Yet lots of adults could say they tried should another violent incident occur. Now entering the fray is the U.S. Secret Service, a group most of us will agree are bona fide security experts. Earlier this month, the group's National Threat Assessment Center released results from an ongoing study of 40 school-violence cases over the last 20 years. They do not usually make explicit threats. This Secret Service study is motivating civil libertarians and children's advocates who condemn blanket profiling such as Mosaic 2000 as a PR effort, not likely to allay many, if any, crimes.
Human beings are complex and complicated.
They simply cannot be profiled as if they were machines. Whitehead is rightly concerned about how school officials will use the data. He worries that administrators may share the information with other schools, with police, or even upload it into online databases. Each student is a unique individual. Neither the students nor their parents should have their rights threatened by intrusive social science.