But the rest of us would do well to expand the range of our considerations beyond moral praise and blame, and start to consider the vastly more important story of the rise of a regime of universal surveillance and the collapse of the public/private boundary that has been foundational for the progress and happiness of Western societies for the past half a millenium or so.
This most recent story, though not the same in all respects, should remind us of the 9-year-old boy in Louisiana who was suspended from fourth grade in September after his teacher spotted a BB gun in the frame of his webcam during online class. The school board found him “guilty of displaying a facsimile weapon while receiving online instruction.” The boy was “at school,” but he was also at home—and there is no reason to believe that had he been at school in the pre-pandemic sense he would have brought his facsimile weapon with him, or that the accidental glimpse of a toy gun on a child’s shelf was likely to have caused any kind of meaningful harm to his classmates, teachers, or anyone else. So let us allow ourselves a moment of himpathy for a 9-year-old Black boy in America who has already been started down the path toward a life of perpetual surveillance and “correction” without even leaving home.by BY JUSTIN E.H. SMITH
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