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Should Facial Recognition Cameras Be In Schools? (nyclu.org)
Facial recognition technology is making its way into schools, raising privacy concerns among parents and officials. The New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report on the matter that focuses on one public school district in particular: Western New York's Lockport School District. "News reports indicate the district plans to have the invasive and error-prone technology installed by next school year," reports NYCLU. The Union sent a letter (PDF) to the New York State Education Department urging it to consider students' and teachers' privacy in reviewing the use of surveillance technology by school districts. They also "sent a freedom of information request to the district seeking details of how and where the technology will be used as well as who will have access to the sensitive data that gets collected."
The report highlights some of the concerns/negatives of such a system. For starters, it costs millions of dollars (Lockport spent almost $4 million), which could be used for things like Wi-Fi, new computers, or 3D printers. It has the "potential to turn every step a student takes into evidence of a crime." The databases could include those used for immigration enforcement, making parents of immigrant students afraid to send their children to school for fear that they or their children could end up on ICE's radar. Last but not least, since facial recognition is notoriously inaccurate, "innocent students are likely to be misidentified and punished for things they didn't do."
Of course, it isn't all bad. Proponents of the system say 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. Do you think facial recognition cameras belong in schools?
The report highlights some of the concerns/negatives of such a system. For starters, it costs millions of dollars (Lockport spent almost $4 million), which could be used for things like Wi-Fi, new computers, or 3D printers. It has the "potential to turn every step a student takes into evidence of a crime." The databases could include those used for immigration enforcement, making parents of immigrant students afraid to send their children to school for fear that they or their children could end up on ICE's radar. Last but not least, since facial recognition is notoriously inaccurate, "innocent students are likely to be misidentified and punished for things they didn't do."
Of course, it isn't all bad. Proponents of the system say 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. Do you think facial recognition cameras belong in schools?
Then they can graduate and get real jobs.
No.
If you value children's lives then yes.
Schools have too many entrances and exits. Cameras can help with this. Potential killers can be identified, and those entraces automatically locked down.
Anyone who is against this does not value the lives of children.
Do not underestimate the ingenuity of children. They may even be able to use it to their advantage.
Should they belong? That doesn't seem like the right word....Do they belong? Should they be in schools? The headline just bugs me too much to read the rest and I'm usually not that worried about that sort of thing.
Do you think facial recognition cameras belong in schools?
Short answer? Very rarely if ever.
Of course, it isn't all bad. Proponents of the system say 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.
I'm sure there are all sorts of corner cases that can be used to distract us from the big picture. Yes you can come up with unusual circumstances where facial recognition might help. But if you are worried about sex offenders or gang members coming onto school grounds you're going to need to secure the entrances and hire a guard anyway which renders the technology redundant and/or unnecessary. If a suspended student shows up I don't really see that as a huge problem worthy of violating the civil rights of the other students. Same with fired employees. This is massive and expensive overkill for what generally are non-existent or minor problems.
The real question is whether there is a compelling state interest to justify violating civil rights (4th amendment and others) of students, staff and others. Remember that most schools in the US are government funded so this isn't private property. My take on it is that there is no compelling state interest that would justify the cost or the rights violations that would ensue.
Yes.. it could be used for recognizing fired employees and suspected gang members. But why on earth are we discussing face recognition cameras FIRST and only THEN what they could be used for?
"Hey! Let's install a few face recognition cameras at $SOMEWHERE."
"Cool. Should those belong there? What could we do with them?"
"Uhmm... let's think of something. Something with Sex offenders?"
Solution in search of a problem.
Does your school HAVE AN ACTUAL PROBLEM with suspended students or fired employee entering school grounds? If yes, could it be solved better and cheaper with a retired cop sitting at a front desk/gate? THEN we could discuss about pros and cons.
In a related aspect..... why would ICE need face recognition? Wouldn't it be easier to check if known illegal immigrants (They have to be known if their face would be searched for by camera) have enrolled? I don't think it's possible to visit schools in the US anonymously, is it?
bickerdyke
Would probably be fine for students and faculty, but if they would have to start scanning everyone that enters the school, they are opening a privacy can of worms. I sure as hell wouldn't set foot there as a guest knowing this was a requirement, I can't help but think there are ulterior motives at work in this, seems a bit extreme when a security team would work just as well. I had security guards at my high school, wasn't a big deal. Additionally, only the wealthiest schools would be able to afford this, and they are not the ones in the headlines. Yes, I smell a rat.
Are you a psychopath? Who would even consider that?
This is not Nazi Germany 2.0... or is it?
Seriously ... the mindset and nerve of some people? ... Not even trying to be anywhere close to sanity anymore!
The arguments are always the same: We need to implement a persistent and total invasion of privacy that applies to everyone at every minute of the day, "just in case" some very unlikely thing might happen in the future. The more likely scenario is the school superintendent got a nice kickback for some percentage of the cost.
Why are we not resisting this panopticon bullshit? Just because we can, doesn't mean we should install cameras and facial recognition everywhere there are groups of people. Why? Because basic privacy is a human right. Who wants to trade that for "security", "think of the children" or "", can do it in their own house, garage, office, business, toilet and bedroom, on their own dime. Don't force this shit on everyone, including children, because you chose to live in fear of some bogeyman that's coming to get you. As a taxpayer, I do not fucking consent to blowing my tax money on this shit. Fix the eduction system, road, bridges and other infrastructure first, then we can talk about your spying toys. Also, watch less TV and get out every once in a while. Get a passport and leave the country when you can. The world is not as scary as the talking heads are telling you it is. Their interest is in having you glued to the screen, so the less you step outside, the happier and wealthier they are. Feel free to mod this down - I've got karma to burn.
You don't want this...
You don't want armed teachers who can pass a CCW process...
We can't afford to station multiple police officers strategically at every school... (most depts would see an extreme increase in manpower costs)
So what is your solution? The status quo, which is draw a magic line around the school, declare "this be a circle of protection, no demons, ghouls or criminals shall cross its magical boundaries" and hope for the best?
Don't you mean WHEN? Oh, you can bet schools will be the first to adopt these, for the "safety" of the children. Once kids grow up with that technology, as adults, they won't scoff at the idea of them being everywhere, because they are use to it. It's called CONDITIONING.
If they grow up thinking it's normal, it will be.
You already took away their lives.
Your totalitarian control removed their existences. You went waaaay overboard with your pathological fear. Like giving somebody such a big "loving" hug that his rib cage gets crushed and he suffocates.
They are now merely avatars of you.
Nothing against swarm lifeforms... but regarding individual lifeforms, YOU are the one who murdered them.
Besides ... without treating each other like business ... err, I mean anti-social psychopathic asshoke shit ... warmongering, stock trading, terrorist breeding drug selling to kids, healthcare destroying, education ruining, forced labor (aka jobs as we know them) and no social net to speak of, there wouln't be so man fucked-up potentially dangerous people!
(Hmm, didn't the statistic say that crime actually went *down* since the 90s?)
So why don't you do something in that regard?
Like go cure a Goldman Sachs employee. Or a general. Or just a single bum on the street.
Putting camera's up in public makes no sense unless you are planning to spy on and inventory people's comings and goings. People like to be semi-anonymous in their outings.
But in a school, if you are supposed to be there, then your identity is known exactly and for good reasons. You are a Student or a parent or teacher or staff.
SO there's no anonymity issue.
And since the school is responsible for keep track of students (attendance sheets, hall passes, fences are all about limiting people's whereabouts and egress.)
It makes total sense for them to have both cameras and face recognition.
On the otherhand the one thing I don't like is the feeling I'm being watched and not trusted. So I also dont really like kids feeling they are being watched all the time by cameras.
But of all places to put cameras, schools do make sense.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
How much porn style facial shot action is going on that we need to capture these events?
Why is every slashdotter illiterate?
sex offenders, suspended students, fired employees, suspected gang members, or anyone else placed on a school's "blacklist" enters the premises.
Every school in my state has the doors locked and you have to buzz in. Problem solved, not cameras required.
Should Facial Recognition Cameras Belong In Schools?
No. "Should Facial Recognition Cameras Be In Schools" or "Do Facial Recognition Cameras Belong In Schools". Not trying to be pedantic, but I'd really like to think the editors have a command of the language when they construct the titles. ESPECIALLY for an article that involves education.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Proponents of the system say 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. Do you think facial recognition cameras belong in schools?
More likely it will be used to alert officials whenever the system mis-identifies random students as sex offenders, suspended, fired employees, or gang members.
In fact, if these are in jr. high and high schools, remember that you have a building full of mischievous teenagers that will probably not miss an opportunity to subtly troll the algorithms. If you want to cause disruptions without getting in trouble, what better way than to have the authorities cause the disruption for you? Couple a few of those with parents that have the resources to hire lawyers, and it'll probably cost a lot more than $4M.
...that this is an excellent investment.
Computer says:
This is NOT Count Olaf.
This is NOT Count Olaf....neeext
This is NOT Count Olaf...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"Proponents of the system say 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."
"Blacklist" yeah that's the security hole right there.
All this will accomplish is that after the next shooting there will be questions why the shooter wasn't on the blacklist, and some Sheriff or Chief of Police will stand there and say that they have to investigate if procedures were followed.
If the security problem you try to solve is that only some people should be present inside a facility you do not solve that with a blacklist, since a working blacklist would have to be ((Population of Earth) minus (people with access)) long. You solve it with a WHITELIST and have the cameras or login daemon or physical lock or whatever raise an alarm whenever someone not on the WHITELIST is trying to enter.
The only reason a company would push a blacklist based system for this purpose is that their system is somehow incapable (false positives and negatives, or max length of "list") to implement a whitelist.
good luck with your security-trumps-everything approach. land of the free my ass.
I'm not explicitly against this, there are already cameras in most schools in Erie and Niagara county anyway so adding the facial recognition is kind of an inevitable next step. The problem with this move is that this is an unconscionable waste of money. Lockport N.Y. has 20K people, the high school has less than 2K students enrolled with something like a 10-1 student teacher ratio. My point is that this isn't some high density area where kids are crammed 30 to a classroom and the teacher barely know their names. It's actually a kind of idyllic suburb where nothing happens especially compared to Niagara Falls or Buffalo. So the idea that this is where we want to crank up security is really what has people around here laughing.
What do you expect? We have all these school shootings. Nothing will ever be done about the guns in the "wrong" hands - although Connecticut has proven that restrictive gun laws reduce gun violence.
And with our gun worshiping culture, the only other thing that can be done is strip the rights of everyone away in another area.
And as more and more surveillance is added, folks who worship their guns can keep them and buy as many as they want, but they will be monitored 24/7.
Unintended consequences can be a bitch. Don't blame me, blame the NRA and all of the impotent old men who run and support it.
Is it a public area? Mostly. Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy? Not really.
Visual recognition is actually not as error-prone as the ACLU would like to believe, and it's substantially better than eyewitnesses. There probably aren't a lot of benefits to installing it, but there aren't really a lot of negatives either.
Indeed, these so-called administrators and educators only work to make THEIR JOBS EASIER and make money for themselves. They DON'T CARE about the students or anybody else. These greedy selfish incompetent people are typical of the upper middle class that have their noses so far up the system's arse, they couldn't make an ethical decision if their lives depended upon it. The system is self-serving and corrupt. It's not there to educate anyone but instead, to provide a cushy irresponsible living for administrators and teachers. When the people grow up enough to accept how corrupt ineffective and evil the current system is, then, and only then, can things really change. Greed is the scholastic game these days.
Make sure the person is listed on other databases in the nation. A legal citizen enjoys a free education. Illegal citizens using fake paperwork get detected.
So a smart person does not take a test for another person.
A student takes their exams and a university can be confident the results match the student.
A university can be assured their intake of students can study, all passed the same tests to a set standard and are educatable.
This will ensure every student that graduates from a US university got a great education and is able to be hired given the qualifications presented.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Just wait until a school district has yet another shooting happen, which could have been prevented by facial recognition.
Please detail a plausible scenario where that could possibly happen. Since school shooters essentially never announce their intentions ahead of time it's unclear what value facial recognition would have in preventing such a scenario.
China is doing it right, as their cameras can tell emotions and get the school to step in if a student is depressed or always showing anger.
Ahh, trolling again I see... Well played.
This is what is needed here in the US. China doesn't have mass shootings for a good reason.
China doesn't have school shootings because few people have access to guns. Kind of hard to shoot up a school if you cannot get the gun in the first place.
Clearly, the best protection you can get is to carve "Elbereth" into the floor at every entrance.
One good use would be to make certain that the real person is taking a major exam like an SAT. Keep in mind that surveillance not only keeps tract of where you are but also keeps track of where you are not. We know of many cases that have very odd outcomes and often find the wrong party as guilty. Imagine the OJ trial if a really good surveillance system was focused on that spot. There is a belief among some that a fourth party was the bad actor. OJ now says that he was struck from behind and went down and came back up stunned beyond being able to identify anyone and admits that he was in some sort of fight. His lawyer also said before he passed away that he thought another killer was involved and that there was much evidence to support that notion. Most people have never been hit hard enough to be half out of their senses and presenting that to a jury, even if true, could cause a false conviction. In his football career OJ clearly would have been hit hard enough at times to get up half out of his ability to see or think much at all. That is why from time to time we see a player, with the ball, running the wrong way. Yet how would one hope to prove that such a thing has happened. OJ even admits that in that state of disability he could have killed people he had no intention of harming.
If they help improve security, good.
If they help catch criminal students that held up a convenience store, good.
If they catch parents who have committed a crime, good.
If they can locate students on campus at any time, good.
If they can be used to prevent bullying on campus, good.
If anything will stop me from caring about the future of humanity, it's the scenario of total elimination of privacy. Unfortunately, every year we come closer to that scenario.
I'm not religious, but the older I get, the more I hope that there's something better than this after we die. A place where people respect each other by default, and nobody takes advantage of anybody else.
People aren't convicted based on "the camera says it's John Smith"; rather, the camera says "the person committing the crime might be John Smith" and then real people compare actual photos of John Smith against the pictures taken by the camera.
Why would immigrants be afraid of ICE? As an immigrant, you're supposed to carry your green card at all times.
How else do the plebs learn that surveillance is ok? If you think it is the norm, you will not doubt it.
Oh! FYI: we have always been at war with Eurasia.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Much as La Raza, the Democrats, and neo-Nazis want to deny it, Mexicans are "white people", descended from imperialist, mass-murdering European assholes and living in a shitty, corrupt, violent nation. Yes, race really doesn't matter when it comes to intelligence, education, or success; culture and ethnicity, on the other hand, very much does.
this kind of small scale corruption is usually the school board. There was tons of it in the small city I lived in. The school admins don't have any power, they just do what the board tells them.
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wages aren't climbing but we're at full employment and 40% of Americans can't come up with $400 bucks (down from 60% a few years ago).
I keep saying this but the best way to fight tyranny is with a robust middle class. People ignore injustice when they're too busy trying to keep their heads above water. It's been that way for thousands of years of recorded history. Nothing's changed except we have the capacity to take care of everybody if we choose.
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I'm guessing this idea is born from the ashes of the recent school shootings and is a technological attempt to identify and / or alert about individuals on campus that do not belong. Ex students / staff, parents, contractors, etc.
I would guess that visitors to the school would have to check in via the main office to get their photo taken so they can be entered into the system as a temporary guest otherwise the system would send an alert about a non-authorized individual once the camera is unable to match their face with its database. Hell, it could even be used to operate entry doors.
The question I would have is how accurate are these things and would they be chasing around ghosts from constant false triggers ?
It does nothing for a student who IS allowed to be on campus who wakes up one day and decides to shoot / burn / blow up / $mayhem the facility because his girl friend dumped him last week. Or who has been picked on / bullied during the school year(s) by other students too fucking stupid to understand what the consequences of their actions can lead to. ( Eg: Student pokes bear with stick all year -> Bear has enough and eats student -> Everyone mad at Bear -> Students are the victim of terrible Bear )
" For starters, it costs millions of dollars (Lockport spent almost $4 million), which could be used for things like Wi-Fi, new computers, or 3D printers. "
I did get a good laugh at that line. The high school in my town recently spent somewhere close to $100M for new Football, Basketball arenas and other sports related venues. It basically boils down to the fact that schools don't want to spend money on security because, for them, it's not as important as a new Football Stadium. :|
If they were serious about it, $100M pays for an awful lot of security for quite a long time.
Why are you posting here? Shouldn't you be out running Gilead?
"sex offenders, suspended students, fired employees, suspected gang members, or anyone else placed on a school's "blacklist" enters the premises."
Why not just have a list of people _allowed_ to be there, then the rest of the 7 billion people will raise an alert if they try to sneak in.
Unless they are afraid that students who dolled up, discovered Emo or Punk will trigger an alarm.
The current method, at least at the schools in my area is that a teacher or principle greets the students in the morning and screens all the people entering the building. Only students can enter the school through those doors everyone else must go through the office where they are screened further. The only gap the camera could fill is if a parent becomes a sex offender / gang member and the school has not been notified and they attempt to enter the school. Giving up that much privacy for such a little amount of security seems insane.
Every situation is slightly different. I went to public school in Hawaii. My high school had k-6 from one village and grade 7-12 from 8 villages. We did not have a monolithic building with a few entry points. We had 4 main buildings and tons of portable classrooms. Our halls were just covered sidewalks. Without ac, our windows were always open to let in the trade winds. With huge grass fields between each building and the portable classrooms, we couldn't easily control access. A school with this layout needs a different security plan.
In a generation, we've gone from, "Cameras everywhere are Big Brother!", to, "Cameras are a key tool to increasing personal safety!"
I've seen people pull out cameras as if they're going to stop people from saying or doing something, as if they are some kind of bulletproof vest that can stop others from doing them harm. In reality, they're as useless as a car window in stopping a murderer from shooting you with a gun. I wouldn't be surprised if people being chased by a killer would opt to pull out a cellphone rather than pick up a club to defend themselves.
"I'll video you and shame you on (fill in social media outlet here)!!" Shame doesn't stop someone that doesn't share your fears and doubts.
You'd think we would've learned from the UK's ring of steel and general surveillance environment (bad things still happen to people there).
Wouldn't "firearm recognition" be of more direct utility to preventing shootings?
Not unless you have a means to rapidly and decisively deal with the individual carrying the firearm. It will do nothing to prevent shootings. Best case it might marginally improve response times to shootings already in progress. Doesn't help those who are already dead though.
> The databases could include those used for immigration enforcement,
Well that is the only good thing about it.
Deport the illegals. Build the wall.
Remove motivation from criminals to ignore borders and put anchor babies here.
We don't need to be treating schoolchildren like convicts in prison. School is tough enough an experience for some of them as-is, socially speaking, we do NOT need to be adding shit like this.
No I'm not going to train my children to live in a dystopian hellscape without privacy. They're not prisoners, and principle aren't wardens, and school should not be a panopticon. While the school system teaches an important lesson about how to deal with authority, the authority figure should not be an authoritarian tyarant with complete knowledge.
1984
Society under constant surveillance and knowing that you're under constant surveillance changes your behavior. Pyschological and neurological problems will increase 100 fold because it's like breeding rats in a cage. A generation of psychopaths.
With 4M you could create your own company to implement a brand new image recognition software from scratch. With open libraries and a programmer I could do it for $10k and $1000 per camera for hardware, installation and wiring.
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Absolutely! We should install dozens of these fine devices in every school.
Right after we finish installing a moat, ramparts, pillboxes, a tiger trap, barbed wire, electric fences, an artillery battery, a minefield, anti-aircraft missiles, and a billboard-sized sign reading "authorized personnel only - all others will be shot on sight".
Freedom isn't free. This is the price we must pay for our freedom to bear arms.
The constitution doesn't say anything about schools not being maximum security facilities. In fact, the constitution doesn't say anything about public schools at all. So if we want to protect our guns and our kids we should dismantle the public school system and stick to home schooling.
NYC schools - hell yes. Every one of them. They need to be secure and NYC is full of crazy people statistically. In a rural school, not so much. If they have a problem, sure. Bring them in. In Parkland Florida where they had that whacko student that they refused to discipline due to the stupid Chicago no-discipline model - sure. Could have saved lives.
We have technology, let's use it.