An Alaska House of Representatives bill that was originally about cell phone use in schools has passed the Senate after being decorated with numerous amendments having nothing to do with cell phones.
One of those amendments to House Bill 57 has the State of Alaska tracking Alaska high school graduates for 20 years — until they are 38 years old.
That amendment came from the Senate Finance Committee last week. For many Alaskans, it means the State of Alaska will be tracking them and collecting data on them for half of their natural lives.
Sen. Jesse Kiehl reassured the Senate that the information would be kept strictly confidential, a claim that was disputed by Sen. Mike Shower, who said data leaks happen all the time and with greater frequency; it wasn’t that long ago that election files were hacked and the state had to issue credit repair benefits to thousands of Alaskans.
Sen. Shelley Hughes, a Republican from the Mat-Su, tried to reduce that tracking of Alaskans to three years, out of concern for people’s privacy, but the Democrat-led majority voted her idea down.
Here’s how the vote went on Hughes’ amendment to reduce the amount of data-gathering that the state would conduct on its citizens:
Nearly all the amendments offered by Republicans on Monday to improve the bill were rejected.
In addition to monitoring Alaskans for 20 years after high school, the bill adds about $184 million in funding for schools, including an additional $700 per student to the Base Student Allocation.
The Base Student Allocation additional funding would become an ongoing expense into future years, locking legislatures into an automatic increase.
Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Loki Tobin said that it’s not the entire answer for the funding needs, and indicated that the Democrats will be back for more next year.
The bill also expands, ever so slightly, the ability of charter schools to get approved by local school boards.
The bill will now return to the House for concurrence.
Kiehl we will hold you to the confidentiality of the data. I believe it’s impossible to protect any data at this point in history. I’m against this bill. More government meddling. Soon we will have facial recognition cameras on every street corner like China. Scary thought. The storage of every text and every conversation is bad enough. Nothing is private anymore. Even a left wing commie democrat should be against all this tracking.
Papers, please. Comrade Fields would like a word with you.
As Alaska runs full speed towards communism.
If I had a kid graduating from a school district in this state, I’d file a lawsuit on graduation day.
Man I am thankful to have raised up our child before the world went mad! I know some of our conservatives were forced into this vote! You scratch my back I’ll scratch yours! I can’t believe how fast people are willing to give up privacy! 🤯
Get these moronic, lefty-loonies OUT of our legislature! They can’t manage money, all they want to do is spend, spend, spend. They are communists and we DON’T NEED THEM! Who are the IGNORANT people electing these evil people???
Are other schools in the nation doing this? I’m thinking they might as the teachers union is a communist organization and population control is part of their philosophy.
Where are they, the State, going to get this information from?
Are they requiring newly graduated students to submit a form detailing what they have done each year until they turn 38?
My guess is this will just be another layer of bureaucracy where some state employee is surfing people’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn pages to see what that graduated student is doing. I seriously doubt that they will have access to tax returns or other confidential information.
But for scientific and statistical purposes, a 20 year study is one of the best ways to see how things are trending. A long term study gives so much more information than a 1 year or 5 year study will produce.
There is so much complaining on how students are performing in Alaska schools with little to no data to backup how those same “underperforming” students do later in life. This study is not a bad idea, but the execution of said study may have some holes in it
Local school districts need less rules and regulations to be most effective. Adding more State regulation to track people is financially stupid and an invasion of privacy. Sometimes the ACLU gets it right
I would refuse to comply. This is a violation of the 4th Amendment.
Conspiracy theorists have been warning everyone about Big Brother for the past 3 decades. Well, there is no more definitive evidence than this motion to show that they were exactly right.
Are the people of America ready to listen now to the warnings shouted from the rooftops?
Or will they continue to think the government as a whole has their best interests at heart?
You can decide for yourself and maybe even be the change for the better. Support your local conspiracy theorist today and be that change!
This is just phase 1. Phase 2 is when on Graduation Day every Student will have a Micro Chip placed in their forehead and hand. The Alaska Union Uni-Party will monitor all the data, kind of what they are doing now. The Alaskan Voters VOTED THIS IN. The parents and voters of this WARPED STATE have just placed their CHILDREN IN DIGITAL BONDAGE.
MRAK: Could I please have my old Avatar back. Thank you. And thank you for giving us the FREEDOM TO COMMENT. You make our Founding Father’s smile.
Showers, Kaufman, and Hughes were okay with this?
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Big disappointments, them.
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Good news is nothing coming out of the so-called senate’s worth wasting our time to hear anymore.
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If the news is bad and concerns us, we’ll hear about it, or get the bill, or both.
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Meanwhile, would it be rude to say we cordially despise you three for what you’ve done to us, to our children… and for betraying our trust in you?
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Of course we’ll do what we can to defy, disobey, disrupt, defeat your Surveillance State.
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Won’t be easy or fun, but since you mob have pretty much declared yourselves against us, against most things decent conservative Americans stand for, what the hell else do you expect us to do?
Sarge, all we know is that Alaska voters were told what they voted for.
WE the voters sent these people to Junaeu to Represent us. We need to be more aware of who we vote for. It is hard to do when they lie to us, and are rewarded, and supported financially by Unions to lie to us. Things will not change unless WE CHANGE THEM.
Sarge, you’re right about nearly every damn thing.
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Only point we might disagree on is that we don’t know anything about election results except what we’re told by the same people who seem to make a point of lying to us about almost everything else.
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Are we seeing a process that can be, and maybe is being, corrupted before our very eyes and there’s nothing we can do about it?
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How do we know for a fact Alaska’s election system’s copacetic when many indicators suggest it isn’t?
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We justifiably distrust what elected and unelected officials tell us, except for the election system which we know they run with pristine honesty and transparency?
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Just asking… you know, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, maybe… ?
Howdy Morrigan, for a start, here in the valley, all local elections are hand counted by LAW. If we can do it Anchorage could do it. If Anchorage does it on up to State level.
A persons cell phone and the information is protected by the constitution.
Has the senate circumvented the constitution?
Who’s paying for the twenty years of monitoring?
Opt-out options, do not sell my information options?
Are the teachers that taught these students going to be monitored too? The school board? The parents of the graduates?
How about the senators that voted to approve it? Surely we should be monitoring them.
Another bad bill that will probably get signed by our spineless Gov., as he is a teacher at heart. This state needs to pass the balance budget law before it’s too late for Alaska to move forward. This liberals and Rino’s never met a dollar they couldn’t spend on frivolous ideas with no funding.
If the State is tracking ANYONE at all, for any reason, they need to be sued into oblivion for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…” Where does the State get off by intentionally violating these rights?
Thomas Edison at the unveiling of the light bulb told the media from this day forward technology will continue to advance rapidly until it finally destroys us, he got a tear in his eye turned his back and walked away. Nuf said.