Habituate them to full-time government surveillance while they are young.
6
What will the GREED do with this now. Too bad AI will go to the dark side just life FB and Internet. Too bad people could do so much good, but power and greed....well just look at the leaders
1
A system that automatically calls the police when it trips. A system that has a high false identification rate for other than whites.
How long until we read of some black (or Asian, or Latino) kid, honor student, well behaved, minding his own business and in the hallways shuttling between classes, being gunned down by the police because he was "identified" by this system, and "... well, we had to stop him."?
11
Fine, unbiased reporting about the issue of AI facial recognition in schools and by extension other public buildings.
It is unfortunate that "The Times" published a picture of the Erie Canal in Lockport when the Canal has been drained for the winter. It looks like the Canal is a "dump." This photo distracts from the issue of facial recognition so well reported in the article.
This section of the Erie Canal is actually very unique with a reconstructed lock (originally one of the "flight of five" locks. The "flight of five" is now the most western two locks (Nos. 34 & 35) on the New York State Canal System. If "The Times" does not have a better file photograph of either the Canal at Lockport or of Lockport itself I will happy to supply one.
3
It's interesting that Mr. LiPuma seems to be the primary spokesperson for the Lockport School District. Did senior school officials shy away from interviews with the reporter? Nothing useful in the article about the vendor or costs to the local taxpayers or who decides whose faces are on the watch list. Nothing here about the apparently automated "AI" system that decides who gets flagged and how and who gets alerted. Jim Schultz and Jayde McDonald and Monica Wallace have got it right -- this kind of system and these sorts of uses are not ready for prime time. I hope the Times follows this closely.
3
Now look; I don't know why you are censoring me, but this is so wrong for authorities to be taking away the privacy rights of children who can't defend their rights. I'm disgusted with what a police state this nation has become. I can't tell the cops from the criminals any more. They all dress and behave the same. So spare me your protection racket. You're the problem where there was none before. I mean c'mon; cameras on kids in school?
2
How does A.I. and facial recognition software work in a group of high school students (grades 9-12 /ages 14-18), most of whom are still going through puberty and sudden growth spurts which would change the appearance of their faces over their four years in high school? It would seen that facial recognition would work best in an adult population.
6
Oh please, let's leave out the protests of racial bias and other weak reasons to object to this technology. What we want is safer schools for our kids and this technology helps further that goal.
6
I have been a resident of Tokyo for the last 35 years and am happy to live in the largest, safest city in the world. It’s not about cameras or facial recognition. It’s about a certainty that we are in this together.
4
Here is one additional fact from our experience here in Lockport. Our district was approached by a salesman who masqueraded himself as a security consultant offering his help “for free.” His recomendación, spend $2.7 million on his company’s system. Our district did not make this choice based on careful analysis or consideration of other alternatives. They were conned and sadly naive. There is a reason other districts didn’t take that bait. They did what we tell our students to do — their homework.
8
As a school administrator, my impression is that this article does not meaningfully examine the rapid and profound changes in societal, legal and practical expectations surrounding school security that districts and buildings are facing.
Historically, schools were essentially open to the public across the country. Now haphazardly recast as "secure" facilities in an attempt to right a variety of social ills, schools are in a double bind. As a society, we have largely decided that it is the school's responsibility to know exactly who is on the campus at all times in a way that we would never expect of many similarly public spaces. It is reasonable to expect more of these types of AI systems and naive to think otherwise.
41
@Telecaster The more you lock down society, the more it becomes the prison you feign protecting free people from.
17
Facial recognition cameras were installed in Galveston Texas schools last year. They were paid for by a bond that the voters supported. I don't think anyone realizes the kind of data that is being scraped from their kids, or that these cameras posted overhead are not that effective at identification. I wonder if companies like Clearview AI, who scrapes social media for faces, offers incentives for the adoption of these cameras? There are far more questions than answers, and yet, we expose our students to this.
74
@Teresa Megahan, we expose our children to what? An image of their face when they already are required to wear photo badges all day in most schools around the country. Sorry, but a lot of commenters here need to choose plastic straws or 5G radio waves as their personal demon and get out of the way of common sense policies of gun control and surveillance of entry in to public spaces.
10
@DoctorRPP Schools have much more data on your child than a picture of their face. They have their address, your contact information, vaccination records, grades, subjects studied, standardized test scores...the list goes on and on. If you think school computers are infallibly secure or that the vendors of the software would never mishandle the data, I've got a bridge to show you.
23
@upstate guy, so convince your state to limit the information a school can store on individual students, but that has no bearing on the entry and exit security of the building.
4
As a former NYC school administrator in a high school I was assigned to be at the door as students entered the building. Without facial recognition technology students had to wait in line to scan their ID card. This card would generate all type of buzzes and dings depending on if a library book was late, a form had not been filled out or a dean was looking for them. Then there were deans telling students to remove their hats. On unannounced days students were subjected to search and seizure of personal property by the NYC police department in addition to having to be scanned to enter. Students were also not allowed to leave the building for lunch.
I watched as the students suffered these indignations quietly, I wondered what impact it had on their nervous systems. I know just watching this ritual of proving oneself innocent, hearing the constant alarms, and being yelled at to comply to school rules had on my nervous system. I started my day with a sense of dread.
Adding facial recognition just helps the police department have more information to profile students. Teachers and school staff, even in large schools already know who their students are. There is no need for facial recognition. In NYC, those records will be a accessible to the NYPD as is the video surveillance of the school buildings. This is a very dangerous and demoralizing step especially for our minority and immigrant students. And it will not make any students safer.
118
@Diana Scalera - Well, at least there's no need for a school to prison pipeline - you're already in jail!
16
I hope this terrible idea doesn't spread, and is overturned. As a parent, I would never let my child attend a school using biometrics to manage its affairs.
3
When did we make the trade-off between education and privacy?
I also suspect Mr.LiPuma's motives. The average school shooting lasts under 10 minutes. The added value of facial recognition might save seconds at most.
School shootings are horrific. However, 95% of us will never experience it. Seems like a ridiculous trade off.
4
"That list includes sex offenders in the area, people prohibited from seeing students by restraining orders, former employees who are barred from visiting the schools and others deemed “credible threats” by law enforcement."
So we must scan children's faces to prevent adult evil doers? Why not scan only adult's faces? This use of technology doesn't pass the smell test or the logic test. No wonder Mr. LiPuma looks so smug. He pulled a fast one.
6
Another step in the implementation of Big Brother. To see where this could go wrong, look to 1984. Oh sure, folks will say that’s not how it will be used. But we are slowly boiling the frog.
2
The progressives should start thinking about moving their children into Charter and private schools.
3
With keeping "safe" and surviving being the prime directive for us humans, I'm betting that we won't need to have the government impose a surveillance state on us as we will, over time, welcome it with open arms. Remember, it was no less a civil rights advocate than Barack Obama who argued that "if it would save one child's life," it was worth putting tens if not hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens on a 'no buy' gun list. And I also bet that the vast majority of NY Times' readers strongly support that position.
With the bar set that low and with the certainty that there will always be one child who could have avoided some sort of harm if only a camera had been filming and, better yet, identifying in real time who it was filming, you can be sure that arguments for placing cameras here, there and everywhere will become ever more common especially given the unwitting support of a click-addicted media which can't help but wallow in fear-based porn.
China here we come.
Hasn't anybody read the great novel "1984" by George Orwell, 1949?
We should be doing everything possible to make facial recognition illegal!!!!!
3
Time for us all to invest in beards and mustaches?
1
Like the police in Watchman, we’ll all be wearing masks for safety.
1
Has anyone been paying attention to what's going on in China with facial recognition? Facial recognition is everywhere and the government is now issuing social scores to everyone. Cross at the intersection within the cross block? Good citizen! Jaywalk? They send you a ticket! Cross against a red light? Bad. Go to a demonstration? You better be going to one that supports the government or you'll be blacklisted. Park outside the lines? Bad. Walk and text? Bad. Smoke? Bad. What are the consequences of a bad social score? Everything from jail to travel bans, lower financial credit scores, inability to apply to prestigious schools, your face on a billboard showing your "offences", re-education. This isn't sci-fi. It's already happening.
It always starts as a "safety" issue. In this case the argument is to prevent school shootings. Has anything ever not morphed into a tool for control? Think that in the future you may be monitored and tracked based on your political preference? Keep kidding yourself that that will never happen. It's already being done in other countries. Don't kid yourself that you're a good citizen who has nothing to hide. Something as simple as jaywalking or coming out of a bar after midnight could put you on a watch list. No thank you.
91
Ben Franklin said all: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
There are no controls on the distribution of facial recognition data, so this isn't just about making a school safer: it's data gathering at an early age. As every tyrant throughout history has known, more information means more control, and the best information comes from the young.
If a school attended by one of my children went with facial recognition (or other data-gathering), I woud move, try to find a private school, or go to homeschooling. I'll never be able to fully protect my beloved offspring from government snoops, but what I can do, I will.
4
As a parent, I am strongly against such technology in schools. The article did a good job covering the pros and cons of such techonology yet I believe if someone intends harm, they will not be stopped by such technology, they will find a way around it or they will not be stopped in time.
And how could anyone who is aware of the bias of such technology be comfortable implementing it? It is essentially saying they do not care, or they consider any fallout an acceptable loss. I feel if the bias were against Caucasian faces, it would not have been implemented.
I agree with Ms. Wallace. There are other and better ways to keep our children safe. My first thought is sensible gun laws.
13
No one, in this article or any other on the subject, has shown any instances where facial recognition technology has actually caused anyone any harm, whereas there ave been instances where it has done some good. If arrests were being made strictly on the basis of the technology, I would agree that there was a problem; but as this system is designed a human is alerted and must confirm an identity before any action is taken.
Vague comments about inaccuracy are not a reason to not implement a technology; they are a reason to do so in order to use the real world experience to improve it.
3
@michaelscody I would encourage you to read about how China is using facial recognition technology to track, and detain various groups such as the Uighurs. Facial surveillance as well as mandatory installation of apps on smartphones (which a college in the US recently required of its students) are a part of this system. In the US there is also the case of Steve Talley, who was misidentified as a bank robber thru facial recognition. Lots of other examples.
Really surprised that you wouldn't have done even a perfunctory search online before posting such an easily dis-proven comment?
6
@Publicus I was commenting on what is being done in Lockport, under US laws, so what is being done in China, under vastly different laws, does not invalidate my statement.
As to the Talley case, yes there is certainly a problem, but it is much more a problem of the Denver police and the FBI than in the use of facial recognition software. Taking him down with a SWAT team and not properly investigating his alibi is the real reason for his lawsuit, the invalid identification would not have been an issue had reasonable procedures been followed after that. As I said, there needs to be human intervention and that should have specified reasonable human identification.
Misidentification of suspects is, was, and always will be a problem in police investigations, no matter if it is automated or eyewitnesses; the real question is what is in place to mitigate the problem; it appears that in Denver the system is either inadequate of was not applied.
Back in the day before the heralded "Comprehensive High School" many schools had, essentially, universal facial recognition because the students and the teachers knew each other. In those earlier days, SAT scores were higher than these days. Large schools where students know only a few classmates give rise to dangers, just as large cities give rise to crimes by comparison with small towns. Perhaps, looking back would be useful.
The data that this will collect won't go away. Does anyone, including the proponents of this system, truly believe this data is safe? Given our current predicament, do we really want to entrust our government and the private contractors behind the project with all of this? One hack or data breach – which will inevitably come – is all it takes for these children's information to be available online to the highest bidder.
The implications of this for the future are truly chilling, and outweigh any possible security gains that could be achieved through other means. This is a high-tech bandaid that handily bypasses the structural changes that could really change things. Freedom dies in the name of 'security' – and that's if we actually buy into the initial premise that this makes us safer.
8
We were on the tube (subway) in London. A group of very threatening and unruly men got on our car at one stop--made us very uncomfortable. The very next stop five police got on the car and removed the men. What a relief! Surveillance. London states "You are always on camera in Central London." Even in the restrooms in Earls Court. To me it's worth the loss of privacy in public.
4
facial recognition wouldn't have prevented Columbine nor Virginia Tech - the shooters were students at those schools.
3
@gk So because it will not stop all shootings, it should not be implemented? Interesting.
2
@michaelscody
That's not what he said. Don't bend someone's words to fit your narrative.
1
This should be concerning for everyone. I think this needs to be resisted as strongly as possible now.
8
A recognition match is only a first step. Those occur everyday in every airport with a metal detector. All it does is require a second step, taking your keys out of your pocket or giving up your pistol and then a second scan. Facial recognition will have the same effect. No one will be arrested for being a match. It will only require a photo ID check. No ID, no problem. Come back when you have it. If someone is not supposed to be on school grounds they will no it and most likely leave w/o having to show an ID. Those who get a false positive more than once will become recognizable to the staff and most likely will be allowed in by the facial and voice recognition of a human.
1
This is the future, and I welcome it. I wish there were more surveillance systems in public areas. I feel much safer in London, one of the most surveilled cities in the world, than in San Francisco which made the dumb mistake of prohibiting this necessary public safety tool. I don’t understand the opposition to it. Privacy? There is no legal right not to be looked at, and in any case, a school is a public area. The old canard of “racial bias”? If the system misidentifies a non-white face, the only way to correct this mistake is to train the algorithm on more black and Asian faces. As it gets more data, it will become more precise. And if more black students commit offenses, then it is not bias that lands them in trouble but their own behavior.
19
@Mor
What better place to apply AI techniques than in the protection of our children.
In recent years schools have become very dangerous places, so anything that can be done to make them safer should be done.
According to a recent survey, 97.6% of criminals were against surveillance cameras and the use of AI to identify perpetrators of crimes. Similarly, in the late 1800s and early 1900s surveys of criminals were undertaken and 96.8% of them were against the use of fingerprints to identify perpetrators of crimes.
I am pretty sure a huge majority of law-abiding Americans support any techniques, including surveillance cameras and AI, that will make their lives safer, reduce crimes and apprehend criminals in general and those who threaten children in particular.
The people who have to fear surveillance cameras and AI identification are those involved in illicit behavior.
2
@Mon Ray No. The people who don't want to install surveillance cameras in schools that are linked to inaccurate "machine learning" algorithms are those who value the privacy of their children. The people who want to install these faulty devices are fear-mongering. Ask the students abused by their teachers if a facial surveillance system would have stopped that abuse? As far as school shootings--unless there is some sort of SWAT team always ready to react to a "match"--which may or may not be accurate-this system is completely useless. Like a lot of the "armor-our-schools" ideas and technologies, they are ignoring the simple fact that there are too many guns and those guns are more deadly than ever.
30
@Mor Yeah, London is much safer than SF. At least two terror incidents in the past six months in London vs. zero in SF.
Fear mongering is such a terrible and destructive means of persuasion. We are fast heading to being a police state, same as China and Russia. At some point, things you believe should be legal will be made illegal. You will then be one of the people of interest popping up on police monitors. When you're arrested, remember this exchange.
42
As I read through the news today, I am reminded how the same vitriol and NYTimes weekly articles were common for a decade focused on the democracy-ending practice of DNA collection. Today, the rapist and murderer of two women was finally brought to justice. How did he get away with it, there was no DNA analysis practiced in the early 90s to match him with the evidence left at the scene. Today, thanks to millions of Americans NOT listening to those opposed to any technology for the sake of fear and paranoia alone....the chances of a rapist and killer getting caught are many times greater than in the past. I have children that attend school and ask school districts to do everything possible to have them return to my home at the end of the day.
6
I grew up in Lockport and went to LHS. Just a FYI it is not in Upstate New York it is Western New York.
2
@cds agreed. I was waiting to read a story about a town in "real" Upstate NY, i.e. north of Albany.
@dogtrnr12 Well, Lockport is farther north than Albany, so it qualifies under that standard.
If you think putting up signs declaring “This is a Gun Free Zone” will keep school children safer than facial recognition technology, you’re tragically mistaken. Do you want to risk your child’s life to find out?
3
This is disgusting.
3
There is a chronic ongoing struggle to preserve individual liberty against those who claim safety and security as an alibi to erode our civil rights. For those of us paying attention, we know another war was also declared on 9/11/2001. The war on individual liberty, and it is being fought right here on the streets of America. While many people disagree on the truthfulness of the official 911 story, most people agree that the fear created by those attacks has been exploited and used as an alibi to erode our constitutionally protected individual rights. We are told ad nauseam that we must sacrifice liberty for security, and that our military personnel are fighting and dying to protect our freedom in countries thousands of miles away. Yet, at home American citizens are being harassed, arrested and treated like terrorist for simply exercising our civil liberties. It is easy to claim your rights when there is no danger in doing so. Our rights only truly count when people are willing to assert those rights under threat and under duress.
18
I suspect that in smaller schools, the teachers can identify each student by appearance, and they can also identify each other and the other people who are supposed to be in school. If they see somebody they don't recognize, then they might take some sort of action.
There you go, facial recognition technology!
8
You know what might also prevent school shootings? Sensible gun regulations.
85
@Anon we have the SAFE act in New York State.
Everyone should go on strike to stop this. Are we truly a free country or a sneaky version of Russia, china and other autocratic systems. If my kids were young and had to go to school under these surveillance tactics they would be home schooled. This world is truly becoming a cage for its citizens
10
This is bad news for everyone and we must stop this madness now. It's an ongoing effort to make face recognition "normal" so we won't riot when the abuse of what they do comes out. There is no need for this and saying "the children" to continue to attack our privacy
5
@joe Hall According to Our Government: Spying & Violence of Any Kind is Unacceptable in our Society... Unless the Violence & Spying is Perpetrated by the Government!
When a State focuses on all children, victimizing their rights to privacy because they can't defend themselves, we are now a very sick nation.
8
Like the lyrics of a song sing;
"Paranoia, the Destroyer".
1
Another NYT article using quoting a few statistics and concluding racial bias. "25% of suspended students were black but the student population was only 12% black". It must be racism, right? How about some information regarding the reasons for the suspensions? Student comments regarding conduct? It may be only a few repeat offenders. Would a similar quote "74% of NBA players are black, and only 1.8% are Hispanic" prove discrimination?
7
@Donna Gray
Must be, since the percentage of participation in crime or other activities must match the ethnic proportions of the population.
1
Until the United States dismantles institutional racism we must fight tooth and nail against further police in our schools.
2
Facial recognition seems to work very well on the British crime shows I watch. It helps to solve many crimes, and the British people are used to their CCTV being everywhere. The innocent go about their business.
4
@HoneyBee, we should also emphasize that television shows demonstrate that what does NOT work well are human eye-witnesses. They repeatedly make entirely inaccurate identification as memory if fickle and open to sub-conscious emotional desire to help. Thank god, facial recognition is become more prominent Though thousands of human recognition errors have sent thousands of innocents to jail (most cleared through another technology protested on these pages...DNA analysis)....we have yet to see a single case of facial recognition lead to a false conviction. Again, NOT ONE CASE! Why, because it is just a tool, most often providing a lead to more solid evidence against the suspect. We need more reliable tools and less injustices from eye witnesses.
1
Ummm... you know that’s tv and it’s not real life, right?
6
@HoneyBee In a free society, all humans have a right to travel freely without being stopped and forced to “show their papers.” If history has taught us anything, it is that handing over one tiny bit of your rights to the state will inevitably result in the loss of even more rights.
2
The idea that this system could prevent school shootings is absurd. By the time the data gets to law enforcement, and they respond, the damage will have been done. Instead of obliterating people's privacy, the money would be better spent on actual education and mental health for adolescents. That a small town in the hinterlands like Lockport should be using this technology, pretending it makes kids safe. is ridiculous. It just makes school administrators feel powerful and they can pretend they've adequately addressed the problem of school shooters.
48
I am not a fan of this as it can be abused too easily. The only thing that would make this worse is it was a system exported by China and implemented by Huawei. Is this plan based on the Uighur camps?
Schools are not prisons.
There has to be a better way that monitoring students inside a school. Now even minor issues are things that will not be overlooked.
13
We must STOP all forms of invasion of privacy, in all facets of our lives. This particular example is expensive and will not prove to be a productivity saver or make the schools safer. In . fact it will require more monitoring, dismissal of false positives and REDUCE the effectiveness of the safety professionals by creating a false sense of security through technology.
The best way to create safe communities of any type is to "know your neighbors" and create open and ongoing dialogue.
10
If nothing else, this is a fantastic way to get children prepared for the school-to-prison pipeline.
Of all the things schools so desperately need, like text books, heat, more teachers, the criminalization of attendance is not high on that list.
40
@Caitlin Aside from conditioning children to grow up in a police state, this move is terrible for other reasons as well. Research shows that police officers in schools create an environment that funnels children into the criminal justice system at a young age.
9
@Nick
I know. It's also going to disproportionately affect Black and brown students. Everyone knows this by now, but at this point we have to assume that is by design, and not a flaw of the AI.
6
Since when did school kids have any privacy? Things must have changed greatly since my school days.
5
@Willy The Quake You must be the same guy that doesn't care about your right to privacy because you have nothing to hide. Probably don't care about free speech either, because you have nothing to say.
2
@Nick: No, just someone who went to school and recalls it. Did and do you?
1
What better place to apply AI techniques than in the protection of our children.
In recent years chools have become very dangerously places, so anything that can be done to make them safer should be done.
According to a recent survey, 97.6% of criminals were against surveillance cameras and the use of AI to identify perpetrators of crimes. Similarly, in the late 1800s and early 1900s surveys of criminals were undertaken and 96.8% of them were against the use of fingerprints to identify perpetrators of crimes.
I am pretty sure a huge majority of law-abiding Americans support any techniques, including surveillance cameras and AI, that will make their lives safer, reduce crimes and apprehend criminals in general and those who threaten children in particular.
The people who have to fear surveillance cameras and AI identification are those involved in illicit behavior.
4
@Mon Ray "The people who have to fear surveillance cameras and AI identification are those involved in illicit behavior." That is almost word-for-word the official explanation that the Chinese government uses to maintain surveillance over 1.4 BILLION people. Do you really want to be China? I certainly do not.
52
@Mon Ray
Did you not read that it isn't a reliable identification tool?
2
@Mon Ray Go play elsewhere the subject of freedom is to advanced for you. “A nation of sheep will soon have a government of wolves.”–Edward R Murrow
7
Given that most every child has an online presence
that they or their parents voluntarily created and prominently publish photos of themselves, I don't think this is as troubling a situation for the school aged students as it is for adults subject to this technology.
For every generation prior to the early 2000s we had the presumption of privacy if we chose and had moderate protection from the invasion of said rights. The idea of the government or their agents, let alone lesser players creating dossiers on ordinary individuals was beyond the law at one time and now it's the norm.
I don't believe this is good tech, but considering the outsized emphasis placed on child safety from events, and the even more outsized emphasis our society places on social networking, it become a moot point to argue against it.
4
Well good luck with this.
Districts are perpetually short of funds and cannot compete At All for top IT talent. So they get second or third tier workers. Obvious, preventable mistakes will happen.
16
Remember when school districts sold students’ health to soda companies, installing machines everywhere? And food processors own the cafeterias so that Districts don’t have to pay for the labor and benefits for people who would cook food from scratch. So now society has to pay for these people’s health problems - all of their lives.
Districts live on tight budgets. It will be too tempting to sell this data (they will call it something else) for their desperately needed operating funds.
27
With all due respect to the civil liberty activists that have chosen facial recognition for their line in the sand, the core arguments here differ little from NRA talking points. It is all about amorphous "unintended consequences" and "slippery slopes" that they can never actually spell out. In the end, this is about finding a cause to fill ones day or donor queue. The vast majority of educated Americans want to see their children in public places protected from known threats. They already wear a badge every day with their photos on them and there is absolutely no loss in their personal privacy to have their face scanned as they walk in the building each day.
5
@DoctorRPP Of course anyone can purchase a $20 'lens' mask with free one day delivery to get around being recognized by this software. Perhaps a murderous psychopath wouldn't think to do that in their four months of pre-planning, but seems unlikely. There will be a constant struggling finding the right balance of safety and privacy, but for many of us, this is not only ineffective, but clearly across the line.
4
@DoctorRPP The world is not a safe place and that truly terrible things can happen when you least expect it. But none of this makes a police state acceptable. The real problem is that government at all levels are dissolving our freedoms on a daily basis.
2
@Smith, I think law enforcement and concerned citizens would celebrate the day law breakers are forced to wear masks when they enter public spaces. It would make prevention and investigation of crimes that much easier.
That $1.4 million could have been used to hire more personnel to work with the students. More qualified teachers and counselors are needed in all schools. Professional development to help teacher and administrators to cope with the many issues students are facing would be where money can be better spent. Most schools are lacking in funding for libraries and technology updates as well as trained nursing staff. Check out the funding for these items in Lockport. What is the class teacher to student ratio? Are there qualified librarians, IT personnel, school nurses, school psychologists, and counselors available to all students? Is there outreach to the community? Money spent on hardware, software, and staff to monitor things like facial recognition is perhaps one of the reasons the public questions where their taxes are being spent. And the fact that the students seem to have little knowledge of what is going to affect them is appalling. Shame on Lockport!
96
@joleigh kirkland Many of the teachers in most US public schools are not really "qualified". What makes you think many, if not all, school districts could find more "qualified teachers"?
1
@Jeff In New York State, teachers in public schools must be certified or taking a requisite number of approved college courses each term to obtain certification. Certification is by subject and grade areas.
13
@Jeff
Sorry, but without further documentation your claim about "unqualified" teachers being the norm must be considered completely bogus. Perhaps you could try not making things up.
15
What better place to apply AI techniques than in the protection of our children.
In recent years chools have become very dangerously places, so anything that can be done to make them safer should be done.
According to a recent survey, 97.6% of criminals were against surveillance cameras and the use of AI to identify perpetrators of crimes. Similarly, in the late 1800s and early 1900s surveys of criminals were undertaken and 96.8% of them were against the use of fingerprints to identify perpetrators of crimes.
I am pretty sure a huge majority of law-abiding Americans support any techniques, including surveillance cameras and AI, that will make their lives safer, reduce crimes and apprehend criminals in general and those who threaten children in particular.
The only people who have to fear surveillance cameras and AI identification are those involved in illicit behavior.
8
There are so many examples of errors and abuse of personal information I cannot agree with the statement that only those guilty of illicit behavior need worry.
My own school had an incident where a state trooper stood outside the dorm room of a student whose license plate partially matched that of a hit and run driver’s. He finally had to leave school because of it and he was innocent. From that point our school instituted several protocols to protect student privacy including encryption of data.
33
@Doug Stone, a great argument in support of more use of technology. These type of mistakes humans make reading license plates is another clear reason we need technology to unobtrusively provide the first clues of a possible threat and only then, objective administrators will make the right call for any officer action. No more humans first reactors making the call under the influence of adrenaline and late night boredom.
2
@Mon Ray So you hate the Constitution? Duly noted. Perhaps you should move somewhere that has laws and ideals more in tune with yours? I hear North Korea and Iran are both nice this time of year. "People who give up freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both". Ben Franklin
2
It's nice to know you have Freedom of the Press, which I adore, but I don't have freedom of speech. Aren't we humans rather odd?
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@PATRICK Ah, but your 2nd Amendment rights are being defended perfectly.
Well, now that they've got the wedge in, you know they'll just keep pressing for that student database.
The public easily buys in when they are told, "Don't worry, your children will be safer. We won't record their faces, just scan for outside intruders, no big deal..." and once the parents relax and accept intrusive technology in the school, behind the scenes the administrators will be enacting tighter controls, greater surveillance and of course, adding students to a so called "watch list," which does look to be the goal.
The problem with watch lists, is that people placed on them often aren't told that they are being subject to greater scrutiny. Being on a watch list WOULD INDEED change people's perceptions to the point where any action could be treated with suspicion, which in turn can affect the targeted person's behavior as they will sense somehow they are being treated differently, but not understand how or why.
A person with mental illness or who is in a bad family environment, particularly a child, whose communication skills aren't fully developed, may be treated like a potential criminal, when what they really might need is love and acceptance. Feeling rejected, they may act out more, not less.
On the flip side, more conniving people might learn to evade this system until they are ready to commit atrocities.
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Such tech wouldn’t prevent a single school shooting. By the time the face and/or gun are detected, a human alerted and a decision, made blood will be spilled in the halls. This is just another step towards a surveillance state in the name of “safety.”
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Such tech won't lead to a single loss of privacy from students already photographed to attend public schools. Look, I also can make Donald Trump proclamations. Too bad, we lost the ability to objectively assess new policies instead of relying on emotive reactions and terse rhetoric.
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@DoctorRPP You really believe not a single school computer would ever be hacked or have its data mined in some manner? Reality shows you to be wrong because computers are hacked every hour of every day. Schools have much more data on your child than a picture of their face. They have their address, your contact information, vaccination records, grades, subjects studied, standardized test scores...the list goes on and on. This is a huge risk to privacy with little to nothing to gain.
I'll add that my child attends an urban public school with plenty of issues. None of these would be solved with AI. More adults in the halls and higher teacher:student ratio are much better solutions.
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Thanks for posting the NRA talking points, I got up late today and was not able to cover the Time this morning.
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