Hi,

If you have kids in high school, they’ve probably read Orwell’s 1984. But
now, they’ll get the chance to live in a real-world tech dystopia.

Tech startups are quietly selling facial recognition services to high
schools across the country.^1 And the potential danger for students,
especially students of color, is too troubling to just sit idly by.

[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition: Tell Congress to ban the use of facial recognition
technology in schools!

It’s common knowledge by now that facial recognition technology is not
accurate for people with darker skin tones.^2 This design flaw leads to
false positives that, for young students of color, could mean the
difference between a safe learning environment or the school-to-prison
pipeline.

But that’s not all. Tech companies selling facial recognition services
have been tight-lipped about just how long they store facial data, whether
they sell that data to third parties or share it with government agencies
like ICE, or how secure their systems are from hacking attempts.^3

Facial recognition in schools also gives administrators the unprecedented
ability to track and monitor students in real time, during some of the
most formative years of their lives. What’s worse: as minors, students may
not have any legal recourse to protect themselves from the racial flaws
within facial recognition systems.

For so many students, high school is already a rough, awkward time.
Imagine how much worse that experience will be when students are scanned,
tracked, and recorded without their consent, and with technology that
can’t tell dark skinned students apart from each other.

[ [link removed] ]Tell Congress: Ban the use of facial recognition technology in schools!

Thanks for taking action,

Tihi and the team at Demand Progress

 

[ [link removed] ]DONATE

 

Sources:
1. Human Rights Watch, “Facial Recognition Technology in US Schools
Threatens Rights,” [ [link removed] ]June 21, 2019.
2. Wall Street Journal, “Facial-Recognition Software Suffers From Racial
Bias, U.S. Study Finds,” [ [link removed] ]December 19, 2019.
3. Salon, “Facial recognition data collected by U.S. customs agency stolen
by hackers,” [ [link removed] ]June 11, 2019.
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