Students protest Busch research (Rutgers)

[struggle4progress]

Department of Homeland Security affiliation raises concerns over invasions of privacy
Nasreen Hussain / Staff Writer
Issue date: 9/24/07 Section: Page One

Students gathered Thursday outside the Hill Center for Mathematical Sciences on Busch campus to protest research that they decried as racist, paranoid and undemocratic.

The protest was directed at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science who, along with three other schools, are conducting research to develop software in a joint project with the Department of Homeland Security.

According to a handouts distributed to students, the software is being developed to track the content of political speech in Internet blogs and on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, with the stated intention of identifying 'anti-American' sentiment and rooting out 'terrorists.'

"If you look at history, the same thing happened during the Red Scare with McCarthy when there were communists," said Tiffany Cheng, a Rutgers College junior. "The people that were punished and jailed never harmed anyone. Many were artists, musicians and academics who disagreed with the way our government was run, and, in this case, terrorism has replaced communism." ...

http://media.www.dailytargum.com/media/storage/paper168/news/2007/09/24/PageOne/Students.Protest.Busch.Research-2985698.shtml

[oneray]

1. Communists...?

New to the site, but did the communists blow up buildings in America too?

[uppityperson]

2. It's dead