Date: Sun Oct 31 13:07:40 1999 From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) Subject: My letter to the ACLU Concerning Mosaic-2000 To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
[Note from Matt Gaylor: Below is the letter that I just sent to members of the Ohio ACLU]
Subject: Mosaic-2000 Ohio Schools Privacy Alert
As some of you know I run a large Internet mailing list with thousands of subscribers. I recently have been following Mosaic-2000, a computer program designed by the threat-evaluation firm Gavin de Becker, Inc. with assistance of The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. This threat-evaluation tool is being tested in 20 high schools nationwide, with testing in Ohio taking place at the Reynoldsburg, Ohio High School [Just east of Columbus].
Mosaic-2000 rates students on a scale of 1 to 10 based on a series of questions about behavior, each with a range of possible answers to determine the students violence potential. The database asks the students if they have access to guns, usedrugs, etc. Of particular concern, the software asks the students to tell about other students whom they think has access to guns or uses drugs.
The Renoldsburg, Ohio High School is the same school that the Police recently installed a covert video camera in a boys restroom in an attempt to catch a graffiti artist. Christine Link has a good letter to the editor in the Columbus Dispatch [Sunday, 10-31-99] about this.
My concern, beyond the obvious privacy ones, is that Mosaic-2000 has no checks and balances and may falsely accuse kids of actions they are not guilty of. Especially troubling is the fact that the government is asking students to "rat" out other students suspected of harboring certain ideas and actions. There is a section on hate speech and violent speech towards others too. I also wonder who has access to this data and what the data is used for and how long will the data be kept? Does this mean that a malicious student could make a false report on another student and have that data appear years later when the student applied for a federal job? I can't think of anything more Orwellian than Mosaic 2000.
As an ACLU member, I recommend that the ACLU seriously look into this to get this stopped.
Regards, Matt Gaylor-
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