One year
California school district hires firm to eavesdrop on students’ social media activity: The Glendale [California] Unified School District has hired Geo Listening [“Your students are crying for help. We have heard these cries of despair, and for help and attention, loud and clear from students themselves via their public postings on social networks”]to eavesdrop and monitor students’ public posts on websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Five years
A kinder, gentler rendition under Obama: This week, we learned that the Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of relocating war-on-terror detainees to other countries for offshore imprisonment and interrogation, with promises that their treatment will now be more closely monitored to ensure that they are not tortured.
Ten years
Bea Arthur’s fight against the Transport Security Agency: Bea Arthur forgot to take her pocketknife out of her purse last week at Logan airport and when the TSA found it, she ran around screaming, “The terrorists! The terrorists put a knife in my purse! We’re all doomed!” She was being funny — it’s what she does. She’s the funniest of all the Golden Girls, that’s for sure.
The TSA didn’t take it well.