Pilot effort at A.J. school is another ‘feel-good’ intrusion

In these days of overbearing federal “Patriot” acts and cameras everywhere you turn, Americans do not need to be under any more surveillance, whether it’s cast as an anti-terrorist or pro-child measure.

It seems like the only real beneficiary of a federally funded pilot program Apache Junction’s Desert Shadows Middle School is participating in would be Raptor Technologies, manufacturer of Web-based software that allows school staff to scan the state-issued IDs of campus visitors, purportedly to find out if they are sex offenders, noncustodial parents or the subject of a restraining order.

It won’t protect students, who are not generally accessed by pedophiles through a well-staffed school front office and are already protected from ill-intentioned parents by policies which put the onus on the child’s guardian to provide court documentation of a custodial dispute or some other extenuating circumstance.

The students will also be taught that Mom, Dad and other trusted adults are to be presumed guilty until found innocent, and that it’s natural to subject yourself to a background check in order to do something as innocuous as read to a roomful of kindergartners.

The program certainly won’t benefit any visitor to Desert Shadows, who must turn over a driver’s license or other identification for a background check every single time — a parent or guardian visiting a student, a vendor delivering soda (or carrot juice, or whatever liquid schools are allowed to dispense in their vending machines these days), a volunteer coming to help an overtaxed teacher.

If they’re clear, “only” the person’s name, photo and date of birth will be retained in the computer — enough to leave them vulnerable to the kind of identity theft that makes life miserable for years.

It won’t, or shouldn’t, give parents who don’t visit the campus more peace of mind, as it will do very little to deter criminals intent on harming kids, either by barging onto the school grounds or getting a fake ID or some other way to circumvent the screening process. It won’t benefit school staff, who could become too reliant on the system to use the gut instinct that could detect a brutal or savvy pervert who would be missed by the screening process.

And allowing the spread of programs like these will do active harm to our still relatively free society. Once government makes an inroad into finding out where we’ve been, what we’re doing or who we’re seeing, it’s difficult or impossible to shut off, as the last action is used to justify the next, slightly more invasive step.

After this yearlong program ends, the Apache Junction Unified School District could decide to expand this program to all its campuses. We’d rather see them teach a lesson in freedom and personal responsibility by canning this program.