Tag: massachusetts

Massachusetts Android users alarmed to wake up to COVID tracking app auto-installed

Massachusetts recently launched a contact tracing app for COVID-19, called MassNotifyApp, to track the spread of the virus in the state. But there is one big problem with the app; it is installing itself on Android devices without users’ consent, and even on devices with parental-lock.

“Thank you MA/Google for silently installing #MassNotify on my phone without consent. But I have a request: Can you also silently install an app that makes my phone explode and kill me?” someone wrote on Twitter.

The story is perhaps one of the most egregious violations of an app during the pandemic. It also contradicts what Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, said about the app; that it would be voluntary.

Keep reading

Massachusetts School Committee Allows Real-Time Crime Center To Monitor Students Live

How does a school committee respond to a year of remote student learning? How will the Springfield, MA School Committee respond to post-COVID schooling?

Now that public schools are reopening (just in time for summer vacation) what are officials worried about? Is it face-to-face learning? Is it in-person interactions with students? Nope, it is mass surveillance and how to let Real-Time Crime Centers (RTCC) monitor students under the guise of public safety.

As MassLive reports, the decision to let the Springfield Police Department monitor students in real-time “feels tone deaf.”

The school committee took a half hour to decide that the best way to make students and faculty feel safe is to allow Big Brother to monitor them in real-time.

It is becoming more apparent to even casual observers, that our public schools resemble our prison system. Our schools are increasingly tied to the school-to-prison pipeline with CCTV cameras watching a students’ every movement; to weapons detectors at entrances, to vape detectors in bathrooms, and to police officers waiting for students to commit an infraction.

Will tying school surveillance cameras to RTCCs be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back?

Keep reading

Massachusetts High School Forces Students To Accept Concept Of ‘Systemic Racism’ In Essays

Students in one 10th-grade history class at a Massachusetts high school last month were tasked with creating slides to highlight the effects that “systemic racism” had on George Floyd’s life.

According to Parents Defending Education, a national grassroots nonprofit group dedicated to combatting state-sanctioned racism under the cloak of critical race theory in K-12 schools, sophomores at Concord-Carlisle High School were assigned a prompt based on required reading from the Washington Post.

Students were asked to create a slide outlining “one form of systemic racism, how it impacted Mr. Floyd’s life and how he responded,” after they read the piece, “Born with two strikes: How systemic racism shaped Mr. Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition” in the Washington Post.

Parents Defending Education published the assignment shown below, where it appears students were offered no opportunity to dissent from the premise that the United States was systemically racist and oppressive, an idea at the heart of critical race theory, a once-fringe theory being forced into the U.S. educational system.

Keep reading

Parents’ group alleges Massachusetts school district held no-Whites-allowed event

A parents-rights group has filed a federal complaint accusing a Massachusetts school district of engaging in racial discrimination by banning White students from an event on hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Parents Defending Education asked the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to investigate the Wellesley Public Schools for an alleged Zoom session described as a “Healing Space for Asian and Asian American students (grades 6-12), faculty/staff, and others in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community who wish to process recent events.”

The invitation shown in a screenshot attached to the complaint went on to say: “* Note: This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian-American and Students of Color, *not* for students who identify only as White.”

Keep reading

Mass. Prisoners Among The First To Get COVID Vaccines

Among those first in line for the COVID-19 vaccine in Massachusetts are correction workers and the nearly 13,000 people incarcerated in jails and prisons in the state. The news comes as COVID cases continue to spike behind bars.

Gov. Charlie Baker included both groups in the first phase of his COVID vaccination plan, which he announced last week. The first phase also includes health care workers, police, fire and emergency responders and residents of long term care facilities and those living and working in homeless shelters. Massachusetts is one of six states to specifically include prisoners in the first phase of vaccinations, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

The Department of Correction referred questions about the vaccine process to the state’s COVID-19 Response Command Center. It says those working and living in congregate care settings, like homeless shelters and correctional facilities, are prioritized for phase one because of the high-risk, high-exposure setting. The state estimates that 22,000 vaccines will be needed for those living and working in correctional facilities, and officials expect the vaccines to be distributed between December and February. Details about how the vaccines will be given behind bars will be clearer once the state receives vaccine shipments.

Keep reading

DPH: Flu vaccine required for all students of Massachusetts schools

Flu shots will now be required for all students in Massachusetts schools, from child care through colleges, the Department of Public Health announced Wednesday.

Students older than six months will have to be vaccinated by Dec. 31, unless either a medical or religious exemption is provided.

“The new vaccine requirement is an important step to reduce flu-related illness and ​the overall impact of respiratory illness during the COVID-19 pandemic,” officials wrote in an announcement of the new policy.

Students who are homeschooled are exempt from the policy, but health officials said students at elementary and secondary schools that are using a remote learning model are not exempt.

College or university students who are entirely off-campus will also be exempt from the mandate.

Keep reading