17-year-old gunman killed early in school started firing In May 2018, in a classroom at the art complex at Santa Fe High School, about 30 miles southeast of Houston.
He threatened fellow students and teachers for about 30 minutes before surrendering to police, killing 10 people and injuring 13 others, leaving the town of 13,000 in mourning.
Santa Fe Independent School District’s school board faces calls from parents to keep students safe after mass shooting Approved $2.1 million For security and building upgrades. This included the use of facial recognition technology that could alert authorities if school cameras detected someone prohibited from entering district property. The neighboring Texas City School District has hired a former intelligence official to provide security and security consulting. Facial recognition is also adopted.
It’s the same technology as New York. prohibited for use in schools It will begin in 2023 at the request of student privacy advocates and parents.
Security companies and some school districts have touted facial recognition as a powerful tool for preventing school shootings and saving lives, but they are trying to make facial recognition a powerful tool for preventing school shootings and saving lives. This is opposed to a movement of students, technologists, and civil rights activists who see it as a dystopian addition. school.
security sales
This summer, organization Online privacy advocacy group Fight for the Future holds demonstrations against school-based facial recognition in four states and Washington, D.C., to pressure U.S. Department of Education to formally ban the use of facial recognition At K-12 schools, one group has come together.
Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director and managing director of Fight for the Future, said facial recognition technology companies are monitoring whether students are wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasingly, the company says it is marketing its services to school districts as a way to track student attendance and attendance.
The expansion of facial recognition in schools is part of the “techno-solutionist” belief that technology is the solution to all problems, even though it is “clearly unnecessary,” she said. say.
“The costs of expanding the use of this technology far exceed the claimed benefits,” Seeley-George says. “In terms of the invasion of privacy, the chilling effect it can have, the potential for misidentifying students, and providing a clear path from student behavior to discipline and punishment in the school-to-prison pipeline. , the impact on students is too severe to take the risk. That’s why we believe that students, teachers, and staff should not be affected by this surveillance technology and should not be used at all. ”
Clarence Okoh, senior associate on privacy and technology at the Georgetown Law Center, said school monitoring companies tend to do marketing after school shootings.
The school surveillance industry makes the following estimates: Business worth $3.1 billion He added that an annual survey of teachers found that: More than 40 percent of students He had been contacted by law enforcement at least once as a result of the surveillance program.
Okoh said that surveillance of students, most commonly through programs that monitor what they type on school computers, in tandem with increased law enforcement, does not make students safer. states. Rather, its biggest impact is to send more students into the juvenile justice system.
“Every conversation about safety that starts with surveillance and enforcement starts in the wrong place,” Okoh said. “I graduated law school and sued the police for systematic rights violations, and the thing about police is that even if those resources don’t help, even if the resources don’t protect people’s rights, Even if they are infringing, they never want their resources taken away, so there is also a self-interest in surveillance technology.”
For example, technology created to detect e-cigarettes and e-cigarette smoke in school restrooms could end up with students being wanted and referred by school police officers. Coat specializing in electronic cigarettes for teens Charged with possession of nicotine.
So why is monitoring so important as a school safety measure?
“I think the short answer is that police are the most well-funded public service available in most communities,” Okoh said. [and] We rely on law enforcement because that’s all we have available: behavioral health care, strong after-school programs, other things that keep young people safe, arts programs, real social infrastructure for care. ”
Seeley-George said facial recognition in schools has changed since the Biden administration last year directed government agencies to develop policies on how artificial intelligence can and should be used within departments. The movement against the move is said to have gained momentum. This created an opportunity for the Department of Education to oppose facial recognition in schools, she said.
After the presidential election and the announcement of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump Candidate for Secretary of Education“There is still much work the State Board of Education can do, including following steps New York State has already taken to protect students from surveillance technologies such as facial recognition,” Seeley George wrote in an email to EdSurge. Ta.
Student privacy
Too often left out of conversations about the use of facial recognition in schools are the voices of students being surveilled, says Gia, a 17-year-old high school senior in New York. (Gia requested to be identified only by her first name because her parents are concerned about her privacy.)
This summer, Zia took part in protests against facial recognition technology organized by the youth-led nonprofit organization Encode Justice. Support privacy-centered policies About artificial intelligence.
The district has implemented facial recognition technology as a security measure against school shootings, but Zia said she feels its use is scaring students.
“I know a lot of people who go to public schools, where surveillance technology is already ramped up. Public schools in New York, especially in certain school districts, have a lot of metal detectors and high security. I think that’s creating a chilling effect,” says Jia. Express yourself. Rather, I feel like—I don’t say [like] Although it is a prison, there is very strict surveillance of people. I also think if you’re attending a school in a particular state where there’s a risk to your rights, like LGBTQ+ rights and free speech, that’s also very scary. ”
Through Encode Justice, Gia says she has met students who were misidentified by facial recognition technology at school and were sent to the principal’s office for disciplinary action.
As a Black and Asian girl, she tells stories of Black people being misidentified by facial recognition cameras, like when facial recognition software mistakenly led to her arrest. pregnant woman in detroit Carjackings make the use of technology feel dangerous.
Fight for the Future’s Seeley George similarly said students she spoke to were skeptical that facial recognition technology would improve safety.
“Especially kids who are now in school and have grown up with technology, they understand the negative effects of a lot of technology in their daily lives,” Seeley-George says. “It wasn’t that long ago that people were posting on social media without thinking that a potential employer would read your posts. And now it’s a fairly common practice. , students are wondering, “Is it possible that a future employer could access video footage of me walking through high school or staring boredly out the window in a classroom?” ”
Real world use case
After the Santa Fe High School shooting, parents packed school board meetings to demand that the district increase safety measures. Some lost children in the shooting, while others received farewell text messages from school officials. Approximately 1,400 students. (The parents of the 23-year-old suspect, who is currently being held in a state mental health facility, It was recently discovered that he was not responsible. Shooting in progress. )
The Santa Fe Independent School District purchased facial recognition technology the following year as part of a security overhaul. The technology was used for four years before the school district discontinued the service due to costs.
Santa Fe ISD Police Chief Ruben Espinoza said he would continue to use facial recognition technology if budgets allowed and would recommend it to all school districts.
The system worked by first allowing police departments to create “photo banks” of images of people who are prohibited from entering school district property. Facial recognition software could compare everyone’s face on camera to its photo bank and alert personnel like Espinoza if a prohibited person was detected.
Espinoza said the district’s practice of facial recognition technology must ensure that data is not stored beyond the time it takes for the system to determine whether a person is in the “photo bank.”
To understand the capabilities of the technology, Espinoza said a photo of himself as a 21-year-old new officer was used as one of the images used to test the system when it was first introduced. states that it was done.
“Even though it used a photo from 30 years ago, it still recognized me, so that’s how confident I am in the system,” he says. “Are you saying it’s perfect? No, but even when an alert occurs, there still needs to be a human element to review it. Have someone look at that alert and You must verify whether they are the same person and act accordingly.”
The facial recognition system pinged a few times, but had no role in responding to serious incidents on school grounds during the four years the district used it, Espinoza said. Still, he feels it is an important tool that has been “mischaracterized by our adversaries.”
“Have there been any major incidents involving weapons or anything like that? No, but these are all precautionary measures,” he says. “The best way to stop an active shooter incident is to be proactive and stop it in the first place. I can sit here and tell you how many incidents we’ve had where we’ve caught someone, but… , we cannot measure the number of crimes we actually prevent.”
Espinoza hopes the federal government will eventually help ease the financial burden of facial recognition by making subsidies available to pay for it.
Espinoza said the district couldn’t afford to replace all of its security cameras with ones with facial recognition, but chose strategic locations to install them. Still, the annual cost of licensing the technology, $1,800 per camera, ultimately put it out of reach for the district.
Santa Fe ISD Interim Technology Director Corey Click said he wishes facial recognition was more affordable for districts. “This is just a powerful tool that can be used at any level, whether it’s drug trafficking or vandalism.” It helps quickly identify something to solve a case or investigation. ”