Schools are exactly where you want this tech - to keep kids, parents & teacher in and the rest of the public out. Leveraging face tech for that is 100% OK.
...you just can't have that data leak out in any way. i.e. utilize it for access control & true security only.
Facial recognition doesn't do /any/ of that.
Teachers have always been able to tell when students are skipping school, that's what roll calls are for. They work just fine, wayward students just don't care and skip school anyway. If you want to ensure your kids stay at school, maybe we should take the money spent on facial recognition systems and spend it on training our current teachers and paying teachers enough that the best in our society start seeing teaching as a viable career.
As for keeping the public out, we've had a purpose-built tool for this for millennia, it's called a gate. CCTV at the gates is every bit as effective as facial recognition in the halls. If people are going to ignore the implied warning of a gate with optional CCTV, adding facial recognition in the halls won't help. Such people will just lie about being a tradesman or public servant or whatever. Either they'll be convincing or they won't. Most of us would recognize a stranger in our office, the same is true for teachers and other staff in schools. They already know this person is a stranger, they don't need a facial recognition system to tell them that. If you're worried about incursions from the public, the money would be better spent on training teachers for that situation or if you must, hiring good old fashioned security guards.
Well, is that really what schools are supposed to be?
It seems like schools have an institutional identity which is indistinguishable from a prison or military base.
I'm not sure that I want schools to be hermetically sealed from the rest of society. I think I prefer that they be much more open and intermingled with their communities.
Guess that's the reality in a country with roughly one school shooting a week. As usual for US politics, the fix doesn't even go anywhere near the sources (a lack of gun control).
> I think I prefer that they be much more open and intermingled with their communities.
Hmm. Honestly I'm not sure how this could be done in a productive way, and that with threats like shooters and pedophiles not even being in scope. Having random quacks peddle kids and their parents with crap like "alternative medicine", anti-vaxx ideology, creationist theory or religious fundamentalism of any kind (no matter if Scientology, hardcore evangelicals or salafist/other radical Islamists) is already a huge problem, no need to further enlarge it. And unlike with guns it's more difficult here to fight the actual problem given the fundamental human right to free speech.
If you think that children don't belong as a part of society as whole, what society do you have anymore?
You believe that children should only be exposed to government indoctrination, and no other human communication? That's... radical.
For "other human communication" there's time after school. As for "government indoctrination", yes, I am aware of the potential consequences especially when government is taken over by religious nutjobs... but on the other hand, seeing the damage that stuff like teaching kids "creationism" in schools already causes, I don't want religious extremists any nearer to kids than they already are.
The lack of gun control is not the source. The source is people having a desire to kill children in the first place.
We can address the specific manifestation of that problem (by enacting tighter controls on how guns may be acquired - something for which I'm very much in favor), but these people can and will find other ways to kill on a large scale (homemade explosives, for example) unless we actually address the mental health issues that are the actual sources.
It's so inhumane to say, "oh well, as long as they don't have guns, everything is swell."
http://www.acolumbinesite.com/diary.php
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1173808-elliot-rodge...
http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2009/08/pondering-po...
Ideally no. In the real world definitely. It serves as a safe space for kids & everything else is secondary.
I've actually been on the receiving side of this: Returned to my Alma mater high school & security wouldn't let me in because I couldn't provide a substantial reason for being there. (I just wanted to walk around my old school)
Fair enough - if I was a parent of a kid that's exactly what I'd want: a reasonably high hurdle to keep strangers away from largely unsupervised kids.