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• Invisible, roll-on protection.
• It's altruism. Really.
• Vacation with Civil Defense.
• Can I get a witness?
• You have been protected!

How saturated in the 1950s pre-digital era this email from MnSCU is. Right down to the register. The pitch is straight out of commercial advertising: protect your home, your family, your innocence. Protect yourself from embarrassing body odor. Even the Civil Defense left it up to the target family to build their own shelters and to take cover in defense.

But the Minnesota State Internet Guardian has you protected. Protected so well you won't even know it. Because you're blameless. We trust you. The only reason you would click a shifty link is accidentally. Because you don't know any better, we monitor your every click for you.

The place for protection in 2017 is the state university. It's not about us.  It's you.

From:  Faculty/Staff Announcement List
Date:  December 4, 2017 at 3:20:07 PM Central Standard Time
To:  “fac_staff_l@listserv.bemidjistate.edu”
Subject:  Minnesota State Internet Guardian

Who: All faculty, staff and students
What: Full implementation of Internet Guardian 
When: Tuesday, December 5
Where: BSU, NTC and Distance MN
Why: To protect you from internet threats by stopping malicious links, phishing links and other malicious software from reaching their intended destinations

Complete Details: Your campus will be deploying a service that is being rolled out system wide known as Minnesota State Internet Guardian.  This service will help to protect you from internet threats by stopping malicious links, phishing links and other malicious software from reaching their intended destinations.  The service and its deployment will mostly be invisible to you as it works at the network level.  The only way you will know that it is active is if you accidently click on a malicious link or navigate to a web page that has malicious software on it.  At that time, a web page will pop up to inform you that you have been protected.  Simple as that! Someone else is taking on the work.

Kept out of sight is the mechanism. MnSCU isn't mentioning that each time you click your move has been recorded, analyzed, vetted by The Guardian to be OK. This is a lost opportunity for affirmation. A little pop up with each click could bring up a assertion of Good Choice! Gold Star!

Your state educational system is extending the same parental protections it brings to the dorms to the network. With the same rationale: It's to protect the State investment. You gain by being under the umbrella.

But MnSCU aren't comfortable. They try to cast the control as parental altruism. The marketing can't hide their apprehension that our use threatens their network. It's same apprehension on the face of moms and dads and teachers in 1959 and 1962 when they sketched plans for fallout shelters and held duck-and-cover exercises. They were doing it for The Kids - knowing that the gestures were just that - gestures.

The Civil Defense banner image is from the Civil Defense Museum. The faculty email shares the same archive. The Cold War prepared us. The same misuse of military equipment can claim guardianship.