{"id":6187,"date":"2019-03-08T18:48:21","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T22:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=6187"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:26","slug":"ai-surveillance-in-schools-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/ai-surveillance-in-schools-why\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Surveillance in Schools: Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This past February 14th<\/sup> marked\nthe one-year anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in the\nnation\u2019s history. Despite being the subject of several 911 calls, and two separate tips to the\nFBI,<\/a> the 19-year-old shooter, armed with a\nrifle, left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,\nFlorida. Since this attack, along with the growing number of incidents of\nmass violence, schools across the country have responded with a willingness to\nadopt unconventional products and practices to improve security. As a result,\nthe rise in public education market led to an \u201carms race\u201d in the security\nindustry, and Big Tech is getting involved, bringing artificial-intelligence\n(\u201cAI\u201d) powered surveillance. However, is bringing AI surveillance to school\ncampuses crossing the line?<\/p>\n\n\n

Schools across the country have\nvaried approach on what they are doing to provide security to students on\ncampuses. Some have resorted to using more defensive personnel including: increasing police presence<\/a>, operating\na dedicated police station within the school<\/a>, or hiring private security guards<\/a>. Some\nschools have turned to reinforced or modified equipment, including installation\nof electronically controlled locks, and bulletproof doors and windows<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n

Few schools have turned to\nusing advanced technology. For instance, in Lockport, New York school district\nmonitors students with a facial-recognition system<\/a>. An elementary school in Artesia, New\nMexico, installed gunshot-detection devices, similar to equipment that is \u201cused by the military to detect snipers\nand missiles<\/a>.\u201d In Michigan, Massachusetts, and California implemented\nartificial-intelligence software that\nscans student\u2019s social media account<\/a>\nfor signs of potential threats, although this program\nis prone to produce false positives. This potentially may have influenced\nParkland, Florida\u2019s school district, Broward County Public Schools, decision\nlast month to install Avigilon, an experimental AI powered surveillance system.<\/p>\n\n\n

Avigilon\nis an AI service acquired last year by the tech giant Motorola Solution for\none-billion-dollars. Unlike other AI programs, Avigilon does not use facial\nrecognition technology, rather an \u201cappearance search\u201d which \u201cwould allow a school official to find or highlight people based on\nwhat they\u2019re wearing<\/a>.\u201d Designers of\nAvigilon further stated that the program\u2019s \u201csecurity algorithms could spot risky behavior with superhuman speed\nand precision, potentially preventing another attack<\/a>.\u201d Although security is a top priority on school campuses, bringing AI\nto campuses is definitely going to far. <\/p>\n\n\n

It should be noted that neither facial recognition<\/a> nor Avigilon<\/a>\u2019s technology have been proven to deter school violence, while school shootings that produce multiple victims are still extremely rare<\/a>. Alternatively, use of AI on school grounds presents privacy issues including: the implicit lack of parental consent to a child\u2019s data being collected, how the data on students is being protected, and the possibility that collected information is being used for something else. Each year, millions of Americans are impacted by data breaches. Most notably, in 2017, Cambridge Analytica, a data firm gained accessed to 50 million Facebook profiles<\/a>, and in 2018, the Equifax breach<\/a> resulted in compromising the data of 148 million people. But the most significant issue with AI surveillance is that it does nothing to solve the core cause of school violence. <\/p>\n\n\n

Christopher Yarnell, 21 February 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past February 14th marked the one-year anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation\u2019s history. Despite being the subject of several 911 calls, and two separate tips to the FBI, the 19-year-old shooter, armed with a rifle, left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Since this …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6843,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions\/6843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}