Yes, consider the power itself, not the category the power belongs to. If a school knows 2 extra things about you (on benefits; father in jail for child abuse), that's not the same as 24x7 video surveillance. Risk assess the reality, not the overarching category.
Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used. The problems captured by the Kafka metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition or chilling. Instead, they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but they also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.
Why dont we just take all the children? Let the state raise them. Father was in jail, he should never see his children ever again. Mother was drunk, take the kids and lets sterlize the parents just in case.
I am making an extreme argument, there is obviously a line for CPS, but you have to remember that every system in the modern society is trying to be total. The police wants to stop crime, at all cost, if they could put is all in matrix like cells so we cant move they would. I will leave it to you to think what the ultimate goal of the education system is.
The only thing that stops systems from becoming total is our votes and also the fact that they are somewhat adversarial to each other e.g. if one becomes more total it consumes from the other system's power and so each systems fight for its life and multi dimensional predator/pray equilibrium is formed.
> you have to remember that every system in the modern society is trying to be total
No, it's not. A school wanting to know a few things about a child is not "trying to be total". I get the extreme view; it can be warranted, but again, the worst case is not the average case, and we should just analyse the current case on its own merits.
