7 ms·

Summer camps use facial recognition so parents can watch from home

61 points by wallflower 7y ago

hindsightbias 7y ago
“When a camper isn't smiling or is on the outside of a big group shot, counselors said they know to expect a phone call from back home. Liz Young, a longtime camp director now helping oversee two camps on the coast of New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, said she now fields as many concerned-parents calls in two hours as she used to get all month - mostly from parents asking about how their kids look on camera, or whether they're being photographed” So they now remind the kids their parents are watching, so they’ll smile. Time for a new era a camp movies. Not sure if it would be a comedy, black mirror or horror movie.
- staticautomatic 7y ago
  This is completely fucking insane. I'd like to say, "As a former camp counselor, I think this is completely fucking insane" but whatever authority I might have on the subject has nothing to do with it.
  - SN76477 7y ago
    The social pressure on a fully surveilled society will be a mess.
- zepto 7y ago
  I don’t know why people find black mirror so interesting- isn’t it just a humdrum depiction of how things are these days?
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    You may be more tuned in to some of the issues that it's calling attention to than the typical viewer.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    As a black mirror fan I’d object to it being boring. If anything the way things are these days is boring and BM adds a bit of edge to it to bring more attention to “what if”.
- userbinator 7y ago
  or is on the outside of a big group shot By definition, someone is always "on the outside".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nlawalker 7y ago
Show the pictures to the kids daily and let them choose which pictures get sent home, and this is a win for everyone.
misnome 7y ago
This is utterly terrifying. Maybe the kids are used to this level of obsessive control? I’m not sure if this sounds more damaging for the kids or for the parents. This also sounds only a _really_ small step away from just having cameras everywhere that the parents can watch 24/7. I’d really like to hear a persuasive argument as to why this is at all reasonable.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  One company sells the camp facial recognition software to stream the kids and another company sells the parents emotion and danger recognition AI software to scan the video stream and signals the parents if something seems "wrong". And yeah, nightmarish. "Welcome Panopticamp , where everyone is happy or else!"
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >I’d really like to hear a persuasive argument as to why this is at all reasonable. Put yourself in the shoes of some jerk from a wealthy suburb. For your kids entire life they have been under the supervision of one of the following: You Your spouse A babysitter hired by you A fellow parent (e.g. soccer coach) A teacher Who are camps staffed primarily by? A bunch of 18 and 19yos. Sending them to a summer camp is downright terrifying. What if they drown. What if they break an arm. What if, what if, what if.... Parents need to grow a pair and let the damn kid out of their sight and under the supervision of someone whom they cannot query for information about how their kid is doing. This facial recognition BS is replacing that feedback. Personally, I think it's all crap but I understand why some people like it.
  - mbrumlow 7y ago
    Until you talk to throwaway07Ju19...
- lowdose 7y ago
  This is next level helicopter parenting in action. Kids these days are twice the age of millennials when they start roaming their surrounding environment without supervision. When I grew up we had a comedy movie called the Truman Show and we were actually laughing about a similar situation. This is guaranteed to set up a generation for failure if kids are never exposed to any risk taking activities.
ummonk 7y ago
I well and truly hope the Gel-Mann effect applies here and this is being exaggerated or misreported. Cause what is described here is absolutely insane.
alistairSH 7y ago
I don't get it. What drives parents to this level of micro-management of their kids? I'm a father, in my mid-40s, and my son just turned 25. So, I definitely parented though the first wave of helicopter parents. I just don't get it. Sending my son out on his bike to roam free was the best part of the day for all of us. And summer camp was a welcome break from the tedium of suburban life - for all of us. He got to run around outside without concern that we were watching; we got some time to catch up on our marriage or whatever else needed tending. And any time we tried to force control his life, it created more problems than it solved. We always had more success just letting him do his thing and trusting that he'd mostly do the right thing (he stumbled a few times, but most of us have).
- novok 7y ago
  I think there always has been an over anxious section of humanity, but now they are enabled by technology and society around them to be that anxious.
  - liability 7y ago
    I'd say they should chill out and smoke a blunt, but that would probably make them paranoid as well as anxious. What an awful way to go through life, is there nothing that can be done for them?
    - novok 7y ago
      Anxiety & panic attacks being a common mental illness isn't a high statistic for no reason, and it tends to skew more female.
jgalt212 7y ago
Obsessed parent or not, the facial recognition is a huge time saver. Some of these camps post hundreds of pictures a day.
winchling 7y ago
Parents: hanging out with your children is reasonably-priced and can actually be fun. Non-parents: starting a family is fun and can actually be reasonably-priced.
p4bl0 7y ago
This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I really think some technologies should simply not be developed. Like it or not, engineers have a social responsibility, and this they should be able to refuse to make certain types of products. In other fields (biology and medicine for example), there is a notion of ethics. We need that too.
- tdxgx 7y ago
  Social responsibility is great and all, until you are struggling to feed your kids. Then it goes out the window. In a country of 300 million, I'm sure someone would be willing to develop it
throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
About 36 years ago I was abused by two camp counselors in one summer. One of them fractured my sternum when he punched me after I mouthed off. I still have the bony ridge and slightly deformed pectoral. But the other did much worse leaving me with lifelong emotional issues. If you asked pre-teen me how I would deal with a grown man determined to abuse me, I would have talked tough. But when that time came, I froze like a rabbit in the presence of a coiled python. Over the course of my life when other victims shared their story with me, I am always reminded how shockingly easy it is to abuse a child. For the record, one of them ended the abuse when she gathered the strength to simply whimper the word "no". For all the confused commenters that wonder why we have this cameras-everywhere trend, it is because there are a multitude of adults like me with their secret abuse stories. There just doesn't seem to be competing ideas on how to prevent child abuse. At the very least if you are a dad, tell your child this, "if an adult harms you, I know it will be difficult but you must tell me. I'll probably get angry at first but I promise I'll calm down and I won't do anything rash, etc.". I just assumed my dad would lose his temper and either wind up in the hospital, jail, or both. But then again given the stigma of being an abused boy I probably still wouldn't talk which appears to be the norm and why it is so widespread.
- crazydoggers 7y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing this. As hard as it is, we all need more brave voices like this, and we as a society should be embracing those who come forward.
- WA 7y ago
  Sorry to hear that, but gotta ask: Do you think a camera would’ve prevented the abuse? Or maybe would it have happened somewhere out of view of a camera?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - golergka 7y ago
    Nobody can be certain that it would completely prevent something like that, and world doesn't deal with absolute. However, it would make it harder to perpetrate, make potential abuser more fearful, and, on average, would make it much less probable, this I'm sure of.
zaroth 7y ago
This is entirely overblown. Several camps my kids have gone to use Bunk1 to post pictures of what the kids are up to. Sometimes there are several hundred photos (for a large camp they may have a full-time photographer who is also putting together yearbooks and social media). The software can flag which photos are more likely to have your child in them. It saves a lot of scrolling. That is all. “Oh look, there she is! Cool.” There is no way I’m calling the camp unless I see blood streaming down my kids face. I have never called the camp except for medical issues. Mostly the pictures make me jealous of all the cool activities they get to do. They give a topic I can mention in the bunk notes (instead of mailing a letter you write a message and they print it and hand it out, and your child can write a reply which gets scanned in and emailed back the next day.)
sverige 7y ago
The first time I got high was when a camp counselor shared a joint with my friend and me. There were no photos, and no parents ever knew. Everything was just fine that way, too. Who knows what my parents and siblings were up to while I was gone. It was such a relief to get away from my whole family for a week when I was a teenager. That was in the 70s. I would have gone nuts if I'd been raised by the helicopter parents of the 90s who were always on the verge of calling social services on my wife and me because we didn't always supervise her every waking moment. Hell, sometimes we didn't know where she was when she was a teen. And the psychotic version of obsessively intrusive cyber-stalking parents that exist now makes me not want to know young parents.
shpx 7y ago
The parents have to set up automated cameras in their house and car and ask their employer to set some up in their workplace as well. Then let the kids get automated messages with the photos. It would only be fair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
stiray 7y ago
This comes to my mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent The first results of this method of parenting are comming in, and I will tell you only the most hilarious result: some guy, 25 or something, came to a job interview with his mother (and I am not joking)
- WA 7y ago
  The media reporting about helicopter parents might be way out of proportion: https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_the_helicopter_parent_the_pernicious_cultural_biases_behind_a_collegiate_urban_legend/ https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_...
  - stiray 7y ago
    Maybe, but this event happened in my company. It is not from the media.
sambull 7y ago
Getting kids ready for always being under surveillance in an authoritarian society.
grawprog 7y ago
Sounds like a good way to build up a large accurate database of children's faces with matching expressions.

61 points by wallflower 7y ago

“When a camper isn't smiling or is on the outside of a big group shot, counselors said they know to expect a phone call from back home. Liz Young, a longtime camp director now helping oversee two camps on the coast of New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, said she now fields as many concerned-parents calls in two hours as she used to get all month - mostly from parents asking about how their kids look on camera, or whether they're being photographed” So they now remind the kids their parents are watching, so they’ll smile. Time for a new era a camp movies. Not sure if it would be a comedy, black mirror or horror movie.

staticautomatic 7y ago
This is completely fucking insane. I'd like to say, "As a former camp counselor, I think this is completely fucking insane" but whatever authority I might have on the subject has nothing to do with it.
- SN76477 7y ago
  The social pressure on a fully surveilled society will be a mess.
zepto 7y ago
I don’t know why people find black mirror so interesting- isn’t it just a humdrum depiction of how things are these days?
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  You may be more tuned in to some of the issues that it's calling attention to than the typical viewer.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  As a black mirror fan I’d object to it being boring. If anything the way things are these days is boring and BM adds a bit of edge to it to bring more attention to “what if”.
userbinator 7y ago
or is on the outside of a big group shot By definition, someone is always "on the outside".
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

nlawalker 7y ago

Show the pictures to the kids daily and let them choose which pictures get sent home, and this is a win for everyone.

misnome 7y ago

This is utterly terrifying. Maybe the kids are used to this level of obsessive control? I’m not sure if this sounds more damaging for the kids or for the parents. This also sounds only a _really_ small step away from just having cameras everywhere that the parents can watch 24/7. I’d really like to hear a persuasive argument as to why this is at all reasonable.

joe_the_user 7y ago
One company sells the camp facial recognition software to stream the kids and another company sells the parents emotion and danger recognition AI software to scan the video stream and signals the parents if something seems "wrong". And yeah, nightmarish. "Welcome Panopticamp , where everyone is happy or else!"
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>I’d really like to hear a persuasive argument as to why this is at all reasonable. Put yourself in the shoes of some jerk from a wealthy suburb. For your kids entire life they have been under the supervision of one of the following: You Your spouse A babysitter hired by you A fellow parent (e.g. soccer coach) A teacher Who are camps staffed primarily by? A bunch of 18 and 19yos. Sending them to a summer camp is downright terrifying. What if they drown. What if they break an arm. What if, what if, what if.... Parents need to grow a pair and let the damn kid out of their sight and under the supervision of someone whom they cannot query for information about how their kid is doing. This facial recognition BS is replacing that feedback. Personally, I think it's all crap but I understand why some people like it.
- mbrumlow 7y ago
  Until you talk to throwaway07Ju19...
lowdose 7y ago
This is next level helicopter parenting in action. Kids these days are twice the age of millennials when they start roaming their surrounding environment without supervision. When I grew up we had a comedy movie called the Truman Show and we were actually laughing about a similar situation. This is guaranteed to set up a generation for failure if kids are never exposed to any risk taking activities.

ummonk 7y ago

I well and truly hope the Gel-Mann effect applies here and this is being exaggerated or misreported. Cause what is described here is absolutely insane.

alistairSH 7y ago

I don't get it. What drives parents to this level of micro-management of their kids? I'm a father, in my mid-40s, and my son just turned 25. So, I definitely parented though the first wave of helicopter parents. I just don't get it. Sending my son out on his bike to roam free was the best part of the day for all of us. And summer camp was a welcome break from the tedium of suburban life - for all of us. He got to run around outside without concern that we were watching; we got some time to catch up on our marriage or whatever else needed tending. And any time we tried to force control his life, it created more problems than it solved. We always had more success just letting him do his thing and trusting that he'd mostly do the right thing (he stumbled a few times, but most of us have).

novok 7y ago
I think there always has been an over anxious section of humanity, but now they are enabled by technology and society around them to be that anxious.
- liability 7y ago
  I'd say they should chill out and smoke a blunt, but that would probably make them paranoid as well as anxious. What an awful way to go through life, is there nothing that can be done for them?
  - novok 7y ago
    Anxiety & panic attacks being a common mental illness isn't a high statistic for no reason, and it tends to skew more female.

jgalt212 7y ago

Obsessed parent or not, the facial recognition is a huge time saver. Some of these camps post hundreds of pictures a day.

winchling 7y ago

Parents: hanging out with your children is reasonably-priced and can actually be fun. Non-parents: starting a family is fun and can actually be reasonably-priced.

p4bl0 7y ago

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I really think some technologies should simply not be developed. Like it or not, engineers have a social responsibility, and this they should be able to refuse to make certain types of products. In other fields (biology and medicine for example), there is a notion of ethics. We need that too.

tdxgx 7y ago
Social responsibility is great and all, until you are struggling to feed your kids. Then it goes out the window. In a country of 300 million, I'm sure someone would be willing to develop it

throwaway07Ju19 7y ago

About 36 years ago I was abused by two camp counselors in one summer. One of them fractured my sternum when he punched me after I mouthed off. I still have the bony ridge and slightly deformed pectoral. But the other did much worse leaving me with lifelong emotional issues. If you asked pre-teen me how I would deal with a grown man determined to abuse me, I would have talked tough. But when that time came, I froze like a rabbit in the presence of a coiled python. Over the course of my life when other victims shared their story with me, I am always reminded how shockingly easy it is to abuse a child. For the record, one of them ended the abuse when she gathered the strength to simply whimper the word "no". For all the confused commenters that wonder why we have this cameras-everywhere trend, it is because there are a multitude of adults like me with their secret abuse stories. There just doesn't seem to be competing ideas on how to prevent child abuse. At the very least if you are a dad, tell your child this, "if an adult harms you, I know it will be difficult but you must tell me. I'll probably get angry at first but I promise I'll calm down and I won't do anything rash, etc.". I just assumed my dad would lose his temper and either wind up in the hospital, jail, or both. But then again given the stigma of being an abused boy I probably still wouldn't talk which appears to be the norm and why it is so widespread.

crazydoggers 7y ago
Thank you so much for sharing this. As hard as it is, we all need more brave voices like this, and we as a society should be embracing those who come forward.
WA 7y ago
Sorry to hear that, but gotta ask: Do you think a camera would’ve prevented the abuse? Or maybe would it have happened somewhere out of view of a camera?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- golergka 7y ago
  Nobody can be certain that it would completely prevent something like that, and world doesn't deal with absolute. However, it would make it harder to perpetrate, make potential abuser more fearful, and, on average, would make it much less probable, this I'm sure of.

zaroth 7y ago

This is entirely overblown. Several camps my kids have gone to use Bunk1 to post pictures of what the kids are up to. Sometimes there are several hundred photos (for a large camp they may have a full-time photographer who is also putting together yearbooks and social media). The software can flag which photos are more likely to have your child in them. It saves a lot of scrolling. That is all. “Oh look, there she is! Cool.” There is no way I’m calling the camp unless I see blood streaming down my kids face. I have never called the camp except for medical issues. Mostly the pictures make me jealous of all the cool activities they get to do. They give a topic I can mention in the bunk notes (instead of mailing a letter you write a message and they print it and hand it out, and your child can write a reply which gets scanned in and emailed back the next day.)

sverige 7y ago

The first time I got high was when a camp counselor shared a joint with my friend and me. There were no photos, and no parents ever knew. Everything was just fine that way, too. Who knows what my parents and siblings were up to while I was gone. It was such a relief to get away from my whole family for a week when I was a teenager. That was in the 70s. I would have gone nuts if I'd been raised by the helicopter parents of the 90s who were always on the verge of calling social services on my wife and me because we didn't always supervise her every waking moment. Hell, sometimes we didn't know where she was when she was a teen. And the psychotic version of obsessively intrusive cyber-stalking parents that exist now makes me not want to know young parents.

shpx 7y ago

The parents have to set up automated cameras in their house and car and ask their employer to set some up in their workplace as well. Then let the kids get automated messages with the photos. It would only be fair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

stiray 7y ago

This comes to my mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent The first results of this method of parenting are comming in, and I will tell you only the most hilarious result: some guy, 25 or something, came to a job interview with his mother (and I am not joking)

WA 7y ago
The media reporting about helicopter parents might be way out of proportion: https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_the_helicopter_parent_the_pernicious_cultural_biases_behind_a_collegiate_urban_legend/ https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_...
- stiray 7y ago
  Maybe, but this event happened in my company. It is not from the media.

sambull 7y ago

Getting kids ready for always being under surveillance in an authoritarian society.

grawprog 7y ago

Sounds like a good way to build up a large accurate database of children's faces with matching expressions.