This is what the mask cultists were doing in the far left Fulton County. Big Brother is always watching
‘Really alarming’: the rise of smart cameras used to catch maskless students US schools
When students in suburban Atlanta returned to school for in-person classes amid the pandemic, they were required to mask up, like in many places across the US. Yet in this 95,000-student district, officials took mask compliance a step further than most.
Through a network of security cameras, officials harnessed artificial intelligence to identify students whose masks drooped below their noses.
“If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, if I send you a piece of video – it’s probably worth a million,” said Paul Hildreth, the district’s emergency operations coordinator. “You really can’t deny, ‘Oh yeah, that’s me, I took my mask off.’”
The school district in Fulton county had installed the surveillance network, by Motorola-owned Avigilon, years before the pandemic shuttered schools nationwide in 2020. Out of fear of mass school shootings, districts in recent years have increasingly deployed controversial surveillance networks like cameras with facial recognition and gun detection.
If the uber-leftist UK Guardian is calling this really alarming, be very concerned. The school system is mask optional now, so, what are the schools doing now?
But one of the most significant developments has been in AI-enabled cameras. Twenty years ago, security cameras were present in 19% of schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Today, that number exceeds 80%. Powering those cameras with artificial intelligence makes automated surveillance possible, enabling things like temperature checks and the collection of other biometric data.
Districts across the country have said they had bought AI-powered cameras to fight the pandemic. But as pandemic-era protocols like mask mandates end, experts said the technology will remain. Some educators have stated plans to leverage pandemic-era surveillance tech for student discipline while others hope AI cameras will help them identify youth carrying guns.
The cameras have faced sharp resistance from civil rights advocates who question their effectiveness and argue they trample students’ privacy rights.
You think? Many other schools systems implemented systems, which were used for COVID compliance in various ways, and are gathering massive amount of data on juveniles
Verkada offers a cautionary tale. Last year, the company suffered a massive data breach when a hack exposed the live feeds of 150,000 surveillance cameras, including those inside Tesla factories, jails and at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. The Newtown district, which suffered a mass school shooting in 2012, said the breach didn’t expose compromising information about students. The vulnerability hasn’t deterred some educators from contracting with the California-based company.
Many of these systems are purchased from China owned vendors. Great way to put all this data on children in the hands of bad actors, right?
In a post-pandemic world, Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the non-profit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, worries the entire school security industry will take a similar approach.
“With the pandemic hopefully waning, we’ll see a lot of security vendors pivoting back to school shooting rhetoric as justification for the camera systems,” he said. Due to the potential for errors, Cahn called the embrace of AI surveillance in schools “really alarming”.
Where is the line between monitoring for safety and invading privacy?
Read: Atlanta Schools Implemented Cameras To Make Sure Kids Wearing Masks Correctly »