{"id":7546,"date":"2025-12-20T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ai-surveillance-school-bathroom\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T14:00:00","slug":"ai-surveillance-school-bathroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ai-surveillance-school-bathroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials Deploying AI Surveillance Devices in School Bathrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Public spaces aren\u2019t the only place you need to be <a href=\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/2025\/12\/17\/oakland-flock-safety-council-approves-surveillance-cameras\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">worried about being monitored<\/a>. In 2025, officials are even placing AI surveillance gadgets in school bathrooms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">New <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/thomasbrewster\/2025\/12\/16\/ai-bathroom-monitors-welcome-to-americas-new-surveillance-high-schools\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">reporting by <em>Forbes<\/em><\/a> revealed the troubling rise of AI surveillance at the Beverly Hills High School that may be a sign of things to come for school districts throughout North America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">From video drones capturing footage of the campus to behavioral analysis AI cameras monitoring the hallways, the Los Angeles school district is quickly starting to mirror the dystopian panopticon of \u201cThe Minority Report.\u201d As <em>Forbes<\/em> tells it, no avenue is left un-monitored: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/startup-crime-spy-cameras\">Flock license plate readers<\/a> survey the comings and goings of every visitor, and perhaps most strikingly, AI audio capture devices line the bathroom walls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">To school officials, this is all just part of doing business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cThis community wants\u2026 whatever we can do to make our schools safer,\u201d district superintendent Alex Cherniss told <em>Forbes<\/em>. \u201cIf that means you have armed security and drones and AI and license plate readers, bring it on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cWe are in the hub of an urban setting of Los Angeles, in one of the most recognizable cities on the planet. So we are always a target and that means our kids are a target and our staff are a target,\u201d Cherniss said, adding that the surveillance panopticon spots \u201cmultiple threats per day.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">What exactly those threats are, district officials didn\u2019t specify. However, they noted that they\u2019ve spent $4.8 million on security in the fiscal year 2024-2025 alone \u2014 a costly solution to a nebulous problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Yet as <em>Forbes<\/em> notes, Beverly Hills isn\u2019t exactly an outlier. From coast to coast, school districts are turning to AI products in an attempt to stem school violence, as America\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/everytownresearch.org\/maps\/gunfire-on-school-grounds\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">school shooting problem<\/a> continues unabated. While that fear of school shootings is perfectly rational, the rise in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu-nj.org\/news\/students-we-face-invasive-ai-powered-school-surveillance-now-were-calling-lawmakers-regulate-it\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">unregulated AI surveillance tools<\/a> comes with its own costs to student\u2019s safety and privacy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">In Baltimore County Public Schools, for example, district officials contract a company called Omnilert to monitor some 7,000 school cameras for deviant activity. In one horrifying case, Omnilert\u2019s system misidentified a <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/future-society\/ai-doritos-bag-gun-cops-teenager\">student\u2019s bag of Doritos<\/a>, labeling it a handgun. It wasn\u2019t until an armed police squad detained the 16-year old student at gunpoint that they realized the system\u2019s error. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">And in Florida, a middle school recently went into lockdown after a similar AI surveillance system <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/future-society\/ai-surveillance-school-clarinet\">mistook<strong> <\/strong>a student\u2019s clarinet<\/a> as a gun. Luckily, no one was hurt in either case, but the capacity for false positives is deeply concerning. Meanwhile, experts remain skeptical that these systems really do make schools safer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cIt\u2019s very peculiar to make the claim that this will keep your kids safe,\u201d Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU, told <em>Forbes<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Marlow was the lead author of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/publications\/digital-dystopia-the-danger-in-buying-what-the-edtech-surveillance-industry-is-selling\" rel=\"nofollow\">2023 report<\/a> finding that eight of the biggest ten school shootings since Columbine took place in heavily-surveilled school campuses. Meanwhile, focus group testing by the ACLU found that pervasive school surveillance makes kids much less comfortable telling teachers and administrators about issues like mental health struggles and domestic abuse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">\u201cBecause kids don\u2019t trust people they view as spying on them, it ruptures trust and actually makes things less safe,\u201d Marlow said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Whether it\u2019s worth the tradeoff remains to be seen \u2014 Marlow notes that more independent research is needed to tell if these AI systems really do lead to safer outcomes for students. In the meantime, it seems like a risk some school administrators are willing to take.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\"><strong>More on surveillance: <\/strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/future-society\/opposition-ai-surveillance-cameras\">Regular People Are Rising Up Against AI Surveillance Cameras<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-surveillance-school-bathroom\">Officials Deploying AI Surveillance Devices in School Bathrooms<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/\">Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public spaces aren\u2019t the only place you need to be worried about being monitored. In 2025, officials are even placing AI surveillance gadgets in school bathrooms. New reporting by Forbes&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}