Apple should not provide the encryption code to unlock the iPhone of Syed Farook- one of the San Bernardino Shooters. Though the U.S government is seeking this encryption code in the name of national security, this access to millions of American’s personal information can too easily lead to the compromise of people’s 4th amendment rights. Moreover, this access may increase the targeting of minority groups such as Muslim American and African Americans. Using examples from Rampage and The New Jim Crow, I will demonstrate that this breach of privacy should be avoided and prove that it is inessential to combating domestic terrorism.
Firstly, I think that it is important to review some background information and relevant sociological issues to …show more content…
In the novel Rampage, the authors argue that one of the five necessary factors of a rampage school shooting is the ability for the student to go “under the radar,” (Newman at el.).Since files and formal records are not passed along from school to school and teachers refrain from branding students as a ‘trouble kid’, information about students is often fragmented and “no one individual has the whole picture of any one of these boys… and the seriousness of their problems,” (Newman at el.109). This institutional memory loss of the public school gives students a right to privacy and a “clean slate” so that he or she is not followed by a bad reputation from school year to school year and/ or school to school (Newman at el 87). However, this allows certain troubled kids to fly under the radar and this coupled with other factors like mental health issues and gun availability, enables certain students to commit mass shootings. The authors of Rampage propose that one solution to these shooting would be to fix the radar and though I support this solution in the case of school shootings, I do not think that the same logic can be applied to domestic terrorism. My main reason is that the labeling of a citizen as a criminal or the placing of someone on the terrorist watch list has a more dramatic effect on the person’s life than labeling a student as troubled. The emerging reality of a labeled trouble student, according to labeling theory, may be influenced by their label as troubled or bad (Ruane and Cerulo 309). However, the additional attention paid to the student may ultimately provide him or her with the needed counseling and supervision that their mental status warrants. On the other hand, as Michel Alexander demonstrates, a labeled criminal (or suspected terrorist) is stigmatized and has considerably fewer life chances. Since many more people are
Firstly, I think that it is important to review some background information and relevant sociological issues to …show more content…
In the novel Rampage, the authors argue that one of the five necessary factors of a rampage school shooting is the ability for the student to go “under the radar,” (Newman at el.).Since files and formal records are not passed along from school to school and teachers refrain from branding students as a ‘trouble kid’, information about students is often fragmented and “no one individual has the whole picture of any one of these boys… and the seriousness of their problems,” (Newman at el.109). This institutional memory loss of the public school gives students a right to privacy and a “clean slate” so that he or she is not followed by a bad reputation from school year to school year and/ or school to school (Newman at el 87). However, this allows certain troubled kids to fly under the radar and this coupled with other factors like mental health issues and gun availability, enables certain students to commit mass shootings. The authors of Rampage propose that one solution to these shooting would be to fix the radar and though I support this solution in the case of school shootings, I do not think that the same logic can be applied to domestic terrorism. My main reason is that the labeling of a citizen as a criminal or the placing of someone on the terrorist watch list has a more dramatic effect on the person’s life than labeling a student as troubled. The emerging reality of a labeled trouble student, according to labeling theory, may be influenced by their label as troubled or bad (Ruane and Cerulo 309). However, the additional attention paid to the student may ultimately provide him or her with the needed counseling and supervision that their mental status warrants. On the other hand, as Michel Alexander demonstrates, a labeled criminal (or suspected terrorist) is stigmatized and has considerably fewer life chances. Since many more people are