The Future Of School Safety Includes Round-The-Clock Surveillance Of Students
June 7th, 2019Via: TechDirt:
To go to school is to be surveilled, on campus and off. The average school hosts a number of cameras, and the average school administration is always looking for more ways to keep tabs on students, even after they’ve gone home.
The move towards pervasive surveillance of off-campus activities is generally justified with the meaningless assertion that if it stops one person from shooting up a school (or just shooting themselves), it’s all worth it. Two articles based on public records requests — both written by Benjamin Herold of Education Week — show there’s a surveillance state being built one school district at a time. (h/t Amelia Vance)
Documents obtained by Education Week via open-records requests show that over the past year, state agencies have discussed the possibility of sharing a breathtaking amount of data. That included more than 2.5 million records related to Floridians who received involuntary psychiatric examinations, records for over 9 million people placed in foster care, diagnosis and treatment records for substance abusers, unverified criminal reports of suspicious activity, reports on students who were bullied and harassed because of their race or sexual orientation, and more.
This database is currently on hold as education officials try to figure out how much of this incredibly sensitive info they can share with other agencies, much less collect in the first place. But once these details are ironed out, the rollout will continue, urged along by Governor Ron DeSantis, who has publicly expressed his frustration that schools aren’t placing students under round-the-clock surveillance quickly enough.
