“My boyfriend who’s an electrical engineer but mostly does computer work says that the government has been able to track our cars since the 1980s. Is this true? How do they do it?” — Allison, Atlanta

Well, automobiles have unique Vehicle Identification Numbers and can be tracked that way, but I don’t think that’s what you are referring to. You’re asking whether or not there is some automatic vehicle tracking system in place in the country.

No, there isn’t. But that’s changing. Cars that are equipped with roadside assistance technologies like OnStar can be tracked, even without the knowledge or consent of the driver. Cell phones can be tracked, and more and more people drive around with cell phones in their pockets. And lastly, we’re starting to see automatic license-plate scanners that can be used to track cars, even by helicopter.

“If government puts a video/audio surveillance device on the utility pole across the street from me to catch a suspected terrorist or drug dealer, doesn’t that impact my privacy as well? What can I do about it?” — Biff from the Southeast

It’s even worse than that. The camera won’t catch any terrorists, and it’s unlikely to catch drug dealers, either. It won’t reduce crime.

Why do we have them, then? It’s complicated, but basically, most “security vs. privacy” debates are really about “liberty vs. control.” The police are in favor of control; that’s their job. So they tend to favor measures that increase control, even if there is no real anti-terrorism or anti-crime justification for them.

As to what to do about it, your primary recourse is politics. These decisions are made at the local level, and local politicians listen to their constituents. Get involved.

I can think of no better way to start off this discussion than to
recall an op-ed I wrote earlier this year for the Minneapolis StarTribune:

Over the past 20 years, there’s been a sea change in the battle for personal privacy.

The pervasiveness of computers has resulted in the almost constant surveillance of everyone, with profound implications for our society and our freedoms. Corporations and the police are both using this new trove of surveillance data. We as a society need to understand the technological trends and discuss their implications. If we ignore the problem and leave it to the “market,” we’ll all find that we have almost no privacy left.

Most people think of surveillance in terms of police procedure: Follow that car, watch that person, listen in on his phone conversations. This kind of surveillance still occurs. But today’s surveillance is more like the NSA’s model, recently turned against Americans: Eavesdrop on every phone call, listening for certain keywords. It’s still surveillance, but it’s wholesale surveillance.

Wholesale surveillance is a whole new world. It’s not “follow that car,” it’s “follow every car.” The National Security Agency can eavesdrop on every phone call, looking for patterns of communication or keywords that might indicate a conversation between terrorists. Many airports collect the license plates of every car in their parking lots, and can use that database to locate suspicious or abandoned cars. Several cities have stationary or car-mounted license-plate scanners that keep records of every car that passes, and save that data for later analysis.

The rest is here.

All this week, we are delighted to host as a guest blogger Bruce Schneier. For those who do not know him, Bruce is a renowned security expert who has come to exert enormous influence over the security debate in this country, not only because of his impeccable credentials as a security expert, executive in a security firm, and world-class cryptologist – but also because of his natural ability to strip away nonsense and clarify and highlight the real issues that lie at the center of many of the security debates of our time.

In May, the ACLU hosted him in our Washington National offices for a talk on “The Future of Privacy.” (WindowsMedia)

All this week, we are delighted to host as a guest blogger Bruce Schneier. For those who do not know him, Bruce is a renowned security expert who has come to exert enormous influence over the security debate in this country, not only because of his impeccable credentials as a security expert, executive in a security firm, and world-class cryptologist – but also because of his natural ability to strip away nonsense and clarify and highlight the real issues that lie at the center of many of the security debates of our time.

In May, the ACLU hosted him in our Washington National offices for a talk on “The Future of Privacy.” (WindowsMedia)

The talk is well worth viewing – please take a look if you have the time – and submit your questions now on security and privacy, today and in the future.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece called Winning the Battle On Teen Pregnancy. The article compares two adjacent counties in South Carolina (Allendale and Bamberg) that have similar demographics — more than 1/4 of families live below the poverty line, half of families only have one parent living at home, and both populations are over 60 percent African-American — but differ in their rates of teen pregnancy. Bamberg has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in SC, while Allendale has one of the state’s highest, and the rate at which teen pregnancy in Bamberg has fallen has been faster than that of most of the US.

The article points out that Bamberg, unlike Allendale, has a long-running and intensive program to prevent teen pregnancy. The program, started in 1982, provides students beginning in the third grade, with 36 sex ed classes a year, twice-monthly one-on-one counseling sessions for Medicaid-eligible students, and access to free condoms at local town hangouts. The goal of Bamberg’s program has been to “flood the community with information, creating an environment that would encourage teens to say ‘no’ to sex but also instruct them on how to avoid pregnancy if they decided to say ‘yes’.”

The program in Bamberg also is unique in that pregnancy-prevention efforts are not solely focused on girls as they are in many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Rather, boys attend weekly discussions on sex, dating, and domestic violence and overnight gatherings called “Mantalk” where an array of men talk about making the right decisions.

One of the article’s subjects, Brandon Jamison, notes that the intensive sex education and messages on preventing pregnancy and STDs has created an environment where teens are comfortable discussing sex and contraception — topics that most teens find awkward.

It should be noted that Bamberg’s approach is markedly different from that of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that focus solely on staying chaste until marriage and provide teens with little information about contraceptives.

Statistics show us that focusing on teens remaining abstinent until marriage is unrealistic (the average age for first intercourse for men and women in the US is 17.7 and 17.4 respectively, while the average age for first marriage is 27.1 for men and 25.3 for women). Yet Bamberg County seems to have hit on the right mixture of promoting both abstinence and safe sex. As the article ends, Brandon Jamison brings a couple condoms to his high school prom, noting, “I don’t plan to have sex, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Florida: An editorial in the Daytona Beach News-Journal argues that parents should talk to their children about sex, and tackles the effectiveness of virginity pledges.

Michigan: An op-ed out of Michigan says that “Morality should not be the focus of sex education. Rather than distinguishing marriage as a point appropriate for sex, educators should focus on facts related to health. As far as facts are concerned, monogamy and celibacy are always options to help stay sexually safe. They are not the only options, though. Educating students about safe sex while not promoting the act itself is more valuable than trying to convince or scare teens into believing that sex outside of marriage is wrong.”

Missouri: The Missourian has a very in depth article about teen sex and the debate between ab-only-until-marriage programs vs. comprehensive sex ed (this article is part of a series, and I will be featuring the rest in the coming days). The article covers one teen’s decision to start having sex and the role that her parents have played in making sure that she is safe. The article talks about how teens want more information about how to protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs and want more than the “just say no” message. It also looks at the struggle one teen faced to get her school to allow her to hand out condoms.

Oklahoma: An editorial in the Muskogee Phoenix notes that a recent study by the Oklahoma state Department of Health reported that 37 percent of Oklahoma mothers did not intend to become pregnant — adolescent mothers reported the largest percentage of unplanned births. The editorial says that “Sex is a part of life, something young people should be prepared for, as well as its consequences whether that be STDs or children. If they are not prepared, the consequences can be tragic for them and others.”

And there are two new articles on the HPV vaccine: One article out of California says that the Los Angeles Unified School District (and possibly more schools in Los Angeles County) plans to offer female students the vaccine. Twenty-two school districts in the county already offer 16 vaccines to uninsured children, and Peter Kerndt, the director of the county health department’s sexually transmitted disease program, says he will soon recommend to county supervisors that all female adolescents in Los Angeles County receive the vaccine unless their parents opt out.

The second article out of Maine quotes a doctor who notes that “A woman could stay abstinent until marriage, and still contract HPV from her husband… This isn’t about premarital sex. This is about who’s going to have sex, period. It’s outside of the whole moral debate.” Interestingly enough, the Guttmacher Institute released a report today about young married women in developing countries and their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS from their husbands.

Kentucky: A local paper notes that parents in northern Kentucky (Boone, Campbell, Grant and Kenton counties) can now pick up tool kits from the Northern Kentucky Abstinence and Character Team to help talk with their children about sex. The Abstinence and Character Team is a community coalition that encourages abstinence until marriage.

Michigan: The Voice reports that the Macomb County Abstinence Partnership was brought in by the Anchor Bay School District to ensure that the school was meeting state reproductive health curriculum standards. Tests given to middle and high school students show a better understanding that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective way to avoid HIV/AIDS and pregnancy; however, the article does not address whether teens have any understanding of how to protect themselves from STDs and pregnancy if they do decide to become sexually active. A survey will be sent home to parents during the upcoming school year to provide feedback on how to improve the program.

South Dakota: A letter-to-the-editor in the Argus Leader calls on the Sioux Falls School Board to include information about homosexuality in its sex ed curriculum, saying that such information is important for all youth not just LGBTQ students.

Texas: CNN reports on a new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that sex education may encourage teens to delay sex. The study focuses on a curriculum designed by doctors at Texas A&M and used in Temple, TX. The study only tracked students responses on surveys about whether they would delay sex, and not whether they actually did.

An editorial in The New York Times examines the problems that young Latina women face including motherhood at a young age. The editorial reminds me of the situation in the Bronx that I wrote about last month, where young girls there had to advocated for comprehensive sex ed.

Alternet has an article on a group called the Medical Institute for Sexual Health (MISH) and a grant it received from the federal government to develop a sexual health curriculum for medical students. The article says MISH provides abstinence-only-until-marriage materials that focus on using scare tactics to persuade teens not to have sex, and notes that past MISH presentations have been criticized for using misleading data about the effectiveness of condoms.

Florida: It seems that taxpayers in Volusia County, Florida, are paying a lot of money ($180,551 to be exact) so that middle schoolers there can take virginity pledges, according to an article in the New Journal. The article notes that Volusia County schools do not teach about contraceptives in high school health education classes and that if a student asks about contraceptives in class the teacher will refer him or her to their parents or physicians. It goes on to say that high schoolers may have even less sex education in the future as the state legislature has made health classes an elective starting with the 2007-2008 school year.

Rhode Island: An editorial in the Providence Journal takes on the idea that the HPV vaccine will give teenage girls the green light to have sex.

Virginia: Here’s another article about the recent grant that a local crisis pregnancy center in Virginia received to teach abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Last week I featured an article that talked about the grant and problems with the “Why kNOw” curriculum. Today’s article says that the grant is already being used to teach abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in Greene, Fluvanna, Orange, Louisa and four other area counties and the center wants to expand the program into Albemarle public schools by spring.

Washington: The Chronicle reports what happens when students go without comprehensive sex education. Public Health officials in Okanogan County, Washington, want teens to learn about the symptoms, transmission, and prevention of STDs after a growing number of reported cases of STDs in Omak.

[The Director of Community Health] said over the past year Omak alone accounted for nearly 50 percent of all the newly reported cases of STDs in youth throughout the county. She said the Omak School District has offered some classes to sixth- and eighth-graders, but high school students have not had access to a classroom-based comprehensive sex education program… “STDs are going through the roof,” said Jones. “Kids have to have the facts. Some people are concerned this is a religious or moral thing, but the issue is education.” … Jones said in Okanogan County some 11-year-old girls are being diagnosed with STDs and some 14-year-old girls are pregnant.

Public health administrator Paul Waterstrat said he and Jones talked to Omak School District officials in 2004 about offering a sex education class, but they rejected it because some parents felt they, not by health officials at a public school, should share the information.

According to Okanogan Family Planning director Lenore Whitecar, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases remain a concern in Okanogan County. She attributed the problem to what she sees as a lack of sex education in schools and the long distance many people must travel to get birth control.

The New York Times reports on the national debate between supporters of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs versus comprehensive sex education as viewed through the failure of the Healthy Teens Act in New York state. Two of the bill’s sponsors have great quotes:

“I look at this as a father and an uncle,” said Nicholas A. Spano, a Republican state senator from Westchester who sponsored the Healthy Teens Act in the upper chamber, while Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat, did so in the Assembly. “I have two children. I’m the oldest of 16 children. I have 34 nieces and nephews. And why should we not teach our kids in an age-appropriate way about sex education? Abstinence could be part of the curriculum, but not the whole curriculum.”

The article notes that while rates of teen pregnancy and STD transmission have declined in the last ten years as the prevalence of ab-only programs has been on the rise, recent research reveals troubling findings:

While teenagers who took virginity pledges as part of abstinence-only programs started sexual activity later and had fewer partners than did other peers, they were just as likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases, the scholars concluded. These young people also tended not to use contraceptives if they became sexually active, and engaged in oral and anal intercourse in the belief such that activity did not violate the virginity pledge.

Apparently Dear Abby agrees that teens need complete and accurate sex education. She writes in her column:

Parents who leave sex education up to the schools should be aware that since 1996, the federal government has poured $1 billion into abstinence-only sex education programs that do not include complete information on birth control methods or even sexually transmitted diseases.

And finally, SIECUS has released the third edition of SIECUS State Profiles: A Portrait of Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs, the most comprehensive document of its kind detailing sexuality education and abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in states and communities.

California: InsideBayArea has an article about teen births in San Joaquin County. The article talks about an organization called Delta Health Care that teaches comprehensive sex education in Tracy, Manteca, Stockton, Lodi and Lathrop. Note that one of the students says that she learned from the program that she “want[s] to be abstinent.”

Deleware: The News Journal reports on a program in Wilmington called the Collaborative Sexual Abstinence Program. The program ended with teens making a public pledge to abstain and they received a silver ring to serve as a reminder of their decision. The article notes that Delaware schools are required to provide comprehensive sex ed that stresses abstinence.

And The Washington Informer has an interview with Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, president and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and a minister of the National Baptist Convention about sexuality education and religion. The article the National Black Religious Summit on Sexuality which the National Black Church Initiative has convened for the last ten years and which took place just last week. Rev. Veazey has some interesting things to say about religion and sex ed:

I think that [what the church can do to promote responsible sexual behavior] is what this whole Summit is about. In fact, when I started the National Black Religious Summit on Sexuality 10 years ago, my goal then, and is today, to make comprehensive sexuality education a vital component of all religious education. I don’t think there should be a religious education program in our churches without having a component of sexuality education and that component should be broad enough, comprehensive enough. We’re living in a time when the most important thing, I think in life, is to have a wholesome relationship. A wholesome relationship may or may not be a marital relationship and I think what we need to teach people is that they ought to have a wholesome relationship with a person and in that wholesome relationship could be a sexuality component…many people will not get married. I have a daughter who is 38 years old, and she has no intention of getting married. What am I to say to her that because of that you are denied the expression of sexuality? No I can’t say that. More progressive ministers understand this. We’re going to have to address questions that people are asking. I had a professor who said that what we do in the church many times we’re answering questions nobody is asking. We have to answer questions people are asking, and they do want to know how can I be religious and also have a wholesome life, which includes a sexuality component? If the church gets real about it, we can prevent a lot of abuse, we can prevent a lot of infection and STDS, but you got to be open enough.

Arizona: The Arizona Daily Sun reports that the Flagstaff Unified School District has approved the hiring of a specialist to teach abstinence-plus sex education classes to middle-school and high-schools students. The program will teach kids that abstinence is best, but also cover ways to reduce risk if they choose to have sex.

Mississippi: The Daily Journal in Mississippi has an article about an abstinence workshop called “Just Wait.” The workshop has young girls caring for electronic babies around-the-clock over a three-day period. There isn’t any mention in the article of whether or not these teens are taught how to avoid pregnancy other than by abstaining.

Virginia: The Hook has an article about a federal grant for more than $645,000 that Pregnancy Centers of Central Virginia received to bring the abstinence-only-until-marriage program “Why kNOw” to 30,000 students in the Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Nelson, Fluvanna, Orange, Madison, Louisa and Culpeper counties. The article notes some of the problems with the Why kNOw curriculum:

Why kNOw is “absolutely fear-based in that it basically tells you that if you have sex outside of marriage, horrible things are going to happen to you, and you are going to have a horrible life,” says Martha Kempner, vice president of the D.C.-based Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. The Why kNOw program in particular “puts all the responsibility on the girl,” Kempner says. “The idea here is that it is the females’ responsibility to make sure they don’t have sex because boys want it all the time and you, as a girl who doesn’t really want it, are in a better position to make sure it doesn’t happen.”