Lockport, NY (WBEN) A year after getting approval from the state education department, Lockport and other schools will have to wait on using facial recognition technology. Governor Cuomo has signed legislation suspending such use in schools and has ordered a study on whether it should be used at all.
"Facial recognition technology could provide a host of benefits to New Yorkers, but its use brings up serious and legitimate privacy concerns that we have to examine, especially in schools," says Cuomo. "This legislation requires state education policymakers to take a step back, consult with experts and address privacy issues before determining whether any kind of biometric identifying technology can be brought into New York's schools. The safety and security of our children is vital to every parent, and whether to use this technology is not a decision to be made lightly."
The call for this legislation follows concerns raised about potential risks posed to students by some existing facial recognition and other biometric technologies, including reported high rates of misidentification of women, young people, and people of color as well as the safety and security of biometric data and corresponding student privacy concerns.
"The moratorium on biometric surveillance is a landmark piece of legislation that should serve as a national model to stop the proliferation of faulty, harmful facial recognition technologies in schools,” said Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director. “For children, whose appearances change rapidly as they grow, and for people of color and women more broadly, the accuracy of biometric technologies is highly questionable. 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.”
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“New York should never dedicate funding to invasive and biased surveillance technology, and now many more school districts across the state will be blocked from deploying these harmful systems,” said Stefanie Coyle, deputy director for the NYCLU’s Education Policy Center. “There is such an overwhelming need for resources in the classroom and to support remote learning, and we hope this will be a part of a shift toward a model of education that centers students’ needs rather than exposes them to law enforcement and discipline.”
“The Lockport school district made our students guinea pigs in an experiment in high-tech surveillance of all their movements,” said Jim Shultz, plaintiff and Lockport parent. “They wasted $2.7 million in taxpayer dollars doing it. Of course facial recognition in schools needs to be studied before any other school district – in New York or anywhere else – does this again.”
The funding for Lockport’s facial recognition system, and 11 other currently approved projects utilizing biometric surveillance, comes from the Smart Schools Bond Act (SSBA), a law to ensure funding for school technology upgrades. Through the SSBA, the Lockport City School District has already been fully reimbursed for the costs incurred installing their system.