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Face Recognition Is Now Being Used In Schools (theintercept.com)
Presto Vivace shares a report from The Intercept: Officials at the Lockport, New York, school district have purchased face recognition technology as part of a purported effort to prevent school shootings. Starting in September, all 10 of Lockport District's school buildings, just north of Buffalo, will be outfitted with a surveillance system that can identify faces and objects. The software, known as Aegis, was developed by SN Technologies Corp., a Canadian biometrics firm that specifically advertises to schools. It can be used to alert officials to whenever sex offenders, suspended students, fired employees, suspected gang members, or anyone else placed on a school's "blacklist" enters the premises. Aegis also sends alerts any time one of the "top 10" most popular guns used in school shootings appears in view of a camera. The district is spending most of its recent $4 million state "Smart School" grant on these and other enhancements to its security systems, including bullet-proof greeter windows and a mass notification system, according to the Niagra Gazette. Slashdot reader Presto Vivace adds: "This is why municipal elections are so important. Just because this stuff is on the market, does not mean your local school system has to buy it."
The report notes that "all the major school shootings in the last five years in the U.S. have been carried out by current students or alumnae of the school in question." These students wouldn't have their face entered into the face recognition system's blacklist. Furthermore, "Most shooters don't brandish their guns before opening fire; and by the time they do, an object-detection algorithm that could specify the exact type of weapon they're firing would not be of much use," reports The Intercept. "... the technology would give a school, at best, only a few extra seconds in response time to a shooting."
The report notes that "all the major school shootings in the last five years in the U.S. have been carried out by current students or alumnae of the school in question." These students wouldn't have their face entered into the face recognition system's blacklist. Furthermore, "Most shooters don't brandish their guns before opening fire; and by the time they do, an object-detection algorithm that could specify the exact type of weapon they're firing would not be of much use," reports The Intercept. "... the technology would give a school, at best, only a few extra seconds in response time to a shooting."
derp.
Or are Americans willing to admit that they as a people are less than the descendants of criminal scum that is Australia? Australia dealt with this issue. Americans, what's your excuse today??
Just admit you're worst than Aussies.. LOL!
Gun control has worked so well in Chicago. We need to emulate so that the only folks with guns are criminals.
Happens when you don't make it nationwide like in Australia.
Australia is totally surrounded by oceans making smuggling something like firearms evtremely difficult. The US has land borders that people, including smugglers, regularly simply walk or drive across. The existing drug and human smuggling cartels would simply add another item to the menu: firearms. Actual military-grade, select-fire/full-automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, and more. If people in the US are unable to obtain a legal firearm that complies with laws and regulations they'll buy from the black market that has no restrictions at all.
There is also the problem of the hundreds of millions of guns...many never registered...that are already in civilian hands. It would be impossible to confiscate enough to make it unlikely a criminal could not obtain one.
Another thing is that guns favors the aggressor.
Guns are an equalizer. They allow a 120 pound (~55 kg) woman a chance to defend herself against a much larger and stronger (usually male) assailant and do it at a distance out of the assailant's reach. Same for older people. Guns save lives as well as take them. It happens almost daily in the US.
The US has had widespread civilian gun ownership since it's founding. The recent violence is a societal problem, not a "tool" problem. Simply look at the UK. Now they're talking about knife bans and one judge in the UK even suggesting people deliberately dull their kitchen knives(!). That's stupid in the extreme.
Of course, enacting bans makes politicos appear to the low-info types to be doing something without having to address the societal problems at the root of the violence that is largely due to their own government policies and laws to begin with.
Any solution that relies on shooting the shooter means that you tolerate one or several innocents shot before the aggressor is dealt with.
The frequency of that having occurred in the many thousands of times criminals have been shot in self defense by civilians in the US is statistically zero, where the number of lives saved is far above statistically zero.
But, let's not allow facts to get in the way of agendas.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Try Googling 'democide' - there is a reason the PUBLIC need to be armed.
We could also get rid of mass shootings (which account for a tiny fraction of the total number of shootings in the USA) by allowing freedom of NON-association - the freedom to simply GET AWAY from people you don't want to live around - i.e. criminals.