It looks like Denmark is discussing a proposal “to encourages students to grant schools access to their personal laptops” in order to avoid cheating at exams. I like it because it is so DUMB that it may achieve a very positive effect anyway, albeit one totally unforeseen by its authors.

• “As part of the new rules, schools will also be allowed to do background checks on students’ search history and social media activity”
• People who fail to comply will receive harsh penalties for their insubordination [ranging] from having the devices confiscated for the duration of a day to being expelled from the school"

I can’t wait for this law to be approved, and actually enforced. I’m serious, and here’s why:

these days, the great majority of the so-called “digital natives” worldwide are completely incompetent, in all digital things that really matter, starting with caring about privacy and digital security, and knowing how to protect them. And I can’t think of a better way to teach them some real digital competence, than a law like that. It only takes a few minutes to:

• run a Live Linux Distribution with Tor, whenever you want to do something online privately. Including having more social network accounts, each unrelated to each other
• (if you have money to spare) swap the hard drive of your laptop with a new one, the morning of the exam

and then hand over “your” laptop and “passwords”, with the sincerest smile of the world, no trouble at all, sir. And those are just the first two things that came to my mind while reading that article.