Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Privacy Education Government

New York Bans Use of Facial Recognition In Schools Statewide (venturebeat.com) 29

The New York legislature today passed a moratorium banning the use of facial recognition and other forms of biometric identification in schools until 2022. VentureBeat reports: The bill, which has yet to be signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, appears to be the first in the nation to explicitly regulate the use of the technologies in schools and comes in response to the planned launch of facial recognition by the Lockport City School District. In January, Lockport Schools became one of the only U.S. school districts to adopt facial recognition in all of its K-12 buildings, which serve about 5,000 students. Proponents argued the $1.4 million system could keep students safe by enforcing watchlists and sending alerts when it detected someone dangerous (or otherwise unwanted). But critics said it could be used to surveil students and build a database of sensitive information about people's faces, which the school district then might struggle to keep secure.

While Lockport Schools' privacy policy states the watchlist wouldn't include students and the database would only cover non-students deemed a threat, including sex offenders or those banned by court order, the district's superintendent ultimately oversaw which individuals were added to the system. And it was reported earlier this month that the school board's president, John Linderman, couldn't guarantee that student photos would never be included in the system for disciplinary reasons.
"This is especially important as schools across the state begin to acknowledge the experiences of Black and Brown students being policed in schools and funneled into the school-to-prison pipeline," said Stefanie Coyle, Deputy Director of the Education Policy Center at the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Facial recognition is notoriously inaccurate especially when it comes to identifying women and people of color. For children, whose appearances change rapidly as they grow, biometric technologies' accuracy is even more questionable. False positives, where the wrong student is identified, can result in traumatic interactions with law enforcement, loss of class time, disciplinary action, and potentially a criminal record."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New York Bans Use of Facial Recognition In Schools Statewide

Comments Filter:
  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @05:11PM (#60320675)

    Schools simply do not have the sophistication required to keep such sensitive data secure.

    • Who does have the required sophistication?

    • School yearbooks have all this data already.
    • Schools simply do not have the sophistication required to keep such sensitive data secure.

      They already have photos of all the students.

      FR requires no additional data.

      It is just running an algorithm on the photos they already have.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Schools by law, due to the risk, should have facial recognition at all entry points for all adults. The law is dumb and pointless.

      • Schools by law, due to the risk, should have facial recognition at all entry points for all adults. The law is dumb and pointless.

        Facial recognition (and associated AI applications of it WRT tracking) are only getting "banned" for the duration of the riots and protests which are expected to last until soon after the election; the people arguing against it don't want "protesters" identified.

        After the protests are done, the same people will be arguing for extensive tracking via facial recognition because "we need to stop the racists and misogynists!"

      • Schools by law, due to the risk

        What risk? What has caused this risk to become a problem now but not before?

  • by tomkost ( 944194 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @05:11PM (#60320679)
    This a small but positive step in protecting privacy rights. Banning it for 1.5 years seems pretty weak though. Perhaps this was the only way to get the bill passed?
    • With everyone wearing masks, it may be empty posturing. Brownie points for a bill that get nothing done.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sounds more like this will not really be ready for 1.5 years anyways, so this nicely gives the appearance of doing something, but does not hurt commercial interests at all.

  • by kenh ( 9056 ) on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @05:18PM (#60320703) Homepage Journal

    Any word on schools maintains their own photo databases of every student and faculty member, and renewed each year?

    Schools have kept these pictures on file for years, integrate them into classroom management programs, and use the pictures for all manner of activities without oversight...

    • Any word on schools maintains their own photo databases of every student and faculty member, and renewed each year?

      Schools have kept these pictures on file for years, integrate them into classroom management programs, and use the pictures for all manner of activities without oversight...

      Current FERPA regulations say you can opt out of having your image used. If a family or student requests, teachers can't even say whether or not a student is registered for a particular class. A student's photo might still

  • Is this some type of dark humored joke? What system like that exist anywhere. Seriously people have a choice of their own to make and making risky choices all the time eventually catches up to you. If that's the pipeline then it sure as steel doesnt sound like a school problem.
    • by narcc ( 412956 )

      Welcome to the United States of America. We have some serious problems.

    • Your privilege is showing, as well as your ignorance. Fortunately, your ignorance, at least, can be fixed, if you want.
      • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline
      • https://www.momsrising.org/campaigns/school-to-prison-pipeline/facts
      • http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/8775
      • https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/school-prison-pipeline-infographic
      • https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/education_futures/2015/08/5_facts_everyone_needs_to_know_about_the_school-to-prison_pipeline.html
  • The kids make selfies all day long and tons of photos and movies and send these to social media where they DO have facial recognition.

    What schools could do is insignificant.

  • While its a nice gesture its still mostly a middle finger all students have smartphones so who needs webcams and it never bothered NYS that there are plate readers everywhere.
  • On the one hand, it is a good gesture towards protecting the identity of students. But in the modern world, when there are social media and face recognition on smartphones, this will not give a huge result. When I wrote about protecting students' personal information with https://writix.co.uk/ [writix.co.uk] I found information that such measures that are supposed to be applied will not completely solve the problem with the protection of personal information.

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous

Working...