Cameras in the Classrooms

Below is an old rant that I decided to add to this site for your enjoyment.

Weekly Musings – “Cameras in the Classrooms”
J Sweeney
08/14/03

Classes for the new school year began in Biloxi, Mississippi this week. Along with the normal jitters of starting a new schedule, the pleasure of seeing friends, and the mirth of guessing what kind of meat product the cafeteria is attempting to pass off as beef, the students have a new presence in their environment to consider. Over the summer every classroom and hallway had a web-enabled camera installed.

So far, most of the feedback from those affected, as reported by the district, is positive. Parents are quoted as saying they feel that their children are safer. Some are reported as having stated that they are willing to surrender certain freedoms if it means better security. The only slightly negative comment noted was from one teacher wondering whether the added oversight would negatively impact the student-teacher rapport.

So, the town of Biloxi has apparently used its proceeds from legalizing gambling in a way that has popular support and may even deter violence or other crimes against students. Civil libertarians will sound an alarm about the erosion of privacy and the danger of “Big Brother” watching, but considering the cameras are installed in a public setting, they do not have a leg to stand on. Unless of course you consider that the students are required to attend the school by law and are therefore being coerced into being monitored without their ascent. Seeing that most students don’t vote and given the popular support among parents and administrators, I expect that nothing short of a successful lawsuit will remove the cameras.

Perhaps this is where we’re headed. A little over a year ago I had the opportunity to dine with a Judge and his wife. They’ll remain nameless, as I did not request permission at the time to quote them. The dinner was full of stimulating conversation. Both the Judge and his wife were active in other areas of our democracy and had served in the defense and education sectors respectively. Among the many issues discussed that evening was the topic of videotape surveillance and its role in our society, public life, and work environment. Joining the conversation was a medical doctor and a technology consultant.

The Judge described the value that adding video and audio recording to his courtroom had produced in reducing errors, creating an objective record, and protecting him from inaccurate claims by defendants and lawyers. He was convinced that every professional, particularly doctors should immediately begin demanding that their interactions with clients, patients, and the public be recorded for their protection.

The doctor at our table was deeply concerned about the potential for harm if patients felt their doctor patient relationship compromised by a recording. Would they be willing to share intimate and potentially embarrassing details about behavior that may have led to disease contraction? Would they be as forthcoming with very personal details about symptoms they were suffering from?

As the Doctor and the Judge argued and periodically turned to the consultant for technical details about security, encryption, and capabilities, I had the opportunity to begin to muse, as I’m inclined to do from time to time.

What about psychologists, lawyers, accountants, teachers, guidance counselors, priests, rabbis, imams, etc.? Was the Judge correct in thinking that once professionals had an opportunity to try the technology they would come to appreciate its benefits so much that they would demand its presence?

The concept of being taped when entering a stadium, using the ATM, or just walking into a department store is something we have all become accustomed to even if we have not grown quite comfortable with it yet. But, when the airports and stadiums added recognition software that identifies facial mappings and then compares them to a database to watch for terrorists and criminals, things changed. The very logical argument was that the police could do the same thing but they would have to increase manpower, and thus costs, significantly to have as much coverage as the automated system. I agree but what police don’t do currently that is within the capability of the system is to record all faces and begin to build a record of places and times where and when that face has been recorded.

Layer that concept with the idea of cameras in the schools and we can begin to map out a possible misuse of this technology. Imagine a school with cameras installing the recognition system. Imagine them then using it to improve school security by alerting officials if an unknown person was wondering the halls, perhaps selling drugs or seeking revenge on a student. The facial mapping software would alert school security that a known drug dealer was on the premises. They could detain him, call the police, or they could watch to see who interacted with him while he was present. Sounds like a great idea and one that would have popular support in some locations.

What it requires is a record of all students’ faces and a system that can maintain detailed time logs of comings and goings. What it precedes is a national, albeit disconnected, network of systems that have similar logs and profiles. A government agency would then merely have to gain access to the disparate systems and search for an individual to get a detailed record of their movement map for a given period of time. That could then be cross-indexed with movements of known terrorists and we could someday begin to unravel support networks for these international criminals.

Given the scope of the Patriot Act, the fear of the average citizen, and the pace of technological advances. I believe it is a forgone conclusion that Big Brother will be watching. I also believe we’ll be safer for it. My only question is, at what cost?

“If you are living within the bounds of the law you shouldn’t mind them looking into your backyard or house”, more than one law enforcement official has told me. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t break any laws in my house but does that mean I am willing to relinquish my privacy? Should I have a say in whether my image can be recorded, stored, searched, tracked, etc? Should I even care if like they say, I “have nothing to hide?”

The word that comes to mind is Trust.

It just keeps moving in and quietly reminding me to consider it. Trust. What happens to “Trust” when we get used to having our lives on tape? Does it improve? Does the fabric of society become stronger because we all live more carefully inside the law? Does it erode as people realize that someone or some agency can edit, manufacture, or destroy records that we rely on for “objective” truth?

Does the human capacity for self-control improve through this silent coercesion or does it erode our internal and individual sense of right and wrong in favor of a socially acceptable code of behavior? Does doing the right thing become something we choose because of our values or instead become a decision made in fear of potential retribution? Are we moving forward or moving backward?

The message of the Old Testament for me was that there was one god and only one god. He was watching and stood in judgment over all creation. He punished the evildoer in this life or the next. The people of the Old Testament lived in awe and fear and behaved accordingly or were punished. The message of the New Testament is that there is a god, he loves us and expects us to love him and to treat our neighbor with the same love that we have for ourselves. There’s more to both stories and I’ve left out everything about his chosen people, but those were the two main themes I learned.

Here’s my question, if this nation was founded on the whole of the Judeo-Christian tradition which story do you want to run the country by? Because this recording and the technologies that come with it sound a lot more like the Old Testament than the New. I’m all for punishing criminals and rehabilitating them if possible, but I deeply prefer that my society and fellow citizens choose the good from a knowledge of our shared inheritance, shared divine love, and unity, rather than that they choose the good from a place of fear of the all knowing eye.

You may think it naïve to expect to live in such a place, a society where people choose the good because it is the good, not for a reward or fear of punishment. You may think it unrealistic given our diverse culture and the lack of a homogenous value system. I may be naïve, but it wasn’t cynicism that caused twelve men and two women to found a tradition of love and forbearance upon the death of their spiritual leader. It wasn’t cynicism that caused the people of the colonies to rise up and create a new society with hope for the self-rule of nations. It wasn’t a lack of faith in his fellow man that gave President Lincoln the confidence to take the North to war and win freedom for an oppressed people. It wasn’t a society of the Old Testament. We are not Israel.

We as a nation have many, many choices ahead of us in the next twenty years. Most of them have to do with public policy as it relates to technological advancements. We should begin to develop a framework for how these decisions will be made. What is most important is to devise a way to determine if a specific technology serves the common good in the long-term, or if it erodes some foundation of our society. I am not sure into which category intelligent video surveillance falls, we probably all need to keep an open mind and consider the testimony of experts from various sciences. Law enforcement, ethicists, legal advocates, educators, national security agencies, civil liberties groups, and religious leaders all have something to add to this debate. Future debates will require even broader gatherings of experts, particularly from the medical and genetics fields.

Our politicians will need to be held to a higher standard than they are currently. They will have to demonstrate intellectual integrity, and I think a degree of intellectual curiosity. It is not enough that they have good advisors and follow their counsel. It is essential that they can read, comprehend and extrapolate against a wide variety of highly technical and emotionally charged topics, without relying too heavily on the advice of industry supported expert testimony.

They will have to balance our needs for international leadership with our internal class dynamics. These forces will be in direct opposition for most of the decisions concerning engineered improvements to the human genome and life expectancy.

It’s time for me to stop typing and go back and cut huge sections out of this overlong missive. I apologize in advance for any failures in editing.

Peace, be upon you and your home.

Joe