Putting Taser Drones In Schools Won’t Stop Shootings

Children should see school as a place of safety and growth, not one of fear and paranoia created by soulless Republicans and greedy tech bros.

by Justin Rosario

As the nation is still reeling from the horrors of both Buffalo and Uvalde, those most responsible for flooding our streets with easily accessible guns have been frantically throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. Desperate to avoid accountability and to keep the flow of blood and iron undiminished, Republicans have a lot of ideas about who to blame and how to prevent the next massacre. None of which involve selling even one less gun.

I’m not, however, going to get into the false flag stupidity or Ted Cruz’ moronic “one door fire death trap.” Today, I want to focus on one particular set of ideas that could easily gain traction and will do nothing but make schools into a dystopian nightmare for students: Turning schools into a surveillance state panopticon.

School cops were a bad idea. 1984 would be infinitely worse.

If you’re not familiar with a panopticon, it is a theoretical prison in which the cells would be arranged in a circle around a central tower. Inside the tower, the guards could watch the prisoners but the prisoners would not be able to see the guards. Thus, you, as a prisoner, would never know if you were being watched at any given time. The paranoia, it was theorized, would force the prisoners to behave at all times.

What does this have to do with schools? Are Republicans demanding we rebuild schools into circular prisons? Well, not quite yet (but give it time). But the concept of adding new layers of “security” to schools in the name of preventing the next school shooting is seductive and scared people do stupid things without considering the consequences. See The Patriot Act and the reelection of George W. Bush for prime examples of how fear can both erode freedom and ruin everything it touches.

So what are officials looking to do to our schools? Vox explains:

In recent years, schools have installed everything from facial recognition software to AI-based tech, including programs that purportedly detect signs of brandished weapons and online screening tools that scan students’ communications for mentions of potential violence. The startups selling this tech have claimed that these systems can help school officials intervene before a crisis happens or respond more quickly when one is occurring. Pro-gun politicians have also advocated for this kind of technology, and argued that if schools implement enough monitoring, they can prevent mass shootings.

This is after adding a number of other security measures that have made schools feel more like prisons and have done little to nothing to stop school shootings:

I am a huge nerd and I believe in the power of technology to do amazing things. But I am also quite aware of how easily technology can be abused. I am also painfully aware that techbros lie through their teeth about how well their gadgets work. Once the sale is made, they can fix the bugs later. For a price, of course. Turns out, Robocop was horrifyingly accurate in so many ways, even in little throwaway lines.

That’s not speculation on my part. A lot of this surveillance technology has turned out to be less than accurate. And that is being generous. One tech company, Evolv, is selling a system that can pick out a weapon as opposed to just detecting metal. And do it without people stopping and stepping through a portal. Which sounds great, if it worked as advertised.

The Washington Post reports:

But IPVM, a security-industry trade publication, concluded after a review that Evolv has “fundamental technological limitations in differentiating benign objects from actual weapons.” One issue, IPVM said, citing its examination of the company, is that some metallic objects confuse the AI, including particularly the ruggedly designed Google Chromebook.

IPVM says Evolv has not provided sufficient data. The publication also says the company will not engage with it due to its inquiries; it says the firm has even asked it to stop reporting on Evolv in the name of public safety.

Nothing inspires confidence in a technology like the maker demanding people stop reporting on its flaws. 

We’ve known for years that algorithms that scan for hate speech are notoriously unreliable, targeting Black users far more often than white. Facial recognition? Great at recognizing white men. Not so great at recognizing women or anyone else. An AI that’s supposed to listen to everyone all the time and detect “aggression?” Shockingly unreliable.

Futurism has the ugly details:

ProPublica visited the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens and enlisted students' help with testing the monitoring system's effectiveness and the results were... not encouraging.

One student let out a glass-shattering scream in a silent library, which didn't set off the detector, but a sick student coughing through a chest cold did. During another test, when the students cheered on a pizza delivery or were playing a calm game of Pictionary, the detector went haywire with warnings.

Don’t even get me started on these systems creating more interactions between the police and special needs kids. The idea that an algorithm is going to be able to tell the difference between an autistic child harmlessly expressing their anger at not getting a toy in class and the sound of a neurotypical kid getting ready to start a fight is ludicrous. Every time the police interact with the special needs community, there’s a high chance of violence because the police have no idea what they are doing.

Aside from the unreliability, all of this surveillance will allow staff and an ever-expanding list of people to watch, listen, and digitally spy on our children. If you’re not familiar with the phrase “mission creep”, allow me to explain it to you. First, only a very small number of administrators and trained professionals will have access to the social media accounts of our kids. Then it will be the police and a few teachers and now they’ll be able to check their emails as well. Then a few more people and now text messages. Then some concerned parent groups and let’s add audio and video, too, just to be safe. Eventually, dozens, if not hundreds, of people will have unfettered access to the private and public lives of thousands of children in a single school district. 

The potential for abuse is staggering. These kinds of systems will draw predators faster than a bible summer camp. The ability to spy on and manipulate children using their private information will be irresistible and whatever safeguards are put in place won’t work against a “trusted” counselor or teacher. Ask the Catholic Church.

That’s on a micro level. The macro will be a true disaster. And maybe that’s the point.

Surveillance always magically seems to affect the most vulnerable

If you’re familiar with the “School to Prison Pipeline”, you probably have some idea where this is going. Black children were already over disciplined in American school systems. First, most teachers are white and in many schools, most students are not. Second, most white people see Black children as older than they are. Third, behavior that is tolerated in white children is absolutely not tolerated in Black children. 

Put those three factors together and Black children are suspended, expelled, and arrested at a wildly disproportionate rate compared to white children. It’s not as stunningly bad for other groups but Latinos, Native Americans, and special needs students are also abused by a system designed to protect white kids and target everyone else.

So what is going to happen when we start watching every student every second of every day? We already have the answer to that: We only need to look at what over policing has done to Black communities. Harassment. Unnecessary arrests. Constant police brutality. Non-white students already have to put up with this in schools. They put little kids in handcuffs now. 

Remember this little kid they put in handcuffs? Oh, not that one, this one. Actually, I meant this one. No, this one. Sorry, I meant this one. USA Today reports that at least 2,600 kids between the ages of 5 and 9 were arrested in schools between 2000 and 2019. Minorities and special needs kids are the overwhelming majority of those arrests. It gets unbelievably worse when you get into high school. Now they’re close to adult age and the police become much more intolerant and violent.

Add on top of that unreliable technology with algorithms predominantly programmed by white men. Garbage in, garbage out. It’s not hard to see how this might appeal to a particular kind of American. The same kind of Americans that are in the middle of trying to murder democracy and install a fascist white nationalist theocracy. If you’re not sure about this, just ask them for money for something besides turning schools into armed fortresses.

There’s always money for bullshit, none for books

A company is rushing to put taser drones in schools that their own ethics board strenuously objected to. Axon International is piously claiming that now is the time to save lives after the tragedy in Uvalde. Now is the time to get scared people to invest millions of dollars in unproven and unsafe technology. It’s not about lives, it’s about money.

Naturally, there will be plenty of money for drones and cameras and microphones and very expensive AIs to run them all. There’s always an unlimited pile of money to pour into security tech. It’s for the children, you see. Ask those same people if they’re willing to fund free school meals and they’ll have to get back to you later.

Living wages for teachers? New textbooks? How about smaller classrooms (I don’t mean physically, I mean less students per teacher)? How about schools that aren’t rotting to the ground? We got money for that? Nah. But here’s an ED209 to guard the entrance of your school. It cost $50 million and will occasionally kill one of your students (but not the nice white ones). No expense spared for safety!

Don’t worry, it hardly ever malfunctions.

In the meantime, schools will no longer feel like safe spaces to children. Active shooter drills and the constant presence of armed police brutalizing students are already traumatizing children. Once our kids understand they are under constant surveillance and can be punished for things they do and say at any moment, even online when they are not in school? School will cease to be a needed social and educational environment. It will become a constant source of stress and loathing. Which may be a feature, not a bug.

Remember, the same people who scream the loudest about turning schools into fortresses are the exact same people who, A. do everything possible to flood the streets with guns, B. do everything possible to prevent people from obtaining the mental health care they need, C. inject as much toxic hate speech into the discourse as possible, and D. have been undermining public schools for decades.

I can’t find any statistics but my guess is that you won’t find metal detectors and intrusive bag searches at private schools for the rich. I’d bet money you also won’t find Republicans demanding we fill those schools with cameras, microphones, and taser drones. One can only wonder why.

Don’t sacrifice schools to the techbros

Republicans are soulless monsters more than happy to destroy public education for their fascist agenda. But techbros are motivated by simple arrogance and greed. Some of them believe so strongly in a utopian vision of AI solving everything that they cannot see the dystopia they’re creating. Others only see the oceans of money they can pour into their offshore accounts. Neither group will be held accountable, any more than the police are, when their promises fall flat or for the lives they’ll irreparably harm in the process. We owe our children better than that. They should see school as a place of (real) safety and growth, not one of fear and paranoia.