Facial Recognition Moves Into a New Front: Schools

“Subjecting 5-year-olds to this technology will not make anyone safer, and we can’t allow invasive surveillance to become the norm in our public spaces,” said Stefanie Coyle, education counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Reminding people of their greatest fears is a disappointing tactic, meant to distract from the fact that this product is discriminatory, unethical and not secure.”

The debate in Lockport has unfolded over nearly two years. The school district initially announced its plans to install a facial recognition security system, called Aegis, in March 2018. The district spent $1.4 million, with money it had been awarded by the state, to install the technology across 300 cameras.

But when administrators wanted to do a test run last May, the State Education Department told them to hold off, partly in response to mounting public concerns over student privacy. The state wanted Lockport to make sure that students’ data would be properly protected, and demanded a policy that would forbid the use of student data, including their photos.

By June, Lockport officials said they had adjusted their policies, and they began testing parts of the system. In late November, the State Education Department said the district’s revised policy addressed its concerns. In January, the school board unanimously approved the latest policy revision.

When the system is on, Mr. LiPuma said, the software looks at the faces captured by the hundreds of cameras and calculates whether those faces match a “persons of interest” list made by school administrators.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/business/facial-recognition-schools.html?emc=rss&partner=rss