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A NY School District Defies State, Plans To Proceed With Facial Recognition Test
- grecy 7y agoI look forward to hordes of teenagers pushing back against this - wearing hats, burkas, sunglasses, excessive makeup etc. etc. At least, I sure hope they will.
- whatshisface 7y agoIt's already against the rules to cover your face in many schools. Besides, if the system can't recognize you, you will be marked as absent - so the punishment for defeating the surveillance system is the same as the punishment for breaking the rule it's intended to enforce. Those teenagers are dependent on the civic involvement of adults, they can't save themselves.
- pjmorris 7y agoIf the system is subject to false positives, students will figure out a way to exploit that, e.g. marked as present when absent via 'masks', Mission Impossible-style.
- chronic372033 7y ago> If the system is subject to false positives, students will figure out a way to exploit that, e.g. marked as present when absent via 'masks', Mission Impossible-style. I can assure you, the teams of PhDs from Stanford and MIT will address those cases. Just like how Google knows if you're clicking random ads.
- pjmorris 7y agoI assure you that teams of PhDs have been working on it for years, same as with, e.g. cryptography. It's just a hard problem [0]. [0] https://cyber.harvard.edu/cybersecurity/Why_Information_Security_is_Hard https://cyber.harvard.edu/cybersecurity/Why_Information_Secu...
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- jdsully 7y agoIn the 90s/2000s we were taunted with a nefarious “permanent record” that recorded all our evil deeds. Do they still use that on students? It even came up in a few Simpson’s episodes. Somehow I haven’t seen anyone actually be negatively affected by this supposed record.
- beenBoutIT 7y ago'Internet' replaced the permanent record' and now kids who act up enough to get news coverage end up with a permanent record of whatever they did.
- jdsully 7y agoOne minor difference: The permanent record was an official document. Twitter mobbing is a failing of our private citizens.
- saagarjha 7y agoThey will, but the school will just make policies outlawing clothing that covers facial features (or may have some already).
- magduf 7y agoIf they outlaw burqas, they can face lawsuits over religious freedom.
- saagarjha 7y agoNot everyone uses burqas, and trying to argue for religious freedom when you're using headwear in bad faith is not a particularly good idea.
- jahewson 7y agoPerhaps so but there’s no legal protection when wearing such clothing for non-religious reasons, as would clearly be the case here.
- r00fus 7y agoWhat do you mean by non-religious reason? What about non-Christian holidays that are school days? Is that non-religious? Has this been decided in jurisprudence?
- okusername 7y agoBurqas are already outlawed in some parts of europe, it's dehumanizing and extremists symbol. Also by that ideology, women would not go to school anyways.
- heraclius 7y agoMany people wearing burqas—and perhaps most—indeed are the victims of such an ideology. But many aren’t, and so it is sensible to be clear that the burqa can be but isn't necessarily such a symbol.
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- daodedickinson 7y agoGood gravy. I'd go into hiding if there was anywhere left to go. Wish I was religious so I could try to join a monestary.
- spraak 7y agoIf you're under 25 you could join the Kaua'i Hindu Monastery. https://www.himalayanacademy.com/livespiritually/monastic-life/how-to https://www.himalayanacademy.com/livespiritually/monastic-li...
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoJust become a pastafarian. You can make up your own creed as you go.
- driverdan 7y agoYou can buy a plot of land in the middle of nowhere for $500. Have fun!
- paulvs 7y agoSlightly confusing how although the article's opening paragraph currently says "...an explicit order" from the state education department, it goes on to quote it later where it can be seen to be just a recommendation.
- prisonBYdefault 7y agoSuicide is going to become a fantastically destructive problem in the near future.
- radcon 7y agoI'm so glad I grew up during a time when you didn't have to worry about every single second of your life potentially being captured on video and used for some nefarious purpose. I can't imagine being a kid in this type of environment. Then again, many of the kids who will be unwillingly subjected to this probably aren't informed enough to understand the potential long-term consequences of pervasive surveillance, which makes it all the more evil. It's appalling that they spent $1.4 million (so far) on this rather than putting the money towards more useful things like teacher salaries or after-school programs. Maybe if they improved the overall school experience they wouldn't need to monitor the kids like prisoners?
- ErikVandeWater 7y agoPaul Graham has an essay on how (US) school is mostly used as a prison
- manfredo 7y ago"Mostly used as a prison" is a mischaracterization of that essay. The paper identified analogues between prison social behavior and school social behavior, and hypothesized that this shows that these patterns happen whenever a population is put in a society without their choice.
- ErikVandeWater 7y agoHe literally call schools prisons: "What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates." Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- StudentStuff 7y agoPublic Schools force you to deal with a wide cross-section of society, especially compared to private schools (mainly mid to upper crust society) and colleges (people are there by choice, often after being part of the workforce and deciding to further themselves). In many ways K-12 schools are run like prisons, with administrators playing god and throwing fits when challenged about their petty actions, students trapped in an environment not of their choosing, and society enforcing this structure. I wish there were more diverse options for schooling, as I would've been much more interested in K-12 school had I been encouraged to dive into a subject, then asked to prove my knowledge, without the distraction of other subjects splitting my focus. College definitely offers much more flexibility in this regard, which has made for a much better experience.
- salawat 7y agoParents. The time has come to teach your chilluns the virtues of laser pointers, spray paint, and civil disobedience. It won't take long, I guarantee you.
- deogeo 7y agoThe stated aims of the system are easily covertly expanded (and there is ample history to indicate that will happen) to turn the school into a panopticon, building a social graph and personality profile of kids as they grow up. To me this looks like an openly hostile act.
- ErikVandeWater 7y agoIf the kids are allowed to know their "social scores" many of them will compete to get the lowest to be cool. I kind of hope the administrators make this mistake. It would give me great Schadenfreude.
- sys_64738 7y agoI thought only Communist China had social scores. Has it spread to the USA too?
- beenBoutIT 7y agoIf it allows the school to accurately identify the most promising students it's worth it. How many kids with potential fall through the cracks now?
- Bjartr 7y agoAll[1] of them. All the kids. They all have the potential for fulfilling lives that contribute to society. [1] Fine, almost all, there will be exceptions, but the goals of the education system should include making exceptions as rare as possible. At the very least I'll claim a belief that achieving a low enough rate of exceptions so as to make them negligible in practice.
- deogeo 7y agoSlightly better schools are worth this massive police state expansion? We could save many lives lost to crime each year if we forced everyone to wear ankle monitors all the time too - wouldn't that be even more worth it?
- rgrieselhuber 7y agoYet another reason to avoid public schools, if you can.
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- otakucode 7y agoBecause children and adolescents aren't people, they often have surveillance and control technologies tested on them. And when the surveillance and control technologies significantly increase school violence (can you name a school shooting at a school that didn't have cameras?), they conclude that more technology is needed to surveil and control. I imagine it's a booming business.
- gumby 7y agoI am reminded of the absurd threat in the film "Rock and Roll High School" that "This will go on your permanent record" Nowadays it will.
- quickben 7y agoA bit incomplete title then. They are also testing legal boundaries, population reaction, and few other things that are morally objectionable.
- walterbell 7y agoWe need to invent a category of property rights for the results of such testing against non-consenting populations. That would create an economic incentive for lawyers to do what they do best. We already have legal precedent for paying reparations for undisclosed tests against civilians.
- rb808 7y agoNo problems from me. NY schools already have a security guard on duty that watches everyone coming and going through the front door. Its not always easy job, anything that can help them would be great.
- LinuxBender 7y agoDid the parents approve the use of the photos by a 3rd party? Were the parents advised of the policies around data retention and data destruction? Will this data remain in the system after the children are adults?
- ilamont 7y agoLockport is an old factory town on the Erie Canal, not far from Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The population is about 20,000 people. North of the city is orchards and farmland, south are the outer suburbs of Buffalo. It's not a place known for high tech, nor is it known for high municipal spending. The backstory of how this came about would surely be interesting.
- souterrain 7y agoA plausible story is that Lockport is the county seat of Niagara County, NY, which has three land (bridge) crossings with Canada, and therefore has significant USCIS presence throughout the county. I can imagine a joint task force involving county law enforcement and USCIS. Most schools in NY State have armed police (“school resource officer”) present. They probably all go to the same sporting events, drink at the same pubs. Nothing like a refreshing beverage and discussing pervasive surveillance technology for the youth of America.
- debacle 7y agoLockport is not the county seat of Niagara County. It's a dilapidated, failing school district that's experiencing a huge amount of wealth flight as it's situated ~10 mins from two quite prominent school districts.
- souterrain 7y agoI won’t argue the challenges of the school district, but Lockport, NY is most certainly the county seat of Niagara County, NY. https://data.ny.gov/widgets/4xc7-bukh https://data.ny.gov/widgets/4xc7-bukh
- misiti3780 7y agoFun Fact: Chris Sacca is from Lockport and graduated from Lockport High School. Timothy McVeigh is also from there.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoWhy don't schools concentrate on education?