This policy may violate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says in part that:

"1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation."

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm

By collecting:

"Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools."

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23868131-3102,00.html

There are quite a few ways that this violation of the children's privacy could be used to hurt Australian children.

For example, it could search for and monitor "Arab-looking" kids.

You know, for their own protection.

Then it would be easy to collect them and ship them to remote homes for such children in the event of a serious terrorist incident.

It's not like the government of Australia has ever done something like that before.

Oh no.

Well, the natives don't count. That was a different situation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-Proof_Fence_(film)

BTW, the Canadian government ran similar schools for Native Americans.

They're still digging up mass graves.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2008/04/mass-graves-revealed-indian-children-canadian-schools
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/RecentUpdatesampArticles/Apr102008LocationofMassGravesRevealed/tabid/71/Default.aspx

We can only hope and pray that such things will never return.

"including random screening of selected passengers' bags"

No one has ever randomly screened my bags in my car, departure time is always exactly when I want to go, and it's substantially cheaper and faster than Amtrak.

Bus passengers are already subject to random searches:

"The Supreme Court ruled today that in conducting random searches for drugs or weapons on buses, the police need not advise passengers that they are free to refuse permission to be searched."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE7DE1F3CF93BA25755C0A9649C8B63

Protect your privacy. Avoid public transportation!

Sadly, we have "witches" and witch hunters in the developed world too. We just don't directly use the word "witch"

Take the case of an Oakland County, Michigan mother and father accused of abusing their autistic daughter.

The only "evidence" holding this case together is the "testimony" of the girl made through the "facilitator", who holds the girls hands in her own while typing on a keyboard to "answer" questions.

Funny, when defense asked the facilitator to leave the room when asking questions, the "girl" could not answer a single question when the facilitator returned. Things like "Are you a boy or a girl?" The answers were gibberish.

Yet the prosecutors will not drop, and this case is still ongoing, dad sits in jail, mom on a tether, and the children sit in foster care.

"Late last year, the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office accused a West Bloomfield couple of doing something very bad to their autistic 14-year-old daughter. Today, more than two months after the girl's father was jailed without bond, an accumulating body of evidence suggests that it is the Prosecutor's Office that has been bad and the parents who have been the victims of a breathtakingly unprofessional witch hunt. "

Crying Rape Through a Ouija Board
Detroit Free Press
Feb 6, 2008

Also:

- Prosecutors were caught "discussing the case" (i.e. rehearsing answers) with the girl and "facilitator" during school time.
- Cops harassed her disabled brother, meeting with him alone
- Mom was not allowed to attend religious services without government approval
- Medical exam showed that girl's hymen is intact, contradicting her "statements" of her abuse
- Defense expert called "facilitator" methods unreliable
- Prosecution expert called the "facilitator" methods unreliable under cross
- Even if dad is found innocent and mom is found innocent, in Michigan, the DHS now has custody of the kids, and getting them back is an entirely different matter. Even if there is clearly no evidence of abuse, the state may keep the kids forever if it decides that such a move is in the best interests of the children.

So while I condemn these Saudi abuses, we in the developed world also need to keep our own homes in order.

he American government has it's problems with family law:

http://dcrally2008.com/

While I'm not a lawyer, even if mom were incapacitated, it was probably illegal for the government to hold the children and not contact their father, or prevent them from contacting their father themselves, although states often bend the rules.

The agencies make more money when they have more children in custody. See Title IV-E:

http://uscode.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sup_01_42_10_7_20_IV_30_E.html

The US has constitutional protections on the rights of parents (including legal residents such as tourists).

"The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” We have long recognized that the Amendment’s Due Process Clause, like its Fifth Amendment counterpart, “guarantees more than fair process.” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 719 (1997). The Clause also includes a substantive component that “provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests.”"

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-138.ZO.html

However, enforcement is sometimes problematic, as federal courts often decline jurisdiction on family matters, and local courts sometimes have close ties to child welfare agencies, making participants less than confident in their objectivity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooker-Feldman_doctrine

In this case, mom could contend that she stayed at a hotel with a good concierge service, with the intent that the concierge would take care of this. Therefore, the state had no justification in interfering with her family.

Which is probably exactly what would have happened if the nurses or the girls had simply called their dad or the hotel. The concierge would personally see to the children's safety, including hiring a nanny as appropriate, and dad would rush to care for them.

PS: Note that the Canadian government actually reserves the right to take children from their parents without cause and hold them permanently, so don't expect peace and joy in Canada:

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=955

December 19 2007, columnist Daniel Howes of the Detroit News bluntly wrote, "In making the rounds this week of the city's dailies, the schools chief painted a picture of financial mismanagement that is stunning in its ineptitude, corruption and possible criminality. It's sickening, this mess that essentially says the education of 105,000 Detroit students is less important to bureaucrats than gaming an inefficient system awash in taxpayer dollars and crying for more.", in response to an apparent visit by Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Connie Calloway. [23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Public_Schools#Financial_Difficulties