countries of major supply and demand.¶ In the US, after adjusting for inflation and purity, the average street price of heroin, cocaine
and cannabis fell by 81%, 80%, and 86%, respectively, whereas the purity and/or potency of these drugs increased by 60%, 11%, and
161%, respectively.¶ Similar trends were observed in Europe where, during the same period, the average price of opiates and cocaine,
adjusted for inflation and purity, decreased by 74% and 51%, respectively, and in Australia, where the price of cocaine fell by 14%
and the price of heroin and cannabis dropped by 49%.¶ In the US seizures of cocaine roughly halved between 1990 and 2010, but
those of cannabis and heroin rose by 465% and 29%, respectively; in Europe seizures of cocaine and cannabis fluctuated, but seizures
of heroin had risen 380% by 2009.¶ On the basis of the data, the authors conclude, as previous studies have, "that the
global supply of illicit drugs has likely not been reduced in the previous two decades."
19/56
Student Congress First Wave
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Pro End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
War on Drugs surveillance has not weakened the Drug Trade—it targets minorities and has unfairly spiked the
prison populations – all while drug cartels remain in power.
Shapiro, JD from Georgetown University Law Center, 2013 Gary, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, Nov
4th, DRUG WARS AND DEFICITS, The American Spectator, http://spectator.org/articles/56315/drug-wars-and-deficits
Government surveillance is a heated topic right now, following revelations earlier this year that the National
Security Administration (NSA) collects massive amounts of data on private citizens. The main difference is that the
NSA collects data for national security purposes, especially counterterrorism efforts; the DEA’s surveillance is meant
specifically to fight domestic crimes.¶ All of this flies in the face of our constitutional rights to due process and to
privacy. More, it’s not even effective. Despite all the best efforts of the DEA and other law enforcement officials, the
war on drugs has turned out to be a $1 trillion failure. Yet we are pouring more money into it every year — in 2013
alone, the White House requested $25.6 billion to keep the fight going — and to allow the DEA to treat us all like
criminals.¶ One of the most devastating results of the war on drugs has been a massive increase in our prison
population. In 1980, about 50,000 people were in jail for non-violent, drug-related offenses. Today, more than
500,000 prisoners are serving sentences for drug-related crimes. The United States has a prison population of 2.2
million people, more than any other nation in the world — or one in four of the world’s prison population.
Incarcerations aren’t solving our problems, and they’re costing taxpayers. In 2011 alone, housing all these prisoners
cost the U.S. $52 billion. Thankfully, some relief from harsh drug laws may come from bipartisan legislation now in both
houses of Congress which gives judges flexibility to depart from mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related
offenses.¶ More, the war on drugs unfairly targets the poor and minorities, especially African Americans, even
though they don’t use drugs any more than any other demographic. Black Americans are arrested as much as 10
times more often than white people for drug offenses. They account for 37 percent of drug arrests, even though they
represent only 14 percent of regular drug users. Rather than developing programs and methods to help people
struggling with addiction, the war on drugs has abandoned far too many people to a life of violence and fear.¶
Meanwhile, the global drug trade continues to thrive. Drugs are cheaper, more accessible and of better quality
today than they were 42 years ago when the war on drugs began. The drug trade is worth an estimated $350 billion
per year. Government efforts to fight drugs have simply fueled the business by driving black market prices and
drawing in unscrupulous people eager to make money.
20/56
Student Congress First Wave
2015-16
Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
Ending drug surveillance won’t solve for non-drug surveillance of poor communities.
Virginia Eubanks teaches in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at
Albany, January 15 2014. “Want to Predict the Future of Surveillance? Ask Poor Communities.” https://prospect.org/article/want-predict-futuresurveillance-ask-poor-communities
If people remain concerned about the impact of surveillance on their lives they may voluntarily withdraw from the
digital world. Gilliom suggests we might even see “a hipster social trend where disengagement becomes a form of
cache.” But digital disconnection can simply be an excuse for maintaining ignorance; many people don’t have the
option to disengage. For example, public assistance applicants must sign a personal information disclosure
statement to permit social services to share their social security number, criminal history, personal, financial,
medical and family information with other public agencies and private companies. Technically, you can refuse to
sign and withhold your social security number. But if you do not sign, you cannot access food stamps,
transportation vouchers, cash assistance, childcare, emergency housing assistance, and other basic necessities for
survival, or even talk to a caseworker about available community resources.
Poor Black people are surveilled through social services as well— ending surveillance doesn’t fix this.
Virginia Eubanks teaches in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at
Albany, January 15 2014. “Want to Predict the Future of Surveillance? Ask Poor Communities.” https://prospect.org/article/want-predict-futuresurveillance-ask-poor-communities
But I wasn’t surprised. A decade ago, I sat talking to a young mother on welfare about her experiences with
technology. When our conversation turned to Electronic Benefit Transfer cards (EBT), Dorothy* said, “They’re
great. Except [Social Services] uses them as a tracking device.” I must have looked shocked, because she explained
that her caseworker routinely looked at her EBT purchase records. Poor women are the test subjects for
surveillance technology, Dorothy told me ruefully, and you should pay attention to what happens to us. You’re
next.
The DEA has changed its policy on racial profiling.
The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2014 “Justice Department Issues New Guidelines Barring Racial Profiling by
Federal Agents” http://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-issue-new-guidelines-barring-racial-profiling-byfederal-agents-1418036401
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday laid out new guidelines against racial and other types of profiling, citing
law-enforcement cases that have sparked protests even as the new federal policy wouldn’t affect local police. The
federal government since 2003 has banned profiling on the basis of race or ethnicity, though it has made an exception
for national-security investigations. The new policy also will bar profiling on the basis of religion, gender, national
origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, according to officials.
21/56
Student Congress First Wave
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Con End the War on Drugs by Ending Domestic Surveillance
The federal government is already curbing the War on Drugs and the states are massively changing drug policy.
Drew Desilver is a correspondent at the Pew Research Center. 2014. “Feds may be rethinking the drug war, but states
have been leading the way” April 2, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/02/feds-may-be-rethinking-the-drugwar-but-states-have-been-leading-the-way/
Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for reduced sentences for low-level drug offenders in federal cases,
with the aim of reducing the growth of the federal prisoner population. (About half of the nearly 200,000 federal
inmates have been convicted of a drug offense.) Earlier, he said low-level drug offenders wouldn’t automatically be
charged with offenses that carried strict mandatory minimum sentences, and gave Washington and Colorado the go-ahead
to implement marijuana-legalization initiatives. This month, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is expected to vote on a set
of amendments to the sentencing guidelines used by federal judges. The interest in sentencing reform now spans
Washington D.C.’s normal partisan and ideological battle lines. The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014, now pending
before the Senate, would cut mandatory minimums for a host of federal drug crimes. Its sponsors include Senate
Majority Whip Richard Durbin, liberal Democrats Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse, Maine independent Angus
King, and libertarian Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee. The federal moves come after years of similar changes at
the state level. Between 2009 and 2013, 40 states took some action to ease their drug laws, according to a Pew
Research Center analysis of legislative data provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Vera
Institute of Justice. Twenty-seven states moved only in the direction of easing, while 13 other states eased some laws
and toughened others — often as part of a broader rethink of their drug policies. State-level actions have included
lowering penalties for possession and use of illegal drugs, shortening mandatory minimums or curbing their
applicability, removing automatic sentence enhancements, and establishing or extending the jurisdiction of drug
courts and other alternatives to the regular criminal justice system. Some have been minor tweaks, such as Idaho’s
2011 change that allowed people convicted of violent felonies to participate in drug courts under certain circumstances.
Other states have taken very different approaches to drugs: New York, for instance, moved away from its harsh
Rockefeller-era drug laws in 2009. Last year, Vermont decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of
marijuana, while Oregon (where possession of less than an ounce has been a noncriminal violation since 1973) made
possession of more than an ounce a misdemeanor rather than a felony. All told, 16 states have passed laws
decriminalizing marijuana; Maryland, which reduced penalties for marijuana possession and use in 2012, is now
considering decriminalization legislation. State-level policy changes may not get the attention of federal moves, but
they can affect many more people. State prisons house more than six times as many prisoners as federal prisons —
more than 1.35 million in 2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And for 16.6% of all state prisoners, a
drug crime is their most serious offense (down from 20% in 2006).
Marijuana legalization is coming now. This will stop the need to stop drug surveillance.
Associated Press, April 2, 2014 “Poll: Marijuana legalization inevitable”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/02/poll-marijuana-legalization-inevitable/7210215/
Marijuana legalization in the U.S. seems inevitable to three-fourths of Americans, whether they support it or not,
according to a new poll out Wednesday. The Pew Research Center survey on the nation's shifting attitudes about
drug policy also showed increased support for moving away from mandatory sentences for non-violent drug
offenders. The telephone survey found that 75 percent of respondents — including majorities of both supporters and
opponents of legal marijuana— think that the sale and use of pot eventually will be legal nationwide. It was the first
time that question had been asked.
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War on Drugs surveillance is necessary to stop drug cartels – surveillance has been behind major past successes that all
prove the War on Drugs is good.
Malcolm Beith, author on the Drug War, Foreign Affairs. 2013
Malcolm, former journalist who has provided commentary on the Drug War to multiple media outlets, A Single Act of Justice,
Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2013-09-08/single-act-justice
By treating the FARC as a terrorist organization that also engaged in drug trafficking, the case became a model for
future prosecutions. At the time, then Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the indictment represented "the convergence of
two of the top priorities of this Department of Justice -- the prevention of terrorism and the reduction of illegal drug use -- in a
single act of justice." In 2006, a single indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia named 50 highranking members of the FARC, and alleged that it supplied more than 60 percent of the world’s cocaine. Prosecutors
again emphasized the nexus between narcotics and terrorism.¶ DEA operatives have also found success in penetrating the
international networks where drug trafficking and terrorist activity intersect. Between November 2007 and March 2008,
confidential sources working with the DEA and posing as members of the FARC arranged to buy millions of dollars in
weaponry from international arms dealer Viktor Bout, ostensibly to use against U.S. helicopters in Colombia. The weaponry
included 800 surface-to-air missiles, more than 20,000 AK-47s, and five tons of C-4 plastic explosives. In 2009, another set of
confidential sources -- also posing as members of the FARC -- arranged a deal with a trio of Malian traffickers and
militants to transport cocaine through West and North Africa and to use the profits to support the activities of al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb. U.S. officials quickly apprehended the traffickers, extraditing them to the United States to stand
trial. Further, it was a DEA confidential source who first uncovered an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador
in Washington on October 11, 2011. Posing as a member of the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, the source claimed to have
discussed executing the plan on behalf of Iranian agent Manssor Arbabsiar.¶ The DEA has benefitted from larger changes in
U.S. intelligence-gathering procedures through the DEA Special Operations Division, which comprises two dozen partner
agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the IRS. Internationally, the DEA has reaped the rewards of increased
flexibility regarding wiretapping by host nations. In some instances, however, its surveillance activities have caused
diplomatic tussles involving foreign politicians linked to the drug trade itself.
War on Drugs surveillance is crucial to solve the drug trade– domestic surveillance equipment allows officials to catch
on to the cartels’ latest strategies and adapt
Andrews, JD from Rogers Williams University School of Law, 2012
T. Michael, JD from Roger Williams University School of Law, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, The Border
Challenge: An Insider's Guide to Stopping Drugs at America's Borders, pg. 48-49
Drug traffickers often alter both the method and timing of their operations in response to border interdiction activities, so
interdiction requires constant vigilance in checking people, equipment and commerce along the border as well a layered
defense. Mobile and fixed checkpoints on US highways near the Southwest border play complementary roles in a layered
defense against the triple threats of drug smuggling, illegal immigration, and terrorist activities. Through the use of internal
checkpoints, persons who are not checked immediately at the border can be checked further down the line. In fiscal year 2004,
74 percent of the cocaine seized nationally by the US Border Patrol was seized at internal checkpoints." ¶ In addition to a
layered defense on land, continued deployment of aerial surveillance is needed. Aerial surveillance includes cameras along
border positions and unmanned aerial surveillance aircraft and drones, as depicted in Photo 5.1. ¶ Despite tireless
interdiction efforts along the Southwest border, massive amounts of drugs are still smuggled each year through legitimate
crossing points. Criminal organizations, especially drug traffickers, have exploited the huge volume of passenger and
commercial traffic that enters the United States via Mexican airports and maritime ports. Consequently, the vast major-ity of
interdictions are the result of "cold hits"—which is enforcement jargon for drug detections that were not cued by prior
intelligence. One of the most effective methods of detecting illegal drug trafficked through legitimate ports of entry (POE) is
deployment of K-9 Units. According to one estimate, 60 percent of all drug seizures at POE result from canine detections.-6
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Drug cartels are involved in 70% of human trafficking cases—weakening them will be a major hit to sex and human
trafficking networks
Ioan Grillo, author on Mexican Drug Violence and journalist, Time. 2013 (Ioan, July 31st, The Mexican Drug Cartels’
Other Business: Sex Trafficking, Time Magazine, http://world.time.com/2013/07/31/the-mexican-drug-cartels-other-businesssex-trafficking/)
.¶ Gangs like the Zetas are involved in human trafficking at many links on the chain. Cartels control most of Mexico’s
smuggling networks through which victims are moved, while they also take money from pimps and brothels operating in
their territories. Prosecution documents show numerous cases in which cartel members have confessed to murdering pimps
who crossed them or burning down establishments that refused to pay their “quota.” Mexican marines arrested the Zetas’
leader, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, this month and prosecutors say that human trafficking will be among the long list of
charges leveled against him. “The cartels know that drugs can only be sold once, but women can be sold again and again
and again,” says Teresa Ulloa, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the
Caribbean. Ulloa, who has helped hundreds of victims of sex trafficking in Mexico, says organized crime is involved in 70%
of cases.
Drug cartel power fuels US murders and violence – cartels sit at the top of the drug trade and let lower parts of the
chain reap the consequences—Chicago proves this outweighs other sources of violence
Andrew O’Reilly, journalist, FOX News 2015 (Andrew, February 5th, Gang warfare on streets of Chicago fueled by Sinaloa
Cartel heroin, Gang warfare on streets of Chicago fueled by Sinaloa Cartel heroin,
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/02/05/gang-warfare-on-streets-chicago-fueled-by-sinaloa-cartel-heroin/)
The timely label, occurring 84 years after gangster Al Capone first earned it following the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in
1929, lasted only a year as Guzmán was arrested in Mexico the following February, but the imprint his organization made
– and continues to make – on Chicago has helped turn the U.S.’s third-largest city into one of the nation’s largest drug
trafficking hubs, replete with the violence and related crimes that come with that designation.¶ “Sinaloa Cartel
traffickers sit on the top of the pile, and they feed down all the way to the street level dealers,” Dennis Wichern, special agent
in charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago field division, told Fox News Latino.¶ The drug trade in
Chicago has helped fuel pervasive gang violence that has resulted in a quickly rising homicide rate. Chicago ended 2014
with 425 murders, and this year the city had seen 30 slayings by the end of January.¶ New York may have the famed five
families of the Mafia, and Los Angeles is the cradle of the Bloods and the Crips, but Chicago remains gangland capital in
the United States.¶ From Capone and his North Side Gang rival, Hymie Weiss, in the 1920s to the Vice Lords and Latin Kings
in the 1950s to biker gangs like the Outlaws that emerged in the city’s suburbs, the Second City has bred some of the U.S.’s
most dangerous and famous criminals over the past century. ¶ Now, however, the heavy-hitters from the criminal class appear
to be moving to Chicago from south of the border and using the city’s ever-growing Mexican population to camouflage
themselves and recruit new members.
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Changes to the way we administer criminal programs, like ending war on drugs surveillance, will not stop
institutional racism.
Naomi Murakawa. Associate Professor. 2014. Associate Professor Center for African American Studies, “First Civil
Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” ProQuest ebrary]
The history of liberal law-and-order matters because the same proposals for better administration, proffered with the same
good intentions, are likely to reproduce the same monstrous outcomes in the twenty-first century. The problems of a
normatively untethered liberal law-and-order regime are clear in the arc of liberal positions on judicial discretion. Mid-century
liberals viewed discretion as dangerous individualized justice, tailored to each defendant from each judge’s moral cloth in all its
idiosyncratic textures. Judicial discretion lurked in law’s “twilight zone,” dispensing what Judge Marvin Frankel called “law
without order.” Liberal fear of discretion endured through the mid-1980s, when one could easily characterize the “mainstream
liberal thought” as unambiguously opposed to discretionary administrative interpretation and implementation. 15 With the rise
of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums through the 1980s and 1990s, however, liberals called for more judicial
discretion by praising that which they previously reprimanded— justice customized to each individual defendant. 16 As a
project to control the irrationalities of racial bias and administrative discretion, liberal law-and-order ignored empirical
lessons and displaced normative questions. Reformers invoked the promises and perils of “discretion” while ignoring the central
findings of research. The American Bar Foundation’s 1957 survey and the myriad studies it inspired analyzed discretion within
the “total criminal justice system.” As a system, carceral machinery is not easily corrected by small administrative
adjustments: tighten discretion in one place, and the criminal justice system “accommodates,” to use the original language
of the ABF studies, so that discretion simply becomes more important for a different decision maker. Accommodation is
evident of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums, which diminished judicial discretion but effectively increased
prosecutorial discretion. When situated with a total system approach, the “amount” of discretion has neither increased nor
decreased, concludes Samuel Walker; it has simply moved from one agency to another. 17 Administrative tinkering does not
confront the damning features of the American carceral state, its scale and its racial concentration, which, when taken
together reinforce and raise African American vulnerability to premature death. By focusing on the intra-system
problems of “discretion,” lawmakers displaced questions of justice onto the more manageable, measurable issues of
system function. When framed as a problem of discretion— that is, individual decision making permissible by formal rules—
then solutions to racial inequality double back to individual administrators and their institutional rules. In this sense,
problematizing discretion forces questions of remediation onto sanitary administrative grounds. Should judges be elected or
appointed? Should judges administer justice through sentencing guidelines? No guidelines and some mandatory minimums? No
mandatory minimums and only mandatory maximums? Will judges or parole boards select the final release date? These
questions matter, but they cannot replace clear commitments to racial justice. When they are posed independently of normative
goals, process becomes the proxy, not the path, to justice. Without a normatively grounded understanding of racial
violence, liberal reforms will do the administrative shuffle. This book traced a stark half-century turn from confronting white
racial violence administered and enabled by carceral apparatuses, to controlling black criminality through a procedurally
fortified, race-neutral system. Race liberals institutionalized the “right to safety” while skirting its animating call against statesanctioned white violence. Fixation on administrative minutiae distracted from the normative core of punishment in a
system of persistent racial hierarchy. Unlike administrative tinkering, reforms for decriminalization and decarceration would
push debates to their normative core: what warrants punishment, in what form, and why? 18 In place of liberal searches for the
ideal procedural path to life incarceration, metrics of racial justice should focus on what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “the statesanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” 19 Seeing racism
as “group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death” gives proper context to acts of violence between individuals. If we
situate private violence in relation to group-differentiated reality, we begin to see the tight weave of state and private racial
violence. An example often mobilized to repressive ends is the fact that most crimes occur within rather than between racial
groups, such that African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans confront high incarceration rates and high victimization
rates. This is the complex story of the U.S. racial state, where normal institutional and ideological processes perpetuate the
multigenerational transmission of accumulated advantage and accumulated disadvantage. 20 Accumulated advantage imparts a
presumption of innocence; inherited wealth enables home ownership in class-segregated areas (i.e., “a safe neighborhood”) and
medical insurance for diagnosis of conditions and coverage of various prescriptions such as Ritalin (i.e., more effective forms of
meth). In contrast, accumulated disadvantage imparts a presumption of guilt.
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The federal government has been spending vast amounts of money on surveillance programs that lack any oversight or
accountability.
Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [Immigration Surveillance, 74 Md. L. Rev. 1
www.digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]
Federal expenditures on border and immigration control have grown fifteen-fold since 1986 and now substantially exceed
expenditures on all other federal law enforcement programs combined.5 These activities have been supplemented by a dizzying
array of initiatives, often administered by state, local, and private actors, that indirectly enforce immigration law by regulating
access to rights, benefits, and services—including employment, social services, driver’s licenses, transportation services, and
education—based on citizenship or immigration status.6 Increasingly, immigration control objectives also are pursued using
criminal prosecutions.7 These initiatives have yielded a staggering, widely noted increase in the number of noncitizens
formally removed from the United States.8 Much less widely noted, however, has been the full significance of that
growth—including an attendant sea change in the underlying nature of immigration regulation itself, hastened by the
implementation of transformative new surveillance and dataveillance technologies. Like many other areas of contemporary
governance, immigration control has rapidly become an information-centered and technology-driven enterprise. At
virtually every stage of the process of migrating or traveling to, from, and within the United States, both noncitizens and U.S.
citizens are now subject to collection and analysis of extensive quantities of personal information for immigration
control and other purposes. This information is aggregated and stored by government agencies for long retention periods
in networks of interoperable databases and shared among a variety of public and private actors, both inside and outside
the United States, with little transparency, oversight, or accountability.
Deportation is expensive and cost billions of dollars over time.
Uwimana, an editor and senior researcher at Media Matters, 2014 [Solange, Media Matters, Deporting Longstanding
Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost U.S. Billions, http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/10/deporting-longstandingundocumented-immigrants/198845]
A 2010 study by the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimated that the United States would need to spend at least $285
billion over five years to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country. That figure includes the
cost of apprehending immigrants, detaining them for an average of 30 days, legally processing them, and transporting them
back to their birth countries. CAP explained: In these challenging economic times, spending a king's ransom to tackle a
symptom of our immigration crisis without addressing g root causes would be a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Spending
$285 billion would require $922 in new taxes for every man, woman, and child in this country. If this kind of money
were raised, it could provide every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade an extra
$5,100 for their education. Or more frivolously, that $285 billion would pay for about 26,146 trips in the private space travel
rocket, Falcon 1e. Put another way, $285 billion is a little more than what the federal government spent to maintain the
Medicaid health program in 2013. However, that cost to the federal government would be compounded by the loss of economic
activity generated by undocumented immigrants. In a 2010 CAP study, UCLA political scientist Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda found
that enacting a mass deportation policy -- which he described as "not a realistic policy option" -- would reduce economic
output by 1.46 percent per year. He added: "This amounts to a cumulative $2.6 trillion in lost GDP over 10 years."
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Immigration surveillance causes a laundry list of bad outcomes including racial discrimination, the worsening of crime
and public safety, sexual assault, and thousands of deaths
The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, An initiative of the National Network for Immigrant and
Refugee Rights (NIRR), 2010 Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and refugees, regardless of
immigration status, http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf]
Police collusion with ICE undermines community safety. Residents will not report crimes and fires if they fear detection
and deportation. Women are less likely to report domestic violence if they or their partners have immigration status.
Batterers are also more likely to threaten their partners with turning them over to ICE to stop them from reporting an
abusive relationship. s Equally troubling, local law enforcement is not trained in immigration law and requires substantial
amounts of time and money to reach a satisfactory level of expertise. As a result, local police departments, already strapped
on resources and manpower, cut back other vital community services, affecting community safety; and s Police
cooperation with ICE encourages racial profiling, already illegal, resulting in civil rights violations and abuses against
immigrant and refugee communities. Even where police departments have worked to end racial profiling, such
collaboration undermines the credibility of police departments to effectively serve all communities. In some states and
localities, local police and sheriffs can ask individuals for proof of their immigration status—and turn them over to DHS
officials—simply based on their perceived status as undocumented immigrants.xiii These practices have fueled racial profiling
and other forms of discrimination.xiv The Western North Carolina 100 Stories Project reports specific cases where local and
county police deliberately used transit stops to arrest a Latino driver to turn over to ICE; see their report on page 16.
Immigration laws and policing have created an anti-immigrant atmosphere in which some county hospitals, schools, and
other public agencies as well as private citizens, including landlords, employers, and even border vigilantes, have been
emboldened to take the “law” into their own hands—attempting to detect, report, and even detain undocumented
immigrants in their communities.
The federal government’s policy of mass deportation overburdens our immigration courts as thousands attempt to get in
the United States each year.
Costa, EPI Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, 2014 [Overloaded Immigration Courts, Economic Policy
Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/immigration-court-caseload-skyrocketing/]
The immigration court system is severely underfunded and there are too few judges, especially since caseloads began
skyrocketing in 2009. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children fleeing from Central America and arriving
at the Southwest border will be waiting for years while their cases are being adjudicated. Rather than providing sufficient
funding for new immigration judges, multiple proposals in Congress would amend current law to eliminate the right these
vulnerable children have to a full hearing in court. The figure shows that in 1998, the immigration court system had 202 judges
who were responsible for 129,500 cases. The caseload has increased dramatically since then but the number of judges has not
kept pace: The immigration courts now have a backlog of 375,500 cases and only 243 immigration judges to adjudicate
them. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including children, wait an average of 587 days for a hearing, and it can
take three to five years for their cases to be resolved. Each immigration judge is responsible for an average of 1,500 cases,
approximately three times more than the average caseload for federal court judges. In busier courts immigration judges may be
responsible for 2,500 to 6,000 cases, and some have only seven minutes to hear each.
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Suspending surveillance for deportation can immediately halt human rights abuses and bring security to millions of
immigrants.
The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, 2010 [Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and refugees, regardless of immigration status,
http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf]
RECOMMENDATIONS Injustice for All urges the U.S. government to undertake a major shift in immigration policies and
address the patterns of human and civil rights violations. The U.S. must provide access to the adjustment of immigration
status, a process long held at bay by a lack of political will and action at the federal level. Without such a shift, millions of
men, women and children residing in this country will continue to face lives of fear, uncertainty and economic insecurity.
There are significant steps that the Obama Administration can authorize, including: The restoration of due process rights and
other Constitutional protections, including access to the courts; The suspension of detentions and deportations, other ICE
enforcement operations and high profile raids; a high-level investigation and hearings with impacted communities; An end to
the policy and practice of jailing persons solely for immigration status offenses, except in cases where there is a high risk to
public safety; The prohibition of ICE and local, county, state and federal law enforcement from using all forms of racial,
ethnic/nationality and religious profiling; A thorough investigation of complaints of abuses in public and private corporate
immigrant detention centers and jails; a moratorium on the expansion of detention centers and privately run prisons; An end to
all inter-agency and immigration-police collaboration programs; Prohibition of local, county, and state governments from
legislating immigration enforcement, such as Arizona’s SB1070; The roll back and end to the militarization of immigration
control and border communities; end Operation Stonegarden and Operation Streamline. iv Finally, disturbed by the lack of
congressional action to enact fair immigration policies, and on our elected officials in the House and Senate to: Hold field
hearings with members of interior and border communities to document the impacts and abuses caused by U.S. immigration
policing and border security policies, measures and practices; Repeal employer sanctions and stop all E-Verify programs;
protect and expand the labor rights of all workers, native and foreign-born; and increase Department of Labor inspectors;
Repeal the 287(g) and “Secure Communities” initiatives; Provide and expand options to legal migration, including access to
legal permanent residency and citizenship; Institute routine programs, including legalization, to adjust the immigration status
and provide “green cards” to immigrants, to ensure civil and labor rights, keep families together and reinforce healthy
communities. we call upon the Administration and members of Congress: To address the root causes of displacement and
involuntary migration, by promoting and implementing fair trade and sustainable community development policies; To
help lead a nationwide condemnation of racial intolerance and xenophobia in keeping with our country’s legal and
moral commitment to equality for all. We further urge the United States to respect and uphold international human and labor
rights standards, including the ratification and implementation of the U.N. International Convention for the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
Focusing on immigration distracts law enforcement from dealing with crime
Nguyen and Gill, Phd’s at UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015 [Interior immigration enforcement: The impacts of expanding local law enforcement authority,
planning.unc.edu/people/faculty/mainguyen/InteriorImmigrationEnforcement_UrbanStud2015Nguyen0042098014563029.pdf
Some scholars argue that the inability of law enforcers to identify and track unauthorised individuals exposes the
country to homeland security and public safety risks. They con- tend that broadening the authority of state and local law
enforcers expands interior enforcement territory and creates a ‘force multiplier’ effect, especially since state and local law
enforcers are typically first respon- ders to public safety and terrorist threats However, 287g may create competing objectives
for state and local law enforce- ment, detracting from their primary duties of policing crime and securing public safety
(Bolick, 2008; Nguyen and Gill, 2010; Waslin, 2010). Questions have also been raised as to whether the focus on policing
immigration violators distracts agencies from their primary mission of protecting the public from crime (Hincapie, 2009;
Nguyen and Gill, 2010; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the American Civil Liberties Union, 2009; Waslin,
2010). Furthermore, concerns have been raised about abuses of power among local law enforcers because of a lack of
program trans- parency and accountability (Hincapie, 2009; Khashu, 2009; US General Accountability Office, 2009; US
Office of the Inspector General, 2010). Motomura (2011: 1856) notes that the degree of discretion involved when local police
make arrests is proble- matic, as these gatekeepers fill ‘. the enforcement pipeline with cases of their choice for civil
removal and possibly criminal prosecution as well.
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Surveillance causes immigrants to distrust the police making it harder to investigate criminal organizations.
Latino Daily News 2013 [New Study: Nearly Half of Latinos Less Likely to Report Crime Due to Immigration Fears,
http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/new-study-nearly-half-of-latinos-less-likely-to-reportcrime-due-to-immigra/24339/]
Their report, Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement, found that
programs like Secure Communities that use local law enforcement agencies as proxies for immigration enforcement, lead
to a growing mistrust of the police—and a disinclination to report crimes. Among the findings of the study: 44% of
respondents reported they are less likely to contact police officers if they have been a victim of a crime for fear they or
someone they know will be asked about their immigration status 45% of respondents indicated they are less likely to
voluntarily offer information about crimes they know have been committed because they are afraid the police officers
will ask them or someone they know about their immigration status 43% of respondents feel “less safe because local law
enforcement is more involved in immigration enforcement” 38% of respondents feel afraid to leave their home because
local law enforcement officials are more involved in immigration enforcement As Dr. Nik Theodore, a University of
Illinois-Chicago professor and the author of the study said: The decision to enlist police in immigration enforcement has
driven a wedge between police and Latino communities. The increased involvement of police in immigration
enforcement has significantly heightened the fears many Latinos have of the police, leading to a mistrust of law
enforcement authorities and a reduction in public safety.
Ending immigration surveillance solves for this new trend in inhumane immigration enforcement by ending the
surveillance process that makes deportations possible.
Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [IMMIGRATION SURVEILLANCE, 74 Md. L. Rev. 1
(2014), http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]
These four sets of migration and mobility surveillance functions— identification, screening and authorization, mobility
tracking and control, and information sharing—play crucial but underappreciated roles in immigration control processes
across the entire spectrum of migration and travel. In the growing number of contexts in which immigration control activities
now take place, enforcement actors engage in extensive collection, storage, analysis, and dissemination of personal
information, in order to identify individuals, screen them and authorize their activities, enable monitoring and control over
their travel, and share information with other actors who bear immigration control responsibilities. Initially deployed for
traditional immigration enforcement purposes, and expanded largely in the name of security, these surveillance technologies
and processes are qualitatively remaking the nature of immigration governance, as a number of examples illustrate. 1. Border
Control Despite implementation challenges, Congress and DHS have placed new surveillance technologies at the heart of
border control strategies.
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The federal government is decreasing deportations now by only focusing on deporting individual’s convicted of a crime.
Washington Post, 2014 [Obama announces immigration overhaul shielding 4 million from deportation,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-immigration-plan-will-shield-37-million-fromdeportation/2014/11/20/3345d672-70dd-11e4-893f-86bd390a3340_story.html]
President Obama sought to convince the American public Thursday that his plans to unilaterally change immigration laws were
well within the precedent set by previous administrations and did not amount to an amnesty program for illegal immigrants. In a
prime-time address from the White House, Obama argued that a mass deportation of the nation’s more than 11 million
undocumented immigrants “would be both impossible and contrary to our character.” Rather, the president said, the
measures he is enacting to defer the deportations of 4 million immigrants while simultaneously refocusing federal border
control agents on the highest-priority cases, such as felons, gang members and recent border-crossers, are aimed at
“actual threats to our security.” “Felons, not families,” Obama said of who would be in line for deportations. “Criminals, not
children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” Under Obama’s plan, the undocumented
parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the country for at least five years can apply,
starting this spring, for relief from deportations for a period of three years. About 3.7 million immigrants are expected
to qualify under the new guidelines. The president also is expanding a 2012 program that has provided administrative
relief to nearly 600,000 young people brought to the country illegally as children. Officials said that expansion, which
will remove an age cap, could reach another 287,000 people.
Immigration surveillance is improving in the status quo - more humane and guided toward public safety
Sarah Saldaña, ICE Director, 2015 [Sarah Saldaña, Written testimony of ICE Director Sarah Saldaña for a House Committee
on the Judiciary hearing titled “Oversight of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement”,
http://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/04/14/written-testimony-ice-director-sarah-saldaña-house-committee-judiciary-hearing#]
We are working hard to ensure that we provide appropriate care and protections for those in our facilities and have
made progress on our standards to that end. ICE is currently compliant with all DHS Prison Rape Elimination Act
(PREA) requirements applicable to the agency. This includes the ICE Directive on “Sexual Abuse and Assault Prevention and
Intervention” (SAAPI), which was updated in May 2014 to incorporate all DHS PREA requirements. The directive established
a zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse and assault, and outlined the duties of agency employees for reporting, response,
investigation, and monitoring for all allegations; established responsibilities for staff training, timely reporting,
protection of victims, provision of medical and mental health care, and investigation protocols; and includes safeguards
to prevent retaliation against those who report sexual abuse or who participate in a subsequent investigation, and it
defines procedures for facilitating the provision of victim services to detainee victims. ICE also promulgated a new ERO Policy
11087.1 “Operations of ERO Holding Facilities” in September 2014, integrating PREA requirements specifically applicable to
ICE holding facilities. While PREA’s agency requirements are primarily addressed in these two policies, ICE has also made
revisions to other policies and protocols as needed (such as medical policies and investigative protocols) in order to incorporate
all applicable PREA mandates. The requirements of ICE’s SAAPI Directive apply to ICE employees responding to any incident
or allegation of sexual abuse or assault at the facility. This ensures that the agency provides timely and effective response
and follow-up with respect to medical and mental health care, victim services, investigation, protection from retaliation,
and other issues, consistent with the requirements of the PREA regulation.
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Dismantling surveillance programs causes ICE to revert to enforcement policies that are extremely inefficient.
Cadman, researcher at Center for Immigration Studies, 2015 [Dan Cadman February 2015 Interior Immigration
Enforcement Legislation, http://cis.org/Testimony/Cadman-House-Judiciary-Committee-Hearing-021115]
But it is not just in the area of worksite enforcement that interior immigration enforcement has suffered. In her testimony a
week ago, Ms. Vaughan spoke eloquently and in detail to the dangers to public safety that have been engendered by misuse
of prosecutorial discretion, which has been turned on its head from an occasional act of ministerial grace accorded to
those few with significant mitigating circumstances, to one of requiring officers to justify, at length and in detail to their
superiors, taking enforcement action in lieu of said "discretion". What is more, a key public safety program that takes
advantage of modern electronic technologies and connectivity — the same kind of technologies routinely used by citizens
today in their multiplicity of computers, smart phones, tablets, and other devices — to quickly and effectively identify
alien criminals in a cost-efficient and work-saving way, has been dismantled. I am speaking of course of the Secure
Communities program. This dismantling pushes the efforts of ICE agents back to pre-electronics days, in which they have
to rely on paper and faxes to obtain and exchange information in a laborious and time consuming manner.
Ending surveillance leads to parents paying for their children to be smuggled to the United States this leads to suffering
during the border crossing.
Cadman, researcher at Center for Immigration Studies, 2015 [Dan Cadman February 2015 Interior Immigration
Enforcement Legislation, http://cis.org/Testimony/Cadman-House-Judiciary-Committee-Hearing-021115]
This bill confronts the reprehensible fact that, through its policies and practices, the federal government has become a major
facilitator in the business of smuggling minors. In a scenario repeated thousands of times, it goes something like this:
Central American parents living and working illegally in the United States send remittances back to their home country
for the express purpose of having their children smuggled northward. Smugglers move them through the perilous journey
and, if nothing untoward happens, deliver them on the U.S. side to be united with relatives. If the children are apprehended, then
the government itself moves the children onward to be united with relatives, no questions asked. This has become so well
known that, for their part, smugglers are just as likely to deposit their loads of minors or families at crossroads proximate
to the border so that they can be found by Border Patrol agents, thus conveniently relieving the smugglers from the burden
of transporting the children on American highways, with the concomitant chance of exposure and arrest such ventures carry.
And, because the illegal parents face no consequence for their part in having initiated the enterprise, word spreads and
others do the same, at great risk to the children.5 How many perish in the jungle lowlands and highlands in Central
America, or in the heat of the Mexican desert because they can't keep up? We don't know. How many die from illness,
dehydration, hypothermia, accidents, or murder? We don't know. In the shadowy world of commerce in human beings,
there is a thin line between smuggling and trafficking: how many children whose smuggling is arranged by parents end up
being diverted into lives of abuse in the sex or drug trades? We don't know. On this side of the border, we don't always even
know with certainty who the children are being tendered to. The bill requires an inquiry into the status of those persons, and
initiation of proceedings if they are unlawfully in the United States. Critics will say this will deter parents from coming forward.
Perhaps. But the alternative is for the United States to continue facilitating the movement of human beings as cargo, even
while we lecture the rest of the world as to their obligations to halt human smuggling and trafficking. The moral
imperative is clear: Our government should undertake no policy or practice that puts more children at risk.
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Limiting the ICE’s surveillance capacity overloads the system and increases public safety risks.
Cadman and Metcalf, researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies, 2015 [Mark Metcalf, Dan Cadman January 2015,
How the Obama administration has trashed a key immigration enforcement tool, http://cis.org/disabling-detainers]
The combination of local obstruction of ICE and ICE's self-imposed limits on enforcement priorities had already begun
before Johnson's decision to terminate their use. According to a recent report from the Syracuse University Transactional Action
Clearinghouse (TRAC), ICE detainers have dropped 39 percent since 2012. Interestingly, the report tells us that, "TRAC shared
its findings with ICE and asked the agency for insights into what was driving this downward trend. However, ICE declined to
comment on why its agents were issuing fewer detainers."42 Ironically, in a recent media article published by NJ.com —
published prior to the president's executive action speech and promulgation of the Johnson memorandum — ICE was much less
reticent about its dissatisfaction with state and local jurisdictions ignoring their detainers. An ICE spokesman is quoted in the
article as saying, "When serious criminal offenders are released to the streets in a community, rather than to ICE custody, it
undermines ICE's ability to protect public safety and impedes us from enforcing the nation's immigration laws. ...
Jurisdictions that ignore detainers bear the risk of possible public safety risks."43 But the problem of ignoring detainers is
not just about statistics, and it is far more than a matter of workload completion for ICE agents and officers in pursuing their
mission, however significant those matters are. Fundamental governmental interests are involved, including community
safety, officer safety, efficient use of taxpayer funds, and maintenance of an effective regimen of due process within the
immigration system established by Congress: When sheriffs or police turn a suspect loose rather than hold him on the
detainer filed, law-abiding members of the community are at risk should he re-offend (and there are many, often
egregious, instances of such alien recidivists victimizing additional members of the public).44 If ICE officers are obliged to go
out and seek the individual once he has been released, they, too, are at greater risk of injury than if receiving him directly
from local law enforcement officers in the secure constraints of a jail setting — especially since the alien offender at the point of
release, notwithstanding the detainer, is likely to know that they are aware of and looking for him. Furthermore, the time and
energy wasted trying to track down and re-apprehend that alien after local police have released him equates to limited
officer resources and public monies not available to do equally important immigration enforcement work elsewhere in
an already overburdened system.
The bill’s decrease of surveillance leaves us with no effective immigration policies – doing nothing emboldens drug
cartels and increases trafficking
David Inserra, Research Associate for Homeland Security and Cyber Security, 2014 David, Research Associate for Homeland Security
and Cyber Security, Master of Public Policy from George Mason, November 3rd, Ten-Step Checklist for Revitalizing America’s Immigration System: How the
Administration Can Fulfill Its Responsibilities, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/11/ten-step-checklist-for-revitalizing-americas-immigration-system-howthe-administration-can-fulfill-its-responsibilities
Security Costs. Beyond the pure fiscal costs of immigration, non-enforcement of immigration laws also hurts U.S. security
and commitment to the rule of law. From a security perspective, lax enforcement of U.S. immigration laws potentially allows
terrorists to gain access to the U.S. to plan and carry out attacks. At least five of the 9/11 hijackers were in the U.S. on expired
visas or had otherwise violated the terms of their visas.[9] More recently, Amine Khalifi, who was illegally in the U.S. for 12
years, was arrested in a sting in 2012 for conspiring to use a suicide vest against the U.S. Capitol.[10]¶ Beyond illegal
immigrants engaging in terrorism—which has so far been rare—lax enforcement of immigration laws also benefits drug
cartels. While the U.S. will never completely stop the flow of illicit drugs, weapons, and people into the U.S., not enforcing
U.S. immigration laws and failing to secure the border makes it easier for cartel members and associates to gain entry
and remain in the U.S. in order to further their criminal operations.[11] Similarly, perceived weakness in U.S.
immigration enforcement encourages more illegal immigrants to come to the U.S. in the hands of drug cartels that
control the smuggling and transportation routes through Mexico. Often forced to do the cartels’ bidding, such as
transporting drugs into the U.S., illegal immigrants have little choice but to comply or be killed.[12]¶ Failure to enforce
U.S. immigration law also allows common criminals to go undeported. As described below, more than 100,000 criminal
aliens were released from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in fiscal year (FY) 2013 despite being
deportable for their criminal convictions, including homicide, arson, and rape.[13] Additional research by the Congressional
Research Service found that many of these criminal aliens go on to commit thousands of additional crimes.
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Surveillance of illegal immigrants is key to reduce drug-related violence—only federal surveillance programs are able to
target illegal immigrants with the worst criminal records like drug traffickers.
Imperial Valley Press Online 2010 Silvio J., July 6th, Criminal aliens' targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, http://articles.ivpressonline.com/2010-07-06/ice-agents_24806586
Searching for noncitizens who run afoul of the law is like finding the proverbial “needle in the haystack,” Lauren Mack,
ICE spokeswoman, said, but it’s a function that ICE needs to pursue.¶ “It’s a tremendous job,” Mack said. “But it has to be
done to make the country safe.”¶ Ferreting out those who ICE authorities call “criminal aliens” is a part of what a
specialized unit of the Violent Criminal Alien section does at varying times from month to month, Miguel M. Munoz,
assistant field office director with ICE’s Imperial Enforcement and Removal Operation, said.¶ Identifying those with criminal
convictions can come through anonymous tips, wanted notices, booking information at the county jail or referrals from the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Office, Munoz said.¶ As required by the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE agents are
directed to find those with serious criminal convictions on their records, which upon review would indicate to ICE what
section of the law was violated. The law gives ICE “the authority to remove the subject from the country,” Munoz said.¶
Among the obstacles ICE agents face include locating a subject, which involves a painstaking effort in culling as much
background information, or “intel” as possible and in not disrupting any “third parties” involved with a target, Munoz said. This
means not having an operation adversely impact children or relatives who may be at home at the time agents come looking for a
specific person, officials said.¶ Toys left in the front yard can serve as an indication that children may be at a home and would
compel ICE agents to exercise discretion in searching for a target, officials said.¶ “They never violate or insult their dignity,”
Munoz said of ICE agents in their sweeps. “In all honesty, once you take someone from their household, we’re doing it because
he or she has violated the law. All the subjects we go after are criminal aliens.Ӧ Surveillance can involve three to five days
of checking on a target’s daily routine and also looking for “whoever goes or leaves the premises during the targeted
time,” Christopher Salgado, supervisory detention and deportation officer with ICE, said.¶ When operations are conducted, ICE
agents can spend time checking files, conferring with immigration attorneys with ICE and checking criminal histories, Salgado
said. Other work includes verifying a target’s employment, car license and registration and checking on referrals from other law
enforcement agencies in the Imperial Valley, Salgado said.¶ “It all depends on the case,” Salgado said of the work that goes into
intelligence gathering. “It takes a while. We do a lot of networking.”¶ At least one of the people arrested during the ICE sweep
had a drug-trafficking conviction that, on the surface, would not measure up to anyone’s idea of a violent act. But Munoz
explained that people with drug-related convictions are pursued by ICE because the nature of the offense often “has
violence tied to it.”
Drug cartel caused violence results in levels of suffering that rival those of major wars— suffering, sexual violence, and
extortion all create a well-founded fear of persecution that is unjust and should be solved.
Jilian Blake, JD University of Michigan Law School, 2012 (Jilian N., former Analyst for the Department of Defense and current owner
of and lawyer at Blake & Wilson Immigraiton Law, Gang and Cartel Violence: A Reason To Grant Political Asylum from Mexico and Central
America, Yale Journal of International Law Vol. 38, http://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/o-38-blake-gang-and-cartel-violence.pdf)
The resulting level of violence in Mexico and Central America has been extremely high. According to U.S. military
officials, the conflict in Mexico and Central America has come to rival the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of
the scale of violence, spending and weapons.26 The United Nations reports that the “Northern Triangle (El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala) has the highest murder rate of any region in the world, and very high rates of other forms of
violent crime.”27 In Mexico, since Calderón’s campaign began in 2006, more than 50,000 people have been killed as a result
of drug-related violence.28 ¶ III. BASIS FOR PROTECTION FROM GANGS AND CARTELS UNDER U.S. LAW The
prevalence of gang violence in the region has been accompanied in recent year by a steadily growing number of asylum
applications in the United States.29 These applicants are individuals who resist gang demands, including young men who
resist recruitment, women who are victims of sexual violence or intimidation, human rights and church activists, those
who resist extortion, lawenforcement agents, gang members forced to join gangs and trying to leave, and others.30¶
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Bystanders are critical to stopping bullying for a number of reasons.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering
bystanders to take action might be the key to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-thebystander/
Bystanders are important because:
Bullying most often takes place in front of peers.
It almost never happens when adults are watching.
Most bystanders want to do something to stop the bully.
Bullies like an audience. If the audience shows disapproval, bullies are discouraged from continuing.
However, bystanders, especially children, need to be empowered to act. The majority of children won’t act for a variety of
reasons, perhaps because they are afraid, confused or unsure of what to do.
When bystanders fail to act, they give bullies their approval.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action
might be the key to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-the-bystander/
Researchers are studying the role of the bystander and discovering just how crucial it can be in creating an emotionally
healthy environment. If the status quo at any school is that children observe bullying behavior in others and do nothing
about it, then they end up tacitly giving their support to the bully.
We need people to start testifying in gang and other trails and to honestly report crimes.
Wendy Murphy is a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor who teaches at New England Law/Boston The
Daily Beast. 2009. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/10/30/punish-the-onlookers.html
Naysayers also will complain that we can’t expect people to “snitch” on each other because the risk of retaliation is too
great, and because they have to remain silent in order to survive in their communities. One study found that the Los
Angeles County district attorney investigated 1,600 cases of witness intimidation, a number that has grown
consistently in recent years. In more than 1,000 gang-violence cases, witnesses refused to cooperate. But citizens
have a right and a duty to testify in judicial proceedings. If a person is summoned to appear in court and doesn’t
show up, he or she can be arrested and sent to jail. The system itself, not the police and prosecutors, has a right to
insist on “everyman’s evidence.” It isn’t fascism, it’s democracy in action.
In the vast majority of cases citizens that intervene reduce crime.
Wendy Murphy is a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor who teaches at New England Law/Boston The
Daily Beast. 2009. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/10/30/punish-the-onlookers.html
It would be even better if we could encourage more direct bystander intervention, and not just criminalize the
nonreporting of crime. But it’s a lot to ask folks to put themselves in harm’s way for the protection of others and the
good of society—even though we expect firefighters, cops, and people in the military to do it every day for little
compensation. And there’s always a risk that encouraging witnesses to get personally involved in crime prevention will
breed vigilantism. But most data from Crime Stopper types of organizations and neighborhood watch programs
suggest the opposite is true. More involvement by citizens tends to increase the social stigma associated with
unlawful behavior—which helps reduce crime.
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People who stand around and watch acts of savagery like rape should be punished.
Wendy Murphy is a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor who teaches at New England Law/Boston The
Daily Beast. 2009. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/10/30/punish-the-onlookers.html
In Northern California, four young men, ages 15 to 19, have been charged with rape and special circumstances that
could put them behind bars for life for the alleged gang assault of a 15-year-old girl outside a high school. But what
of the nearly two-dozen people, including adults, who watched the alleged gang rape last Saturday and did
nothing? This wasn’t just a few people standing around watching a barroom brawl or consensual group sex. This was a
group of folks finding entertainment value in human savagery.
Requiring the reporting of rape would reduce the number of sexual violence.
Wendy Murphy is a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor who teaches at New England Law/Boston The
Daily Beast. 2009. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/10/30/punish-the-onlookers.html
That one human being has the capacity to so mistreat another is not news. Nor is it shocking that laws against sexual
violence have failed to prevent rape. Rapists don’t respect women—why would they respect the law? But there’s a good
argument that requiring witnesses to report sexual violence to police when they see it might actually make a difference in
reducing incidence rates.
Bystander action reduces bullying 50%.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action might be the key
to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-the-bystander/
The second step is teaching them that intervening in a bullying situation can make a difference. Studies show that if a
bystander discourages the bully there is a 50% chance that the bully will stop. “Most bullies bully because they want to
impress people and they like an audience. So if the audience is booing instead of clapping, they realize they’re losing their
audience,” says Rigby.
There is always something a bystander can do to help stop bullying.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action might be the key
to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-the-bystander/
Children also need adults to help them understand that they are not alone in thinking that bullying is disturbing and wrong,
and that they will be supported by their peers if they speak up. “There is always something that any bystander can do
safely. There are lots and lots of things to do. Just be flexible and keep looking for things that are going to be safe and
effective for the child to do,” says Davis.
Only one in five are willing to intervene.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action might be the key to stopping
bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-the-bystander/
Without any education or support from adults, the vast majority of children will not take any action if they witness
bullying. “The proportion of children who will spontaneously intervene is about one in five,” says Rigby. “Children on the
whole feel bullying is wrong and unfair, and most want to intervene, but there are all sorts of reasons why they don’t.”
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People that to fail during a hate crime should face punishment.
The State News (Michigan State) August 28, 2012.
http://statenews.com/blog/on_the_qt/2012/08/bystanders_of_alleged_hate_crime_should_receive_serious_punishment
News broke Monday afternoon that an alleged anti-Semitic hate crime against a Jewish student occurred at Michigan State
University. If you read the alleged details of the incident, odds are you felt the same way I felt: disgusted and appalled.
It’s no question that the two men who are alleged to have assaulted journalism sophomore Zachary Tennen should receive
heavy punishment, but I would go even further than punishing just those two. According to reports, Tennen had his mouth
stapled shut by the two assaulters and had his jaw broken in two places while about 20 people stood by and did nothing.
Do you know what I would do with those careless bystanders? Expel them from Michigan State University. In addition to
the two cowards who committed the alleged hate crime, the people who sat around and watched Tennen get his face
bashed in should never see an MSU classroom again. Think about it --— if just one person simply stepped up and tried to
help Tennen while he was being beaten to unconsciousness, MSU would have been saved from much embarrassment, and
people wouldn’t even think to associate anti-Semitism with the university. Not to mention that Tennen wouldn’t be sitting
in a hospital recovering from jaw surgery. Members of the party instead took a step back and watched, according to
reports. Because of them, current and former students are ashamed of what happened near their university, and
prospective students probably will take MSU off their list of possible schools. Expulsion is quite the punishment, but if
you are going to let a student be the victim of an alleged hate crime right in front of you, a strict punishment is warranted.
It’s been reported that nobody reached out to help, and because of that, an innocent student now has a broken jaw, among
other injuries, and MSU has a black eye. Those two together are grounds for serious punishment from the university.
Bystanders can reduce bullying.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action might be the key
to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-the-bystander/
An eighth-grader approaches a sixth-grader in a crowded girls’ locker room. The older girl says to the younger, “Those
are some ugly shoes you’ve got there.” Then, in front of everyone, she takes out a permanent marker and slashes Xs on
the younger girl’s shoes, ruining them. The bystanders stare and shake their heads, but do not intervene or try to
discourage the bully. Unfortunately, this passive response from bystanders is not unusual. In other words, bystanders are
living up to their name by standing there and doing nothing – and this is a problem. A number of experts today say that
bystanders have the power to drastically reduce bullying at schools. Their research offers tips for parents and schools on
how to get bystanders to take a stand.
Bystanders can actively encourage crime and make things worse.
S.E. SMITH, Writer and Activist, XO Jane.Com JAN 8, 2013 Should Bystanders Have A Legal Obligation To
Intervene In A Rape? http://www.xojane.com/issues/should-bystanders-have-a-legal-obligation-to-intervene-in-crimes
The problem with bystanders isn’t necessarily that they don’t do anything, although obviously that’s an issue. The larger
problem is sometimes that they do in fact “do something” and that something is very unpleasant. They’re the ones
cheering, creating a larger audience, goading the criminals on, feeding something terrible and monstrous that swells and
grows as more people are attracted. They’re the ones who aren’t just condoning by remaining silent, but by actively highfiving the criminals and creating a charged atmosphere. Bystanders here are actively contributing to the crime, but they
are also products of the culture they’re socialized in. Male bystanders to violent rapes are put in the position of having to
cheer or be jeered at, to prove their masculinity by being “one of the boys,” while women are reminded that they’re in
danger of joining (or becoming) the victim unless they play along. Never underestimate the power of a group when it
comes to pressuring people into conformity.
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Punishing bystanders sounds good but quickly becomes difficult to implement.
S.E. SMITH, Writer and Activist, XO Jane.Com JAN 8, 2013 Should Bystanders Have A Legal Obligation To
Intervene In A Rape? http://www.xojane.com/issues/should-bystanders-have-a-legal-obligation-to-intervene-in-crimes
A Redditor recently asked whether bystanders who don't intervene during a rape should be prosecuted: I'm asking
in relation to what happened in Steubenville in Ohio. Considering that people stood by and apparently did not try to
intervene, I wonder if people should have a legal responsibility to intervene, as a moral responsibility apparently no longer
suffices to mobilize people. What do you think?
My first, gut response was, “Hell yeah, throw the book at bystanders. Who the hell stands around and does nothing
when acts of violence and horrible crimes are committed?” And then I took a step back and thought about the issue,
noting that it’s actually much more complicated than I was making it out to be. Many of the commenters also
articulated the clear problems with making inactivity illegal, from a likely dip in reporting crimes (for fear that
people would be implicated and charged) to more difficulty finding witnesses to the simple and poignant “put on
your own oxygen mask before helping others” ethos.
Intervening can cause more people to get hurt and you cannot legislate good behavior.
S.E. SMITH, Writer and Activist, XO Jane.Com JAN 8, 2013 Should Bystanders Have A Legal Obligation To
Intervene In A Rape? http://www.xojane.com/issues/should-bystanders-have-a-legal-obligation-to-intervene-in-crimes
Intervention in a rape or any other violent crime can turn one victim into two, numerous responses to the original post
pointed out. It’s a painful truth. I believe that bystanders have an ethical duty to intervene if they can do so safely, and
most definitely to call for assistance from law enforcement. But this is a case where legislating ethics would go very, very
badly, and the ensuing laws would be effectively unenforceable anyway. You can't legislate people into common decency.
We don’t need laws. We need to examine our culture and figure out how we create bystanders.
S.E. SMITH, Writer and Activist, XO Jane.Com JAN 8, 2013 Should Bystanders Have A Legal Obligation To
Intervene In A Rape? http://www.xojane.com/issues/should-bystanders-have-a-legal-obligation-to-intervene-in-crimes
The bystander effect is real, and it needs to be explored and confronted. But more than that, the culture that leads
people to gather around the site of a violent crime and watch without acting needs to be explored and confronted.
This, right here, is what we talk about when we talk about “rape culture,” that a group of men should be struck
senseless in the face of rape, rather than being moved to step in or get to safety and call the police. We must not only
teach boys not to rape, but also teach boys their ethical responsibilities as witnesses. “If you see something, say
something” is a saying for a reason, but it's a surprisingly difficult one to put into action for many of us, because
there are so many obstacles in the way of saying something. Fear of being mocked or attacked, worries that you won't
be believed, the threat of punishment or being viewed as complicit in a crime. Should bystanders be prosecuted? No.
Should we as a society be asking why it is that bystanders continue to be such a huge problem? Hell. Yes.
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Anti-bullying education is needed.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering
bystanders to take action might be the key to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-thebystander/
However, without any bullying-prevention education, as many as 25% of children will actually encourage the bully.
“These kids tend to be friends with the bully,” says Kuther. “They’re also more likely to have low self-esteem. But
the larger problem is that more than half of kids will do nothing if they see someone being bullied, and by doing nothing
they encourage the bully.”
Encouraging intervention in bullying can be dangerous.
Marian Wilde. Great Schools.Org. Downloaded 2015. The bully and the bystander Experts say that empowering
bystanders to take action might be the key to stopping bullies. http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/the-bully-and-thebystander/
Children should not be encouraged to intervene physically in a fight or any dangerous situation. Once things escalate into
physical altercations, adults should be summoned. “Don’t have children intervene physically because you never know
where it’s going to go,” says Davis. “We discourage confrontation, unless the bystander is a friend of the bully and can
say something like, ‘Remember how much trouble you got in the last time you did something like this?'”
Bystander education works.
Mark Tyrrell is a therapist, trainer and author and is the co-founder of Hypnosis Downloads. Uncommon
KNowldedge.Com. Downloaded July 2015. Bystander apathy - it's none of my business! http://www.uncommonknowledge.co.uk/articles/bystander-apathy.html
Social scientist Arthur Beaman discovered that when he educated people about social cues and bystander apathy they
were more ready to take action. He took a group of college students and showed them footage of the smoke experiment
I've just described. He also spoke to them about the seizure research in relation to Genovese murder case. He found that
after exposure to this information the students were twice as likely to offer help 'in the street' as compared with people
who had not been educated about this.
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Con Consequences for Bystanders
Punishing child bystanders during bullying blames children for lack of adult control.
Canada News Daily Brew. Nov 26, 2012 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/alberta-anti-bullying-law-couldpunish-kids-don-202355455.html
A report released Monday by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an Ottawa think tank tied to the religiouslybased Focus on the Family organization, says the law gives schools the authority to suspend bystanders to bullying.
That means, presumably, if you don't step in to stop a bullying incident or at the very least report it to someone, you're
liable to be disciplined for your inaction. The report's author, institute senior researcher Peter Jon Mitchell, calls the
provision "wrongheaded," according to Postmedia News, because it appears to leave parents out of the equation."It's
essentially saying that as adults, we've left the playground, and that it's up to kids to police bullies on behalf of the
school and parents," Mitchell said. "Certainly there might be room for bystanders' (involvement), but I hope we're
not passing the buck to kids and saying, 'Solve your own problems.' " Mitchell also argued the law puts the
government, and by extension school authorities, in the role of parents, a job he thinks they're lousy at. "Bullying is a
relational issue requiring a relational response," said Mitchell. "It's not that (lawmakers) shouldn't be involved; it's
that involvement should be limited, with policies that empower parents instead of having the opposite effect."
Bully bystander laws will create a climate of fear.
Canada News Daily Brew. Nov 26, 2012 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/alberta-anti-bullying-law-couldpunish-kids-don-202355455.html
The right-wing research group got some surprising support from Brenda Morrison, a Simon Fraser University
criminologist and outspoken critic of the passive-bystander culture. The problem with the Alberta law is that it
threatens students into reporting bullying under pain of suspension or expulsion, instead of empowering them to
do the right thing, she said. "These heavy sanctions actually create more of a culture of fear in schools," Morrison
told Postmedia News. "We want kids to voluntarily step up for all the right reasons, because they're good citizens."
Bystander laws bypass the truth of the problem; bullying must be fixed at the societal level, not by laws.
Canada News Daily Brew. Nov 26, 2012 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/alberta-anti-bullying-law-couldpunish-kids-don-202355455.html
Mitchell and Morrison agree bullying is a problem that won't be solved simply by threatening kids. It needs to be
addressed at a societal level. For Morrison, that means pulling everyone — students, teachers, parents and groups
— into the discussion. Mitchell thinks parents are the primary influencers and role models of children but concedes a
widening generation gap makes it harder for them make a difference. "Youth have their own culture where adults, for the
most part, aren't present," he told Postmedia News. "(As such), many of our approaches to bullying are akin to refereeing
a soccer match from outside the stadium."
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Pro Minimum Wage Increase
The latest research over city wage laws shows that higher minimum wages increase income without reducing jobs.
National Employment Law Project. May 2015. City Minimum Wage Laws: Recent Trends and Economic Evidence
http://campaign.nelp.org/page/-/rtmw/City-Minimum-Wage-Laws-Recent-Trends-Economic-Evidence.pdf?nocdn=1
Economic evidence indicates that the higher city minimum wages enacted in U.S. cities to date have boosted earnings
without slowing job growth or causing business relocations. These findings are consistent with the bulk of modern
research on higher state minimum wages, which has generally found no statistically significant evidence of job losses
resulting from minimum wage increases passed over the last 20 years in the United States. This is partly because the bulk
of the low-wage positions affected by city minimum wages are in fields such as restaurants, retail, building services, home
health care, and child care – jobs that serve city-based customers such as residents, office workers, and tourists at city
locations. As a result, most cannot practically be moved by their employers to locations outside of the city while still
retaining their customer bases
Increasing the minimum wage would help 45 million families in need.
US Daily Review July 17, 2013 Over 100 Economists Agree: Raise The Minimum Wage To $10.50
The petition, signed by economists from dozens of universities and research institutes, explains how a minimum
wage employee working full time at the current rate earns $15,080 a year — 19 percent below the poverty line for a
family of three. Raising the minimum wage to $10.50 would 'deliver much needed living standard improvements to 45
million U.S. workers and their families.'
The growing and un-just wage gap makes increasing the minimum wage a moral imperative.
Catholic News Service | Feb. 21, 2014. Addressing income inequality: A higher minimum wage is just the start
Raising the minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour would give an automatic raise to an
estimated 16.5 million workers, according to a Congressional Budget Office study issued Tuesday. Other studies have
pointed to a spillover effect that could ultimately help 28 million workers in all, as those already making $10 an hour or a
bit more would likely get raises as well. It's a moral issue, according to Thom Shellabarger, a former domestic policy
adviser to the U.S. bishops who is now a Washington-based public policy associate for Interfaith Worker Justice.
In 1982, CEO pay in the United States was about 42 times what their employees made on average, Shellabarger
said. "And in 2012, just a few years ago, the last number I recall it's now over 400-to-1, 440-to-1. That type of
movement further and further off the norm distorts the whole economic picture, particularly if you know that
wages for the average family are flat and have been going down (in real terms) since 1982." "As productivity and
profits go up," he said, "only a few are benefiting from that, not the general population. So we're concerned about how
that inequality is growing." The gap, according to American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein,
is the greatest it's been since 1929, the year of the stock market crash that spawned the Great Depression. The CBO
study said the proposed minimum wage hike -- there are companion bills in the House and Senate -- would pull 900,000
people out of poverty. The bills also would index the minimum wage to inflation, and raise the minimum hourly pay for
"tipped workers" such as waiters and baggage handlers from $2.13 to 70 percent of the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage will not cause large consumer price increases.
US Daily Review July 17, 2013 Over 100 Economists Agree: Raise The Minimum Wage To $10.50
Third, the petition rebuts those who attempt to connect a moderate minimum wage increase with huge consumer
price increases, explaining how, for example, the fast-food industry would only see a 2.7% rise in costs. These
cost increases, note the economists, can be paid for through negligible price increases, small productivity gains or more
equal distribution of companies' total revenues.
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Pro Minimum Wage Increase
United States Department of Labor. 2015. Minimum
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm
Wage Mythbusters .
Myth: Raising the minimum wage will only benefit teens.
Not true: The typical minimum wage worker is not a high-school student earning weekend pocket money. In fact, 88
percent of those who would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase are age 20 or older, and 55 percent are
women.
Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.
Not true: A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally,
more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of
raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.
Myth: Small business owners can't afford to pay their workers more, and therefore don't support an increase in
the minimum wage.
Not true: A June 2014 survey found that more than 3 out of 5 small business owners support increasing the minimum
wage to $10.10. Small business owners believe that a higher minimum wage would benefit business in important ways:
58% say raising the minimum wage would increase consumer purchasing power. 56% say raising the minimum wage
would help the economy. In addition, 53% agree that with a higher minimum wage, businesses would benefit from lower
employee turnover, increased productivity and customer satisfaction.
Myth: Raising the federal tipped minimum wage ($2.13 per hour since 1991) would hurt restaurants.
Not true: In California, employers are required to pay servers the full minimum wage of $9 per hour - before tips. Even
with a recent increase in the minimum wage, the National Restaurant Association projects California restaurant sales will
outpace the U.S. average in 2014.
Myth: Raising the federal tipped minimum wage ($2.13 per hour since 1991) would lead to restaurant job losses.
Not true: Employers in San Francisco must pay tipped workers the full minimum wage of $10.74 per hour – before tips.
Yet, the San Francisco restaurant industry has experienced positive job growth over the past few years according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Myth: Raising the federal minimum wage won't benefit workers in states where the hourly minimum rate is
already higher than the federal minimum.
Not true: Only 23 states and the District of Columbia currently have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum,
meaning a majority of states have an hourly minimum rate at or below the federal minimum. Increasing the federal
minimum wage will boost the earnings for some 28 million low-wage workers nationwide. That includes workers in those
states already earning above the current federal minimum. Raising the federal minimum wage is an important part of
strengthening the economy. A raise for minimum wage earners will put more money in more families' pockets, which will
be spent on goods and services, stimulating economic growth locally and nationally.
Myth: Younger workers don't have to be paid the minimum wage.
Not true: While there are some exceptions, employers are generally required to pay at least the federal minimum wage.
Exceptions allowed include a minimum wage of $4.25 per hour for young workers under the age of 20, but only during
their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer, and as long as their work does not displace
other workers. After 90 consecutive days of employment or the employee reaches 20 years of age, whichever comes first,
the employee must receive the current federal minimum wage or the state minimum wage, whichever is higher. There are
programs requiring federal certification that allow for payment of less than the full federal minimum wage, but those
programs are not limited to the employment of young workers.
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Pro Minimum Wage Increase
United States Department of Labor. 2015. Minimum
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm
Wage Mythbusters.
Myth: Restaurant servers don't need to be paid the minimum wage since they receive tips.
Not true: An employer can pay a tipped employee as little as $2.13 per hour in direct wages, but only if that amount plus
tips equal at least the federal minimum wage and the worker retains all tips and customarily and regularly receives more
than $30 a month in tips. Often, an employee's tips combined with the employer's direct wages of at least $2.13 an hour do
not equal the federal minimum hourly wage. When that occurs, the employer must make up the difference. Some states
have minimum wage laws specific to tipped employees. When an employee is subject to both the federal and state wage
laws, he or she is entitled to the provisions of each law which provides the greater benefits.
Myth: Only part-time workers are paid the minimum wage.
Not true: About 53 percent of all minimum wage earners are full-time workers, and minimum wage workers contributed
almost half (46 percent) of their household's wage and salary income in 2011. Moreover, more than 88 percent of those
who would benefit from raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 are working adults, and 55 percent are
working women.
Myth: Increasing the minimum wage is bad for businesses.
Not true: Academic research has shown that higher wages sharply reduce employee turnover which can reduce
employment and training costs.
Myth: Increasing the minimum wage is bad for the economy.
Not true: Since 1938, the federal minimum wage has been increased 22 times. For more than 75 years, real GDP per
capita has steadily increased, even when the minimum wage has been raised.
Myth: The federal minimum wage goes up automatically as prices increase.
Not true: While some states have enacted rules in recent years triggering automatic increases in their minimum wages to
help them keep up with inflation, the federal minimum wage does not operate in the same manner. An increase in the
federal minimum wage requires approval by Congress and the president. However, in his call to gradually increase the
current federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, President Obama has also called for it to adjust automatically with
inflation. Eliminating the requirement of formal congressional action would likely reduce the amount of time between
increases, and better help low-income families keep up with rising prices.
Myth: The federal minimum wage is higher today than it was when President Reagan took office.
Not true: While the federal minimum wage was only $3.35 per hour in 1981 and is currently $7.25 per hour in real
dollars, when adjusted for inflation, the current federal minimum wage would need to be more than $8 per hour to equal
its buying power of the early 1980s and more nearly $11 per hour to equal its buying power of the late 1960s. That's why
President Obama is urging Congress to increase the federal minimum wage and give low-wage workers a much-needed
boost.
Myth: Increasing the minimum wage lacks public support.
Not true: Raising the federal minimum wage is an issue with broad popular support. Polls conducted since February 2013
when President Obama first called on Congress to increase the minimum wage have consistently shown that an
overwhelming majority of Americans support an increase.
Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will result in job losses for newly hired and unskilled workers in what some
call a “last-one-hired-equals-first-one-fired” scenario.
Not true: Minimum wage increases have little to no negative effect on employment as shown in independent studies from
economists across the country. Academic research also has shown that higher wages sharply reduce employee turnover
which can reduce employment and training costs.
Myth: The minimum wage stays the same if Congress doesn't change it.
Not true: Congress sets the minimum wage, but it doesn't keep pace with inflation. Because the cost of living is always
rising, the value of a new minimum wage begins to fall from the moment it is set.
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Con Minimum Wage Increase
CATO Institute 2015 Four Reasons Not to Raise the Minimum Wage
Some policymakers are proposing to raise the minimum wage, but that policy would be harmful.
Research shows businesses would respond to the increased costs by reducing employment, particularly
for low-skilled workers. Some businesses may pass the higher costs on to consumers. Despite the hope
of proponents, the minimum wage does little, if anything, to decrease poverty.
It Would Result In Job Loss
Evidence of job losses have been found since the earliest imposition of the minimum wage
 The first 25-cent minimum wage in 1938 resulted in significant job losses.
 Minimum wage increases recently imposed in American Samoa resulted in economic effects so pronounced that
President Obama signed into law a bill postponing them.
 A 2006 review of more than 100 minimum wage studies by David Neumark and William Wascher found that
about two-thirds found negative employment effects.

In 2010, Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser estimated: “nearly 1.3 million jobs will be lost if the federal
minimum wage is increased to $9.50 per hour.”
It Would Hurt Low-Skilled Workers
Evidence shows minimum wage increases disproportionally hurt the people they’re supposed to help
 The 2006 Neumark and Wascher review found the literature “as largely solidifying the conventional view that
minimum wages reduce employment among low-skilled workers.”
 A 2012 analysis of the New York State minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.75 per hour found a “20.2 to 21.8
percent reduction in the employment of younger less-educated individuals.”
 A 2010 analysis by Michael J. Hicks found: “the latest round of minimum wage increases” account “for
roughly 550,000 fewer part-time jobs,” including “roughly 310,000 fewer teenagers working part-time.”
It Would Have Little Effect On Reducing Poverty
Evidence suggests that minimum wage increases don’t reduce poverty
 In the previous federal minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $7.25, only 15 percent of the workers who were
expected to gain from it lived in poor households, according to a 2012 review by Mark Wilson. If the minimum
were today raised to $9.50, only 11 percent of workers who would gain live in poor households.
 The 2012 Wilson review noted: “Since 1995, eight studies have examined the income and poverty effects of
minimum wage increases, and all but one have found that past minimum wage hikes had no effect on poverty.”
 The 2012 Wilson review noted: “One recent academic study found that both state and federal minimum wage
increases between 2003 and 2007 had no effect on state poverty rates.”
It May Result In Higher Prices For Consumers
The costs of minimum wage increases must be paid by someone


The 2012 Wilson review noted: A 2004 “review of more than 20 minimum wage studies looking at price effects
found that a 10 percent increase in the U.S. minimum wage raises food prices by up to 4 percent.”
A 2007 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that restaurant prices increase in response to
minimum wage increases.
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Con Minimum Wage Increase
Raising the minimum wage will not do nearly enough. Wage disparity between the rich and poor is so high it will
barely make a dent.
Nikelle Snader. Writer/Assistant Editor at The Cheat Sheet May 15, 2015. Why Raising the Minimum Wage Is Not
Going to Fix the Problem http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/why-raising-the-minimum-wage-isnt-a-silver-bullet.html/?a=viewall#ixzz3hnGonl00
Dr. Michael Ungar, a writer for Psychology Today, puts it like this: “A higher minimum wage may help families
avoid the food banks, but it won’t make them any happier unless their wages hit a level where they feel fairly
compensated for the work they do and their wages are positioned well when compared with the paychecks [sic] of others.
In other words, more money does not equal happiness unless it brings with it social justice.” Ungar advocates that
raising the minimum wage does help families in need, and gives everyone who is affected more buying power. But they
won’t be happy unless they also feel they’re being compensated fairly compared to others, either within the company or in
similar positions elsewhere. The study from the National Academy of Sciences backs up this idea. Life evaluation will
continue to increase with income, it said. But emotional well-being (happiness) stops increasing with any
significance around the $75,000 salary mark. That’s the level at which most basic needs can be met without significant
trouble, the study suggests, therefore not having as much of an affect on well-being. Perhaps this is where conversation
about the disparity of pay between executives and typical employees becomes relevant. One recent study suggests that
larger firms, often with highly paid CEOs, are one of the main contributors to wage inequality in the United States. The
Economic Policy Institute reports that CEO wages increased by 937% between 1978 to 2013. A typical worker’s
compensation grew just 10.2% over that same period. Referencing the Psychology Today article once more, if
employees’ overall happiness depends on perceived equity and worth of their work, not just a higher dollar figure, then
the goal of looking out for America’s well-being becomes even more difficult than convincing people to meet in the
middle on minimum wage. It also becomes necessary to decrease the pay gap company-wide. Not too many CEOs are
willing to take the pay cut that Dan Price just did, and critics argue he might end up paying himself more anyway through
bonuses and other means. But the bottom line is this: Raising the minimum wage will likely help those at the very
bottom, which would undoubtedly bring about a sense of relief. But as long as wage disparities in companies
like Disney, Microsoft, and Oracle are the difference of millions of dollars per year, minimum wage workers could
realize that the unhappiness persists even with a slightly bump in their paycheck.
Raising the minimum wage would decrease jobs.
Caroline Baum, Bloomberg View columnist, Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) September 7, 2013
Why not a $50 minimum wage?; A higher wage is not so good for the workers not hired
A higher wage is great for the workers who keep their jobs; it isn't so great for those who wouldn't get hired because
McDonald's starts asking its existing workforce to do a bit more. With a higher minimum wage, the cost of automating
certain tasks suddenly becomes more affordable. Raising the minimum wage to lift people out of poverty has the opposite
effect.
Raising the minimum will cause companies to replace workers with machines.
The Daily Signal. Jan 23, 2014. http://dailysignal.com/2014/01/23/bill-gates-raising-minimum-wage-can-destroy-jobs/
Microsoft founder Bill Gates said yesterday that raising the minimum wage can “cause job destruction.” Gates’s
comment in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” surprised some because of his generally liberal political leanings.
Here’s what Gates said when co-host Mika Brzezinski asked his thoughts on raising the minimum wage, including
paying employees “a lot more”: “Well, jobs are a great thing. You have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum
wage, you’re encouraging labor substitution and you’re going to go buy machines and automate things — or cause
jobs to appear outside of that jurisdiction. And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you
really start pushing it, then you’re just making a huge trade-off.”
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Con Minimum Wage Increase
Raising the minimum wage defies the law of supply and demand.
Caroline Baum, Bloomberg View columnist, Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) September 7, 2013
Why not a $50 minimum wage?; A higher wage is not so good for the workers not hired
So why does an idea that violates the most basic principle of economics keep coming back to haunt us? It may appeal to
our humanitarian instincts, but as social policy, it fails the test. Let's start with the basics. As with any good or service,
there is a supply of, and demand for, labor. Supply and demand meet at what's known as the equilibrium price.
The unintended consequences of setting a cap or a floor on prices have been well documented. Many economics
textbooks use New York City's rent-control laws to demonstrate the effect of price caps: a supply shortage as
landlords keep apartments off the market rather than lease them at a below-market rate. The lack of supply also
gives them the power to charge above-market rates on apartments that aren't subject to rent control. The effect of price
floors is just the opposite: a surplus. More people - an increase in the supply of labor - want to work at McDonald's
at a rate of $15 an hour than $7.25. That leads to an influx of workers into the labor force and higher
unemployment as new entrants fail to find a job. (You have to be looking for work to count as unemployed.) The
higher the price of labor, the lower the demand. This is so basic that it defies logic to claim otherwise.
Increasing the minimum wage will cause job losses.
Doug Bandow. Fellow at the CATO Institute. Jan 14, 2014. http://www.cato.org/blog/minimum-wage-immoral-inefficient
The first question is the minimum’s impact on employment and price levels. The answer is clear: the cost of higher
wages will be borne in varying degrees by customers, workers, and investors. As I wrote in the American Spectator:
as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman observed, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Arbitrarily raising the cost
of labor—there is no principled basis for choosing any particular government minimum—will increase prices, reduce
investor returns, and cut employment levels. Most vulnerable are workers with the least education, experience, and
skills, who tend to be young and minorities. Forcing up wages will not only reduce overall employment, but shift
jobs toward higher-skilled workers who are more productive and thus warrant higher pay. The minimum wage
also encourages mechanization, since it makes economic sense for companies to invest more in machines to spend less on
labor. In effect, the minimum wage is a tax on labor-intensive companies. No surprise, then, as explained by Mark
Wilson of Applied Economic Strategies in a Cato Institute Policy Analysis: “The main finding of economic theory and
empirical research over the past 70 years is that minimum wage increases tend to reduce employment.”
Raising the minimum wage is not a practical way to stimulate the economy and if it was we could set the minimum
at $100 per hour.
Doug Bandow. Fellow at the CATO Institute. Jan 14, 2014. http://www.cato.org/blog/minimum-wage-immoral-inefficient
The strangest claim may come from the Financial Times, which editorialized: “a higher wage would stimulate the
economy without adding a dime to federal spending.” However, to the extent raising the minimum increases the total
amount of wages, it does so by redistributing the money from other people, who end up with less to spend on
consumption. No doubt, the employment impact of a small increase, especially if salary levels have been rising, would be
modest, which explains recent economic studies demonstrating lesser job loss. But the less significant the increase, the
less meaningful any potential benefit. In contrast, those who claim that raising today’s minimum would have no impact on
employer behavior fail to demonstrate the courage of their convictions. If government can hike wages without harm,
why stop at $10 or $15 an hour? Why not go to $1000 or $1500? Then everyone in America could be rich at no
cost to anyone!
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Pro Ban School Social Media Monitoring
Requesting access to social media is a huge violation of privacy.
The American Civil Liberties Union 2015. https://www.aclu.org/employers-schools-and-social-networking-privacy
A growing number of employers and schools are demanding that job applicants, employees and students hand over
the passwords to their private social networking accounts such as Facebook. Robert Collins of Maryland, for
example, was required to provide his Facebook login by his employer, the Maryland Division of Corrections. Justin
Bassett of New York was asked for his Facebook password during a job interview. Police departments such as the
Norman, Oklahoma Police Department ask applicants to turn over their Facebook passwords as part of background
checks. Many students, such as this Minnesota girl, have been forced to provide access to their Facebook accounts. For
several years, the city of Bozeman Montana instructed all job applicants to provide passwords for all social media
accounts. Such demands constitute a grievous invasion of privacy. Private activities that would never be intruded
upon offline should not receive less privacy protection simply because they take place online. It is inconceivable
that an employer or school official would be permitted to read an applicant's or student's diary or postal mail,
listen in on the chatter at their private gatherings with friends, or look at their private videos and photo albums.
Nor should they expect the right to do the electronic equivalent.
We need laws to make it illegal for schools to request students’ social media, even as a condition for privileges.
The American Civil Liberties Union 2015. https://www.aclu.org/employers-schools-and-social-networking-privacy
Current laws are inadequate to protect individuals from these flagrant invasions of privacy. We need new state and
federal legislation that expressly prohibits these violations. Comprehensive legislation should:
 Make it illegal for any government or private employer or any public or private school to require, request,
suggest, or cause any student, employee or prospective employee to provide passwords to Facebook or any
other password-protected accounts.
 Make it illegal for employers to require employees to permit access to private material through indirect routes
such as requiring employees to add them to their private social networks (e.g., by “friending” them) as a condition
of employment . The legislation should likewise make it illegal for schools to do the same as a condition for
receiving educational benefits or privileges such as participating on a sports team.
Social media access will allow schools to monitor student activity at literally ANY time and for almost any reason.
Public School Review. Mar 29, 2015. Schools Demand Students' Social Media Passwords.
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/schools-demand-students-social-media-passwords
Instead, the Illinois law allows school officials to ask for student passwords and search their social media accounts
regardless of when the alleged incident took place. Any posting, made at any time, at any place, can be the subject of
a school inquiry. In short, school officials can demand access to a child’s social media accounts for something they
allegedly said off school grounds or posted while in their bedroom at home. Another point of contention for parents is
that the law, which is intended to reduce the incidence of cyberbullying, seems to imply that school officials are
within their rights to ask for a student’s password in any situation in which children are suspected of violating
school rules. The question then becomes, if a child gets in trouble for being tardy to class or for using
inappropriate language, does the school get to browse through that child’s social media accounts to see what else he
or she has been up to? The answer to that question seems to be unknown.
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Pro Ban School Social Media Monitoring
A case in Minnesota shows the way schools can trample a student’s rights through social media control.
ACLU March 06, 2012 ACLU-MN Files Lawsuit Against Minnewaska Area Schools
http://www.aclu-mn.org/news/2012/03/06/aclu-mn-files-lawsuit-against-minnewaska-area-schools
Today, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court against
Minnewaska Area Schools and the Pope County Sheriff's office for violating the constitutional rights of a minor
student. R.S's free speech and privacy rights were violated by the school district in two separate instances involving
Facebook. (To protect the privacy of the minor defendant, she will be referred to as R.S.)
In early 2011 R.S. (To protect the privacy of the minor defendant, she will be referred to as R.S.) posted a comment,
while at home, on her Facebook page about her dislike of a school staff member. The school learned about the
comment, and R.S. received a detention and was forced to write an apology to the staff member. She was
disciplined again when she cursed on her Facebook page, complaining that someone reported her to the school. This
time she was given an in-school suspension and was prohibited from attending a school field trip. The ACLU-MN
contends that these sanctions violate her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. In a second incident R.S. was
brought into a school administrator's office where she was coerced to turn over (against her will) login information
to her Facebook and email accounts because of allegations that she had online conversations about sex with
another student off-campus. Present at the search was a local deputy along with two school officials. During this
process, R.S. was called a liar and told she would be given detentions if she did not give the adults access to her
accounts. R.S.'s mother was not informed about the search until after it happened. The Deputy and school officials did not
have a warrant to search R.S.'s private accounts. The ACLU-MN alleges in their suit that this violated R.S.'s Fourth
Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The lawsuit seeks damages, declaratory and injunctive
relief for the violations of R.S.'s constitutional rights. "The trauma that these incidents have put R.S. through is
completely uncalled for: She was intimidated, frightened, humiliated and sobbing while school administrators were
scouring her private communications," stated cooperating attorney Wally Hilke. "These adults traumatized this
minor without any regard for her rights." "Students do not shed their First Amendment rights at the school house
gate," stated Charles Samuelson, Executive Director for the ACLU-MN. "The Supreme Court ruled on that in the 1970s,
yet schools like Minnewaska seem to have no regard for the standard." Cooperating attorneys working on the case are:
Wallace Hilke and Bryan Freeman of Lindquist & Vennum PLLP and Professor Raleigh Hannah Levine, William
Mitchell College of Law. To coincide with the lawsuit the ACLU-MN produced a handout for students outlining their
privacy rights when using social networking sites.
Social media monitoring will make schools more open to lawsuits.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
When schools and universities decide to monitor student social media use, they may open themselves up to
lawsuits, particularly at the K-12 level where students are entitled to a public education, Claypoole said. If students
were kicked out of school for their social media use, someone may be able to make a case that their right to public
education has been denied. But participating in sports or other extracurricular activities is a privilege, not a right, and is
thus treated differently. In addition, educators who are monitoring student social media are taking on a task that they have
not been trained for, such as identifying whether a student is actually serious about committing suicide in his or her posts,
Claypoole said. And if schools are monitoring posts, but don't see or act on a post about cyberbullying or suicide,
they may be liable because they have taken on a new duty and obligation to monitor social media, Shear said. "The
last thing you need is the school to have a new obligation and a new duty to become social media police," Shear
said.
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If students refuse to turn over their passwords they could be punished criminally.
Public School Review. Mar 29, 2015. Schools Demand Students' Social Media Passwords.
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/schools-demand-students-social-media-passwords
Also unknown is the extent to which school districts can go if a student refuses to supply their passwords. Superintendent
Lewis says that schools could potentially press charges if a student refuses to cooperate. In statements made to
Motherboard, the Superintendent affirmed that “I would imagine that turning it [the case] over to the police would
certainly be one way to go. If they [the student] didn’t turn over the password, we would call our district attorneys because
they would be in violation of the law.” The effort to protect children from harassment by their peers is certainly
admirable, but many parents don’t appreciate the threatening tone of the superintendent’s message or the prospect that
their child might be prosecuted for refusing to hand over personal information.
Monitoring social media is nearly impossible. Instead schools focus on education about social media.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
But after the department sought legal counsel, that policy changed. "We could feel the tide shifting a little bit that
requiring passwords and requiring things like that was not a course of action that we wanted to take moving forward," said
Jake Garlock, associate athletic director for compliance at Utah State. While the university had the policy for a number of
years, it only used a third-party monitoring service for one year. After that year, the athletics department stopped using
the system because it created unneeded liability in certain situations, Garlock said. It also took staff time away
from regular responsibilities. The staff members who analyzed social media results spent most of their time doing
so, he said. "They found that it was just overburdensome to monitor just because of the way the software is set
up," Garlock said. "It has those keywords that it searches for and the key pictures, and there's so many keywords
that you get a lot of false positives, and so it became almost a full-time job to monitor." Instead of using monitoring
software, the athletics department has focused on education with its students. Each year, the media relations staff
talk with students and basically tell them, "Don't put anything on social media that you wouldn't want your mother to see."
That pretty much covers everything, Garlock said. They also have a student athlete orientation class where they spend part
of their time talking about good social media practices and reviewing the university's policy.
Social media monitoring in schools is a waste of money and violates students’ rights.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
But at least one lawyer doesn't buy the education argument for social media monitoring and related services.
"They're a waste of money and they're legal liability creators," said Bradley S. Shear, a lawyer who specializes in
Internet and social media law and blogs about it. Varsity Monitor and U Diligence have both been in the news for
allegedly monitoring words including "Arab" and monetizing student-athlete pictures respectively. And while
Fieldhouse Media says it's not as invasive as other companies, it still may require students to verify their social media
username, which at least seven state laws do not allow, Shear said in a blog post. Along with being a waste of money,
they're not a valuable use of time, said Claypoole, the attorney who co-authored a book about privacy online. And
they allow universities and schools to do something that police couldn't do in the real world: Search a house
without a warrant based on a specific suspicion. "If for no other reason, it's a waste of time," Claypoole said. "Who and
why would you pay to go look at the banal and silly things that most students are talking about online? But more than that,
it is in general an infringement of their rights to essentially get a generalized warrant just to go look for wrongdoing,
either out here in the physical world or in the electronic world."
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Schools’ request access to social media to stop bullying
Public School Review. Mar 29, 2015. Schools Demand Students' Social Media Passwords.
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/schools-demand-students-social-media-passwords
Recent legislation that allows Illinois public schools to demand students’ social media passwords has renewed the
debate about students’ right to privacy at school. It is a story that is all too often in the news: A child is subjected to
torturous cyberbullying by his or her peers via social media. Threatening messages sent on Facebook, humiliating
comments about their appearance on Twitter, and other such nonsense drives the student to lash out, possibly
hurting themselves, their peers, or both. Schools no doubt serve a protective function and are charged with
ensuring students have access to a free, appropriate education in an environment that is safe, secure, and
nurturing. To help achieve that end, some states are taking strong measures to bolster the authority and power of
school districts with regard to investigating instances of bullying, even if such negative behaviors do not occur on
school property or within the bounds of the school day.
Schools will only look into student accounts if they violate school rules and create a danger. Parents will be
involved and the goal is to stop bullying.
Public School Review. Mar 29, 2015. Schools Demand Students' Social Media Passwords.
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/schools-demand-students-social-media-passwords
In an attempt to curb cyberbullying behaviors, the Illinois General Assembly passed a law, enacted January 1st of
this year, that allows public school districts to demand access to students’ personal social media accounts if the
student is suspected of violating school rules. A letter sent home to parents in Triad Community Schools in Illinois,
obtained by Motherboard, outlines the new policy: “School authorities may require a student or his or her parent/guardian
to provide a password or other related account information in order to gain access to his/her account profile on a social
networking website if school authorities have reasonable cause to believe that a student’s account on a social networking
site contains evidence that a student has violated a school disciplinary rule or procedure.” Leigh Lewis, the
superintendent of Triad Community Schools, clarified the parent letter by saying that the district understands
privacy concerns and that school officials “will not haphazardly request social media passwords unless there is a
need.” Lewis also asserted that should a situation arise, parents would be involved in the process. Lawmakers and
state education officials drafted the law because of the potential impact that online threats – made at school, at
home or otherwise – have on the school environment. In the past, students have by and large voluntarily complied with
requests by school personnel to examine the contents of their social media accounts when problems arose. However, in an
effort to ensure their ability to step in when needed, lawmakers gave school officials the power to demand students’
passwords.
The bill creates a problem that doesn’t exist. Most schools don’t monitor social media.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
While at least one school district is monitoring student social media, the majority of school districts don't have time to sort
through all the posts that go through social media monitoring software, said Sonja Trainor, director of the Council of
School Attorneys at the National School Boards Association. "Most schools I think would prefer not to monitor student
activity on social media outside of their official school activities," Trainor said. "There are thousands of student
communications per day via social media outside of school-based activities, and there's no way that a school district could
keep on top of all of that, nor do they want to be policing students' private lives outside of school."
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Social media sites provide a playground for sexual predators.
Sophy Corness staff writer Suiite101 Nov 21, 2010 Dangers of Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites
http://www.suite101.com/content/dangers-of-facebook-and-other-social-networking-sites-a311770#ixzz1ABwy3JVH.
Social networking sites have proved to be a top-class hunting ground for stalkers and paedophiles looking to groom
children, because they allow them to remain anonymous There have been high-profile cases in which serial sex offenders
have taken on a false identity and established online friendships with children before meeting up with them. A British
newspaper report revealed that a homeless sex offender posed as a handsome teenager on Facebook to lure a 17-year-old
girl to a secluded location where she was kidnapped, gagged, raped and murdered. As Peter Chapman was jailed for life in
March this year with a minimum term of 35 years, police urged parents and internet companies to see the case as “a wakeup call” to the “scheming, devious tricks of predatory paedophiles” online. He raped and killed his victim, student,
Ashleigh Hall from Darlington, County Durham, before dumping her body in a ditch.
Social media can be monitored safely and effectively.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
Social media education is what Kevin DeShazo says he does every day. He founded Fieldhouse Media because most
messages to student athletes were, "Don't do this or don't do that." He wanted to show student athletes that social media
could help them build a positive image online, not only for themselves, but also for the university.
He speaks to student athletes at colleges around the country, spending an hour with them and an hour with the
coaching staff each year to talk about how they can use social media to their advantage. He also shares social media
best practices on Twitter and his blog, and answers questions from athletics department staff throughout the year. Shortly
after he started his company in 2011, he offered monitoring software that universities could only use in conjunction with
his education services. "I'll tell student athletes, 'We're just monitoring public information that you're putting on
the Internet -- the way you're portraying yourself,'" DeShazo said. "We're not here to invade your privacy, we're
not here to spy on you, we're here to help you hopefully make better decisions about how you use social media and
understand that it's an extremely powerful and public tool, and should be treated that way." He said that other social media
monitoring companies are too invasive because they require usernames, passwords, and third-party app downloads to
access private areas of student social media sites. His software only checks the public Twitter posts of student athletes,
and if their profiles go private at any time, the software automatically kicks that profile out of its monitoring system, he
said. "It doesn't have to be big brotherish, it doesn't have to be invasive, it can be a good thing if we're just focusing
on public information and if we're using it to actually teach them and educate them as opposed to coming at it
from trying to discipline," DeShazo said.
If schools prevent suicide then it’s worth it to monitor social media.
Tanya Roscorla. Managing Editor Center for Digital Education. Sep 13, 2013.
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html
At the same time, many school district staff members feel like they have a responsibility to monitor student activites that
relate to school and affect the school's students, Trainor said. While school districts may take on more obligations and risk
by monitoring, they may be willing to take that risk if it means they can catch things like suicide before they happen.
They're in a tough spot because the law does not definitely say how far school districts can go in disciplining students
outside of school, Trainor said.
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Students are abusing social media from bullying to stalking.
USA Today April 12, 2015. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/04/12/cyberbullying-study/25652655/
Armed with cell phones and a dizzying array of social media choices, half of this area's middle- and high-schoolers in a
recent study admitted to social media abuse — from bullying schoolmates to spreading rumors to pressuring others to
send sexual texts or pictures. They also admitted to stalking their partners. "It begins with the constant texting or the
stalking on Facebook. 'Where are you?' and 'Who are you with?'" said researcher Poco Kernsmith, an associate professor
of social work at Wayne State University. What may seem like harmless teen jealousy can spiral into a dangerous
relationship if left unchecked, said Kernsmith, whose research has centered on violence in relationships. She led a survey
of 1,236 sixth- and ninth-graders at six metro Detroit high schools, a mix of high- moderate- and low-risk schools when
measured with crime statistics and poverty levels. "It becomes 'I don't want you to hang out with your friends,' and 'I don't
like the way you dress,' " she said. "It becomes controlling and isolating." Just 37% of the students said their parents
monitored their online behavior. It's a disconnect that — maybe not surprisingly — suggests teens let loose more than
their parents know.
Laws that ban social media monitoring in schools will make it harder to stop bullying and abuse by staff.
Sea Cost Online Mar. 24, 2015 http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20150324/NEWS/150329668
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A 14-year-old bullying victim joined parents and school officials Tuesday in opposing a
bill aimed at protecting student privacy. The bill would prohibit any public or private school in the state from
requiring or requesting access to students' personal social media accounts. Supporters of the bill, including the New
Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, argue that students have a right to personal, private lives outside of school and that
accessing their accounts is an invasion of privacy. But opponents, including Souhegan High School freshman Jonathan
Petersen, said the bill would prevent school officials from fully investigating allegations of bullying. Petersen, who
has autism, said he left school for a year after being bullied, and has continued to be a target since he returned this fall.
He described a recent incident in which two girls took inappropriate pictures of him and said school officials should be
allowed to quickly access such images before they are deleted. "I've been bullied a lot and most of the time people get
away with it," he said. Dean Michener, director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association, said the
legislation not only hampers a school district's ability to address bullying but also would affect investigations into
inappropriate conduct between staff and students. He and other critics urged lawmakers to include exceptions for
cases in which school officials have reasonable suspicions that policies have been violated.
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Speech Outline
I.
Introduction:
>>>Include transition to the thesis.
II. Thesis statement:
III. Preview of Main Points:
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Speech Outline
IV. Main Points of the Body-
A.
B.
C.
V. Conclusion-
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noC
orP
noC
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noC
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Speech Flow Chart
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Speech – Flow Combo
I. Introduction
II. Thesis
III. Preview
IV. Body
Point 1
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Point 2
Point 3
v. Conclusion
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