Thursday, September 19, 2013

Really? 'Biometrics Help Teachers Track Students Every Move'

Biometrics Help Teachers Track Students' Every Move
Just look how invasive biometrics can be in the classroom with this article from Yahoo attractively entitled 'Biometrics Help Teachers Track Students' Every Move'.

[Title of article changed in the 24 hours of writing this article to 'Will Big Brother Be Watching Your Kids?' - lots more accurate, thank you.  Original title still in the URL.]

Is where we are heading in society, not just with education, but with all aspects of our life, advertising, interviews, shopping, etc?

If teachers need this level of aid to teach or improve their teaching they simply should get out of the profession.  This level of personal data should not be analysed with children nor anyone.  At what point as a society do we say that enough is enough and that there needs to be some privacy? ...but this is not the case.  Britain houses something like a quarter of the world's CCTV cameras, here we are surveilled by consent apparently.  Our crime rates are completely comparable to other western countries as is our conviction rate so why the intrusion by CCTV?  And not take some down?  Once surveillance systems are in place they tend not to be disabled, if anything they become more invasive as technology improves.

With facial recognition being used covertly, with the US state of Ohio justifying  "the installation without any prior warning or legal oversight of a facial recognition system using public data bases and CCTV, arguing that “every other state is doing so”, do we need to worry about the capabilities of the surveillance cameras on the street or in the school classrooms?  We are in a sad position to have to trust that more data is not being taken and gathered on us or our children than we believe.

The capability of technology is great, not always so great is the intent.

We are being normalised to accept this surveillance and it is happening first in our schools.  Get them while they're young...

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