Drones In Schools

School surveillance continues to be a growth industry, maybe because students don't have a lobby and some adults curl up every time someone says, "But it's for the safety of the children!" Nevertheless, it just keeps getting creepier.

Back in January of 2020, I predicted that one of the big stories of the coming year would be a growth in the student surveillance industry. I'd been following the story as it popped up, because it was everywhere. 

Florida (you know--the Freedom State) was implementing a huge student surveillance system. Colleges were using student phones for all manner of tracking. Public schools were experimenting with all sorts of creepy facial recognition and surveillance software. Audio surveillance was another great frontier. In 2019, California enacted the Cradle-to-Career Data Systems Act, intended to data mine the hell out of California's minor citizens. And that was on top of the old stuff like Pearson's crazy student surveillance to protect its tests (a story I can't fully relate because a piece about it was one of the few posts that Google ever took down on my blog).

That prediction was looking pretty good in January of 2020. Then March of 2020 kind of pushed it to the back burner, as far as coverage went. But the fact that we were all kind of distracted did not stop the march of ed tech's surveillance industry. 

Now we're getting a new trend in this kind of surveillance. Drones.

Drone security is growing in many sectors, with companies like Titan promising "24/7 aerial protection, lightning-fast response, and real-time visibility." Also, of course, it's cheaper than hiring live humans.

The website Dangerous Schools last year touted drones as a "transformative tool in bolstering school safety." They can provide "real-time aerial surveillance" and "monitor large areas efficiently." They can "swiftly assess emergency situations," because, as with some other surveillance tools, the promise is that AI will be able to judge the situation. And always, the advantage of being "cost-effective."

And, of course, the drones will be armed.

Campus Guardian Angel is a Texas-based firm offering "an elite, on-site safety response capability that teams with law enforcement, confronting any active shooter threat in seconds to save lives."

The start-up is a fine fit for Texas, where a 2023 law requires an armed person on every campus (the state's half-assed response to the Uvalde murders). But many Texas districts asked to opt out of the law because armed guards were too pricey. Voila! Just get a patrol drone for enhanced "situational awareness." In a Texas demo, CEO Justin Marston promised that once as teacher hit a panic button, the drones could find the shooter in 15 seconds and incapacitate them in 60. 

A set of six drones is a mere $15,000, plus a per-pupil monthly prescription.

And it's not just Texas. A few months ago, Newsweek ran a story about Florida school districts considering CGA. 

Campus Guardian Angel CEO Justin Marston told Newsweek that the drones were equipped with pepper rounds plus a glass breaker, allowing them to quickly navigate inside and outside classrooms.

"We feed live video to police, show exactly what's happening, where the suspect is, and even smash through windows with a glass punch to create distractions. This tactic, like during the SAS's famous hostage rescue [at the Iranian Embassy in London], can give officers a huge advantage," Marston said.

As with all surveillance products, this is being pitched in the context of the worst possible events, while the question that really needs to be asked is, "Once this is in place, what other uses will district administrators find for it?"  Pepper rounds to break up fights on the playground? Pepper rounds to break up what the AI thinks is about to be a fight in the hall? Assign a drone to hover over your most challenging problem students all day?

We've already got surveillance tools that are aimed at calculating students who might be considering suicide or acts of violence, so why not tie that kind of analysis to a surveillance tool that can hover over students all the time? 

Oh, and the Florida drones would be captained by people in Austin, Texas. I can't imagine how many ways that could go badly.

I get that high security for low costs has a seductive appeal, and reportedly Homeland Security is going to buy $100 million worth of drones. But there are just so many ways this could be abused or simply go wrong. Here's hoping that this little industry fades away sooner rather than later.