#87: High School Surveillance Debate

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2016

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’re looking for a nuanced, thoughtful debate on government surveillance, you probably won’t find it in Congress. But look no further than American high schools. Jenna McLaughlin, a national security and surveillance reporter for The Intercept, immersed herself in a major high school debate competition. She found the arguments to be much more substantive and scrutinized than the claims about surveillance made in the halls of Congress. She and Evan discuss her feature article, high schoolers’ views on surveillance, and how different generations view the issue.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwarger. On today's show, high school students debate surveillance. You know, Edward Snowden famously said his biggest fear when he leaked information about, classified information about the U.S. government surveillance activities, his biggest fear was that no one would care.
0:26.7	And while many in Congress don't seem to care or understand the issue, a breath of fresh air is coming out of our nation's high schools in the form of policy debate.
0:35.4	Joining me to discuss this is Jenna McLaughlin, a reporter for The Intercept,
0:39.8	who focuses on national security and surveillance. Jenna, thank you for joining the show.
0:44.1	Thanks so much for having me. So Jenna, a couple months ago, you went to a debate competition
0:48.6	and one of the major focus areas was surveillance. So how are high school students approaching this issue?
0:55.8	Sure. Well, I went to a tournament in Nashville, which was sort of a mid-season tournament in
1:01.4	January. So these students actually have been studying the topic of surveillance from pretty much
1:05.9	every arena since last summer. The topic for policy debate is traditionally selected by a committee
1:12.7	the year before. It's kind of a vote system and the students go to summer camps to discuss
1:19.0	surveillance. They go crazy with it. So depending on who you talk to, somebody might be thinking
1:24.5	about surveillance in terms of how it impacts minority communities.
1:33.0	They might be thinking about something as far-reaching as how it impacts drones, technological innovation, nuclear war.
1:36.2	They think of every single possibility.
1:38.4	And they hone those arguments over the year when they go up against different teams.
1:43.5	So you see a really broad range.
1:45.8	And what were some of the biggest takeaways from you having, you know, embedded yourself
1:49.8	in this experience? Sure. Well, I honestly just came away thinking that they were so smart
1:55.3	and nuanced and non-judgmental. The entire process for them, I think, at least from what they
2:02.4	told me, really made them into very analytical thinkers about the topic so that they could
2:08.3	judge it based on statistics, facts, and also their own experiences. So they didn't have just
2:14.0	sort of knee-jerk reactions. Yeah, and you had a feature article detailing
	...

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