All Sorts of Bad

While I see some advantages to living in a surveillance state, there are too many disadvantages; I'd rather pay the price of not living in one that the price of living in one.

Similarly, I can see the advantage of having unfettered access to student cell phones, but what lessons would we be teaching students if we did?  No lessons that would be good for the republic, that's for sure, and I'm glad this bill was defeated:

In January, a California lawmaker introduced legislation, backed by school administrators, that would give K-12 school administrators broad powers to search the phones and electronic devices of their students without a warrant.

On Wednesday, AB165 met its death, at least for now, after intense lobbying by more than 60 groups (PDF), including everyone from the American Civil Liberties Union to the California Newspaper Publishers Association.

As are most such measures that diminish personal freedoms and privacy, this one, too, was couched in terms of "safety" and, since it's related to schools, "anti-bullying".

It's not surprising that this bill was proposed in the one-party state of California:

California may be considered the land of the liberals, but sometimes its legislators float not-so-liberal laws akin to this warrantless search bill. Two weeks ago, opposition killed a proposed law outlawing "fake news" for instance.

People can be pretty illiberal when they think there's no one to tell them "no".