Maine district’s biometrics contract did not prioritize student data safety: ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has shed more light on what led to the cancellation of a contract between a Maine school district and the biometrics firm identiMetrics, according to a report in The County, which covers the district in northern Maine.

This week the ACLU made public over 200 pages of documents from the negotiation and its fallout, accusing both parties of failing to adequately consider the safety of students’ biometric data in their plan to implement a biometric attendance system. But the civil rights organization says identiMetrics, in particular, is too ambiguous about what it intends to do with biometric data it collects.

The system identiMetrics offers for K-12 education systems is a dual left-right index fingerprint scanner that the company says does not store the entire fingerprint but identifies key features, such as sweat pores or intersecting lines, to create a unique biometric ID for each student. According to identiMetrics CEO Raymond J. Fry, “students’ IDs are stored behind the school firewalls and nothing is stored in the cloud.” He says the company follows “the same laws that protect students’ grades and health information.”

Critics, however, are not convinced. “Any time biometric information is collected, it must have strong security protections,” says ACLU of Maine Communications Director Samuel Crankshaw. “The risk of identity theft, stalking and other harms increase when companies store data for longer periods of time.”

Cost is also an issue. The ACLU points out that the biometric scanning software, which costs $5,135 to install, comes with an annual subscription fee of $2,460 after the first year. These are unnecessary costs, according to those who argue that the district already uses a digitized non-biometric system for taking attendance. Administrators say they would not have used the biometric scanner for standard attendance, but rather to monitor tardiness among older students who are allowed to leave the school premises for lunch.

Regardless, the contract is dead, and now there is more clarity on why.

Civil rights groups urge Dept of Ed not to fund AI surveillance

Schools are quickly becoming arenas for the debate over how deeply biometric technology and AI should be integrated into fundamental institutions.

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and forty other organizations have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education expressing “concerns about the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies in K-12 public schools and the potential to violate the civil and human rights of students from historically marginalized communities.”

“We view these developments as a dangerous new chapter in the school-to-prison pipeline and mass criminalization of Black, brown, and Indigenous youth and other marginalized young people,” says the letter, which was also signed by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and the The No Tech Criminalization in Education Coalition (NOTICE), among others.

The letter calls for the education department to “ban federal grantmaking activities that allow schools to purchase or use artificial intelligence and big data technologies to violate students’ fundamental rights.” It also includes suggested strategies to protect students against data overreach, which include financial divestment from police surveillance technology in schools, technical guidance for conducting impact assessments, and “prioritizing enforcement actions against algorithmic discrimination.”

Researcher proposes using facial recognition to tattle

It can be assumed that neither the ACLU nor CLASP would be fans of a new facial recognition system for classroom management, proposed by Chafic Bou-Saba, an associate professor for computing technology and information systems at Guilford College. Inside Higher Ed reports that the system aims to use short video-based facial recognition to monitor students’ distraction levels and other emotional cues. Bou-Saba says it is designed to “take the stress away” from teachers or professors responsible for monitoring and maintaining student engagement.

Critics point out that constant biometric surveillance could also increase student stress levels.

Article Topics

ACLU  |  biometrics  |  children  |  data privacy  |  facial recognition  |  Identimetrics  |  schools  |  United States