Unproven facial recognition tech is the latest tool that is being increasingly marketed by security contractors to US schools terrified of shootings
Drew Harwell / Washington Post : Tweets: @tracyjan , @funnymonkey , @drewharwell , @lizzadwoskin , @bfeldman89 , @drewharwell , and @kirstenberg Tweets: Tracy Jan / @tracyjan : Smart @drewharwell story on how some security companies exploit fear & tragedy. In its presentations, AnyVision includes pictures and body counts from the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings, and says its mission is “making sure your children get home safe.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Bill Fitzgerald / @funnymonkey : Our faces are assets that get bundled and sold by private companies. Of course, every image of every face is also geolocation and time data. And, depending on the location, interest data. But hey. It's for the kids. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Drew Harwell / @drewharwell : Face recognition is moving rapidly into schools. Tech companies, seeing a lucrative market, claim the systems can stop school shootings - even though they've never done so. Here's what one looks like, at an all-ages rec center in Indiana: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... http://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Dwoskin / @lizzadwoskin : “The facial recognition cameras installed near the after-school rec center in Bloomington, Indiana, are aimed low enough to scan the face of every parent, teen, and toddler who walks in.” Great story @drewharwell http://twitter.com/... Blake Feldman / @bfeldman89 : The same rationale was used to put SROs in schools. The result: school shootings continue, but Black and brown students were further criminalized. http://twitter.com/... Drew Harwell / @drewharwell : @JohnWoodrowCox @dataeditor We also got video of the latest in surveillance programs. AI has given these systems incredible power. They can track bodies, recognize faces and filter by age, gender, etc.: The last photo is a search of just women holding bags http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... http://twitter.com/... Kirsten Berg / @kirstenberg : “These companies are taking advantage of the genuine fear and almost impotence of parents who want to protect their kids,” @ProfFerguson said, “and they're selling them surveillance technology at a cost that will do very little to protect them.” http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Drew Harwell's reporting documents how vendors like AnyVision pitch facial recognition to school districts by putting Parkland and Sandy Hook body counts in their presentations — selling a safety outcome the technology has never actually demonstrated. The story lands amid a broader wave of fear-driven school surveillance procurement: months later, New York's [[a:935041|Lockport City school district pushed ahead with a facial recognition and gun-detection system]], and districts were simultaneously adopting social media monitoring programs with little regard for effectiveness or privacy.
The throughline is that cameras scanning parents, teenagers, and toddlers near an after-school rec center are being justified as shooting prevention, even as later analysis concluded that no amount of ML-powered surveillance eliminates school-shooting risk. The gap between what these systems prevent and what they collect is the story's real subject.
First-order effects
- School districts signing these contracts put students' and families' biometric data into vendor hands on the strength of marketing claims, not documented results — AnyVision's own materials lean on tragedy imagery rather than efficacy evidence.
- Communities around installations like the Bloomington rec center face immediate privacy exposure: faces of parents and toddlers are scanned and stored without those individuals opting in.
Second-order effects
- Rival security contractors see the fear-based sales playbook work and extend it into adjacent products — the same districts buying face-scanning cameras were soon sold social media monitoring, expanding vendor revenue per school.
- Privacy advocates and journalists respond by documenting how the technology works and who runs it, raising the reputational cost for districts that adopt without public debate.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US schools normalize biometric surveillance of minors as standard infrastructure — a structural shift where children's faces become bundled commercial assets, as Bill Fitzgerald's commentary notes, long before any proof the systems stop shooters.
- The eventual reckoning is regulatory: years of adoption without efficacy evidence invites state-level bans or procurement rules requiring demonstrated performance, reshaping how security vendors can sell to education.
The trend: School safety spending is shifting from physical security hardware toward AI-driven biometric and behavioral surveillance, with vendors' fear-based marketing outpacing both evidence and governance.