Lockport, NY (WBEN) - The New York Civil Liberties Union has announced it filed a lawsuit against the State Department of Education over the facial recognition system in Lockport City Schools.
According to the school, the technology would allow school security to identify threats and keeps a database of sex offenders and people who are deemed a threat to the school by law enforcement.
The suit, challenging the State Education Department's decision to allow the system, was filed on behalf of Lockport parents Jim Shultz and Renee Cheatham.
"NYSED’s approval of this technology demonstrated a dangerous lack of oversight and an alarming misunderstanding of the way it analyzes student data,” said Stefanie Coyle, Deputy Director of the Education Policy Center at the NYCLU, in a statement.
Though the school, and the company that operates the system say that it only identifies faces that match threats that school administrators put in to the system, the lawsuit alleges that the system engages in real-time collection, analysis, and retention of biometric information from each child in Lockport’s schools.
"It is a closed database," said Tony Olivo, the owner of CSI Group in Buffalo. "This technology doesn't record movement... The schools already have that... This technology merely looks at the stream of video prior to it getting to the recording device and identifies people who are prohibited from being on school property or weapons on hand."
Parents are now raising a new concern, though.
“Both Lockport and NYSED knew that face surveillance software is racially biased against people of color, and they apparently decided that was an acceptable price to pay in order to install an experimental security system,” said Renee Cheatham, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, in a statement.
Many companies, including Amazon, have paused use of facial recognition software in the past month over concerns of racial discrimination.
New York State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Monica Wallace released the following joint statement:
“The lawsuit recently filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union against the New York State Education Department for permitting the use of facial recognition technology in the Lockport City School District illustrates, yet again, why it is urgent for NYSED to alter its course on this issue. We have proposed legislation to impose a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology in schools, but NYSED and school districts themselves have the authority to take that step now, without waiting for either the Legislature or the Courts to require that. We are concerned that this technology could be used in ways that violate the privacy and civil rights of students, staff, and visitors; that it is an ineffective form of school security; and that student data may not be stored securely. We are also concerned about the accuracy of this technology. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently found that African American and Asian individuals were falsely identified up to 100 times more than Caucasians. Numerous studies have found that the technology is generally less accurate when scanning the faces of young people, people of color, and women. Our bill gives NYSED an avenue to address these issues and develop detailed guidelines on the use of this technology, if it decides to allow its use at all, before any young people are subjected to this invasive form of surveillance. This lawsuit comes at a time when state and local governments, including schools, face significant fiscal stress as a result of COVID-19. It makes no sense for NYSED to spend taxpayer dollars to defend its decision to permit a technology that may ultimately be prohibited in schools. Therefore, we encourage NYSED and the Lockport City School District to adopt their own moratoriums on facial recognition technology, in order to avoid unnecessary litigation costs at a time when education resources are scarce.”
"It's much more than just facial recognition," Olivo told WBEN. "In addition to identifying unwanted individuals or individuals that would be prohibited from being on school property, the system also identifies firearms in hand. We're able to identify a gun in someone's hand in real time and, if need be, dispatch police and send alerts to police. There's a lot more to this than just normal facial recognition system."
“The Lockport facial recognition surveillance system was the product of a Board of Education falling for the sweet talk of a salesman who misrepresented himself as an independent security expert,” said Jim Shultz, a Lockport parent and plaintiff in the suit, in a statement.