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."
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."
Good. (Score:3)
Schools simply do not have the sophistication required to keep such sensitive data secure.
Re: Good. (Score:2)
Who does have the required sophistication?
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Nobody.
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Pretty much. At least nobody that has regular budgetary requirements and management structures.
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Anyone with a large budget who's primary priority is security.
Re: Good. (Score:2)
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School yearbooks have all this data already.
So does the database of photos collected for the school-issued ID cards.
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Alas, a single still image is not the issue.
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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.
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They already have photos of all the students.
Alas, a single still image is not the issue.
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Schools by law, due to the risk, should have facial recognition at all entry points for all adults. The law is dumb and pointless.
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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!"
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Schools by law, due to the risk
What risk? What has caused this risk to become a problem now but not before?
Great, but why only ban it until 2022? (Score:4, Insightful)
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With everyone wearing masks, it may be empty posturing. Brownie points for a bill that get nothing done.
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Have you not heard? Face-recognition is or will soon be mask-compatible.
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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.
Any word... (Score:3)
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...
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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
school-to-prison pipeline (Score:2)
Blame them all you want, it's your problem (Score:2)
It's a Leftist phrase created to make White people know that they are the ones at fault for all the minorities who fail to thrive after failing to take school seriously.
Personally, I think it's difficult enough to educate a person with an 85 IQ, but one who has a hair-trigger temper, a low attention span, and a high capacity for violence is just setting yourself up for abject failure, repeatedly, for generation after generation.
So, throw more money at it, and create buzz-words that attempt to cover up the real problem.
Blaming white people is a stupid exercise. It doesn't matter if it's the student's fault or White America's fault...kids transitioning into the criminal justice system is everyone's problem. When you make comments blaming "Leftists" or whatever woke/PC group you wish to complain about, it sounds like you're saying it's someone else's problem....you're all free and clear and it's not your problem because you're not part of that group. It's really quite childish.
Here's the problem...it may be everyone'
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Welcome to the United States of America. We have some serious problems.
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OMG (Score:2)
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.
Big deal (Score:2)
Questionable (Score:1)