Students Have Been Called to the Office - Or Arrested - for False Alarms from AI-Powered Surveillance Systems (apnews.com) 161
In 2023 a 13-year-old girl "made an offensive joke while chatting online with her classmates," reports the Associated Press.
But when the school's surveillance software spotted that joke, "Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says." Her parents filed a lawsuit against the school system, according to the article (which points out the girl wasn't allowed to talk to her parents until the next day). "A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl." Gaggle's CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. "I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment," said Patterson.
But that's just one example, the article points out. "Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices." Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids' online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement... In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement....
Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance, said Shahar Pasch, an education lawyer in Florida. One teenage girl she represented made a joke about school shootings on a private Snapchat story. Snapchat's automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours... The technology can also involve law enforcement in responses to mental health crises. In Florida's Polk County Schools, a district of more than 100,000 students, the school safety program received nearly 500 Gaggle alerts over four years, officers said in public Board of Education meetings. This led to 72 involuntary hospitalization cases under the Baker Act, a state law that allows authorities to require mental health evaluations for people against their will if they pose a risk to themselves or others...
Information that could allow schools to assess the software's effectiveness, such as the rate of false alerts, is closely held by technology companies and unavailable publicly unless schools track the data themselves. Students in one photography class were called to the principal's office over concerns Gaggle had detected nudity. The photos had been automatically deleted from the students' Google Drives, but students who had backups of the flagged images on their own devices showed it was a false alarm. District officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. Natasha Torkzaban, who graduated in 2024, said she was flagged for editing a friend's college essay because it had the words "mental health...."
School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. "Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good," said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting.
But when the school's surveillance software spotted that joke, "Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says." Her parents filed a lawsuit against the school system, according to the article (which points out the girl wasn't allowed to talk to her parents until the next day). "A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl." Gaggle's CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. "I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment," said Patterson.
But that's just one example, the article points out. "Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices." Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids' online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement... In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement....
Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance, said Shahar Pasch, an education lawyer in Florida. One teenage girl she represented made a joke about school shootings on a private Snapchat story. Snapchat's automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours... The technology can also involve law enforcement in responses to mental health crises. In Florida's Polk County Schools, a district of more than 100,000 students, the school safety program received nearly 500 Gaggle alerts over four years, officers said in public Board of Education meetings. This led to 72 involuntary hospitalization cases under the Baker Act, a state law that allows authorities to require mental health evaluations for people against their will if they pose a risk to themselves or others...
Information that could allow schools to assess the software's effectiveness, such as the rate of false alerts, is closely held by technology companies and unavailable publicly unless schools track the data themselves. Students in one photography class were called to the principal's office over concerns Gaggle had detected nudity. The photos had been automatically deleted from the students' Google Drives, but students who had backups of the flagged images on their own devices showed it was a false alarm. District officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. Natasha Torkzaban, who graduated in 2024, said she was flagged for editing a friend's college essay because it had the words "mental health...."
School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. "Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good," said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting.
Forget the AI! (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the AI angle.
The real story is the response to an "offensive joke"!
Holy shit!!! Every single adult (including the entire school board) involved should lose their job, be fined $25K with the money going in trust for the girl, and prevented from ever having a govt job again.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!
Re:Forget the AI! (Score:4, Insightful)
Truly, "1984" vibes.
Re:Forget the AI! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am fortunate to have been raised in the 70s and 80s, when mass surveillance like this was only a nightmare brought on by works like "1984". There was no surveillance from the parents even; "Do you know where your children are?" was a question my parents rarely answered in the affirmative. Home for supper, home before dark, or a phone call if you're staying at a friend for dinner or a sleepover.
I was struck by the remark of one student, commenting on the now national ban on mobile phones in the classroom (some schools have the students deposit them in a bin at the classroom entrance, others require them to keep them in a locker for the duration of the school day). She said it was annoying, but also oddly liberating, knowing that not every little gaffe is going to end up on Tiktok to be made fun of. As if "a weight had been lifted". Modern kids might be used to the surveillance state, but it seems they find it as oppressive as we do.
Re:Forget the AI! (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't even 1984. This is orders of magnitude worse, not from the surveillance point but from the response and complete lack of critical thinking. Strip searching a 13 year old girl and keeping her from communicating with her parents, WTF.
Re: Forget the AI! (Score:2)
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Schools have to take these threats seriously every time.
Except for cowardly pigs, they just stand around eating donuts with their fat asses mooching off the government, while people kill kids. Those future kids could have been raped by donald j. trump.
Uvalde officials (cops) cannot be trusted to do the right thing, as the video proves.
Despite the presence of close to 400 officers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, it took 77 minutes for police to confront
And the powers that be in Texas continue to lie, deflect and defend the police who stood by, literally, for over an hour as an active shooter terrorized Robb Elementary in Uvalde.
“Chickens–t.”
That’s Uvalde City Councilman Ernest W. King III — not assailing those spineless officers but rather local news outlets for releasing this footage.
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Kids need to be taught that if they get in trouble at school, that they have a right to have their parents present. Just like adults may have a lawyer. (The parents can then call a lawyer, if necessary). It is perfectly legal to request your parents be present, and they must be present if requested - school administrators may not isolate the kid from their parents.
Strip searching is technically legal if justified, bu
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Better yet throw them in jail without an opportunity to speak to their lawyer or friends/family. It's too optimistic to think that these cockroaches will be removed from positions of authority, but we can at least give them a dose of their own medicine so they can see how harmful it is.
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American schools react pretty strongly when students talk about killing people because it happens quite a bit.
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The real story is the response to an "offensive joke"!
Response to free speech.
How can one be arrested for speech, intentional or a joke, with full approval from a school and the courts? This case needs to be thrown out with prejudice.
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Surveillance it normal.
2 years ago.
Let that sink in.
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Holy shit!!! Every single adult (including the entire school board) involved should lose their job, be fined $25K with the money going in trust for the girl, and prevented from ever having a govt job again Do you think I will be investigated if I say that instead they should be f***ed with a broomstick, preferably one with a cactus mounted on the top?
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Hey, "Registrations_suck", you should prepare for the cops to come knocking on -your door- after posting that threatening and obscene comment....
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I'm ready.
And I've got terminal cancer too.
So, I hope they go ahead and try me.
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Seriously, sorry to hear about your condition, and wish you all the best.
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Not just jokes, but all kinds of behaviour. Most people screw up to some degree as children, and it's often just accepted as part of growing up. If going by the letter of the law, it might be a criminal matter, it might warrant severe punishment. That leeway gives children the chance to make mistakes without it ruining their lives. It's even baked into some legal codes, with childhood convictions being forgotten when they reach adulthood.
Things get bad when people start trying to enforce the rules too stric
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Yes, but maybe she said the N word. Did you even consider that for a moment?
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Exactly this! WTF?!? strip searched, weeks of house arrest, alternative school (read juvie school) and a psych eval for a 13 year old acting like a 13 year old?
Multiple violations of the constitution and a judge with an extra hole or two in his/her head. At MOST she violated a school rule, but school rules can't and shouldn't lead to house arrest (or full on arrest, incommunicado no less, or strip searches).
The judge should be arrested and removed from the bench!.
I sincerely hope the parents talk to the ACL
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I dunno, I think the real problem is that they were even aware of the offensive joke to begin with. Maybe that's not much of a story anymore but it should be.
Re: Forget the AI! (Score:2)
She made the 'joke' on a school account using a school device - that's reasonable IMHO - now, had she made the comment on Facebook, Instagram, or X, that's different, but she was on a school system, that's fair.
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What a wonderful trap for kids, we give them these great communication tools and then monitor them hard core for the inevitably of them using them as kids of any generation would and then we get to punish them!
Re: Forget the AI! (Score:2)
"Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices."
I fail to see the problem - if students say things in "school accounts" using (school) "devices", then yes, the school district SHOULD monitor the activity!
The issue here, clearly, is that every adult involved in the response to this incident took it WAY TOO SERIOUSLY - they deserve to be called out and asked to defend their part in this incident, and the parents need to sue the school district over the way their child was treated by district employees.
If the child was kept away from her parents overnight,
Re:Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:5, Interesting)
we aren't allowed to take them [firearms] away from people who are irresponsible or mentally ill.
That is factually incorrect. Those are both situations where firearms can be taken away. As is a temporary mental crisis.
You seem to be conflating the difficulty in establishing a mental illness. Yes, HIPPA laws have an unintended consequence where reporting a person unfit to possess firearms can be difficult. That can be fixed. As criminal convictions are reported to the government for firearms background check purposes, so to could such a determination by a medical professional. Not a description of the illness, just that a person is considered mentally unfit. A person could challenge that before a judge if they wish to. Severe penalties, including loss of medical license, should exist for reports made in bad faith. The current gov't system, which only has the criminal conviction info (would that included mental commitments ordered by a judge?) is available to fun dealers and yields a near-real time YES/NO to the dealer with regard to whether the sale can proceed of they wish to. The system exists, it just needs a way for doctors to contribute.
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Actually, if you've ever been held for a psychiatric evaluation, you name is on a list of people get get special scrutiny if you try to buy a gun. Not sure of the details, but yes, the government does keep track of such things.
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Actually, if you've ever been held for a psychiatric evaluation, you name is on a list of people get get special scrutiny if you try to buy a gun. Not sure of the details, but yes, the government does keep track of such things.
"held", that sounds like something ordered by a judge. So it's still something initiated by the criminal justice system, not the medical care system. We need the latter to participate too.
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"Gun shows" have nothing to do with it.
Dealers are required to do background checks, "gun show" or not.
Private individuals are not required to do background checks, "gun show" or not (under federal law, state laws differ).
If you claim to be a private individual and the ATF determines that you are, de facto, effectively acting as unlicensed dealer, you go to prison for a very long time (assuming they don't just show up at your house and kill you, your dogs and quite possibly the rest of your family)
Anyone wh
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https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07... [npr.org]
see sec 3.2 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
https://giffords.org/lawcenter... [giffords.org]
see "State Implementation"... https://www.rand.org/research/... [rand.org]
https://www.newyorker.com/news... [newyorker.com]
the takeaway: many states do enforce such prohibitions. some really, really don't.
I like the fact that the factually incorrect post (Score:2)
It's amazing how rarely the truth wins
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There's a lot of folks around here who really hate what I have to say about the evils of unlimited capitalism, and I presume they typically don't mod me up even when they agree with me on some kind of bullshit principle.
This is one of the reasons (Score:2)
Yes there are laws and rules on the books that would allow a mentally ill person to have their weapons taken away. They are extremely difficult to enforce bordering on impossible. Also if the mentally ill person isn't the owner of the guns you can't take them away. So if some kid's uncle is armed to the teeth and the kid is clearly getting ready to go on a s
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I'm not sure I know what the solution to this is.
Its obvious. The solution to school shootings is to get rid of schools. Why anyone thinks its a good idea to put 500+ hormone crazed lunatics together in a prison and force them to do the most worthless make-work imaginable for six hours is beyond me.
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Yes there are laws and rules on the books that would allow a mentally ill person to have their weapons taken away. They are extremely difficult to enforce bordering on impossible.
You sure that is not bad prosecutorial or judicial discretion. We have people arrested with a firearm during a crime and the discretion is used to change them with misdemeanors and release them back into the community.
Also if the mentally ill person isn't the owner of the guns you can't take them away. So if some kid's uncle is armed to the teeth and the kid is clearly getting ready to go on a spree there is fuck off anyone can do about it.
As I have said repeatedly, safe storage. The kid should not have access.
you're going to have a damn hard time convincing that guy that he needs to secure his firearms unless you just pass a law requiring him to secure his damn firearms.
I've seen multiple firearms owners move from wall racks to gun safes after having a proper safety class. And some going lower budget and putting a trigger lock on the rifle/shotgun in the wall rack.
And there's a entire host of problems even with that because traditionally those kind of laws are used to force people to buy expensive equipment so that minorities particularly black people can't own firearms cuz they can't afford the equipment.
Nope. Mossberg shotguns
Re:Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, HIPPA laws have an unintended consequence...
Sigh. As I used to point out regularly to the doctors at the hospital where I used to work -- and who were required to undergo annual refresher training to make sure they understood its ramifications, and should know better, but continued to make the same mistake in writing and email, the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has one 'P' and two 'A's, not the other way around. HIPAA, not HIPPA.
Re: Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:2)
Re: Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:2)
Obsessed, much?
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The summary is that mental health, which can be manufactured, is not a reliable way to "discredit" someone from owning a gun.
By "mental health" I am referring to something like documented behavior of endangering someone or themselves. Something evidence based, not merely a subjective opinion. On the criminal side, we use honest to god convictions. Not subjective things like a good character reference as someone suggested. I'd rank a lot of diagnoses more like good character references. Insufficient.
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The AP article added the context of the joke, which didn't make it funny but subjectively I would agree that it was non-serious. One does not passively say "kill all x" after accused of being one of x in a group chat with friends because she is serious.
A manual review and some minor counseling would have solved this problem, but apparently nobody in a position of leadership understood the point of this software.
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So because of that we will relentlessly punish anyone convicted of any crime or even tensions lead near crime rather than risk a one and a hundred thousand or one in a million
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If she was a 23 year old known ammosexual, I might agree, but she's 13 and said a 13 year old thing "Kill all the Mexicos" with a 13 year old level of thought.
Re: Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:2)
The folly is in thinking that school shootings are as common in the rest of the world as they are in the US
So we do have a culture of violence (Score:2)
It's the combination of late stage capitalism and puritanical insanity. It is most definitely not a good mix.
But bottom line is when school shootings happen in other countries the way they solved it wasn't by taking away assault rifles. They had to take away basically everything except farmer shotguns and bolt action hunting rifles.
When the left wing points to othe
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It's amazing all the shittiness we accept in this country all for this dumb experiment in the mass ownership of guns, I guarantee this Orwellian level of surveillance on kids is all deemed necessary because of mass shooting.
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This post is stupid. Every other first world country in the world enjoys criminals who largely don't have access to guns because of their strict gun ownership laws and you see it their drastically lower homicide rates. Your hypothetical doesn't hold up to very obvious mountain of real world examples.
Re: Wasn't an offensive joke (Score:2)
To be fair. This is all laws. No law stops bad behavior. Nothing stops me from killing except my lack of desire.
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So? There are _educational_ measures for dealing with that. Throwing a kid in jail is never acceptable. In the absolute worst case you can lock them in a closed juvenile mental institution, but that requires at the very least a real psych evaluation that clearly says they are a danger.
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Well, here it would be a criminal act to put somebody of that age in jail. Do we have a massive violence problem with kids? No.
Re: Forget the AI! (Score:4, Informative)
I guarantee there's a lot more to the story including the kid probably being a bully to other kids and possibly the offensive joke directed to one of their peers?
From TFA:
Earlier in the day, her friends had teased the teen about her tanned complexion and called her “Mexican,” even though she’s not. When a friend asked what she was planning for Thursday, she wrote: “on Thursday we kill all the Mexico’s.”
Mathis said the comments were “wrong” and “stupid,” but context showed they were not a threat.
Good thing Bender isn't in eighth grade.
So what's the license say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Gaggle's CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. "I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment," said Patterson.
If the license doesn't prohibit leaping to law enforcement when the alleged purpose is to "intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement" then fuck you Jeff Patterson, you lying fuck.
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Everybody Runs
2023
Normal for Florida
but who am I kidding, not myself, so... normal for everywhere
I feel like I'm the only one puzzled that no one else seems to know or care when I bring it up with chumps
(chumps: technical term for "regular" people)
Re: So what's the license say? (Score:2)
If the license doesn't prohibit leaping to law enforcement when the alleged purpose is to "intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement" then fuck you Jeff Patterson, you lying fuck.
Wait a minute, are you blaming the CEO because the software license agreement didn't require users to NEVER escalate anything uncovered to law enforcement? Really?
Your anger should be directed toward the folks that picked up the phone and called the police/pressed charges against the 13 year-old girl...
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Wait a minute, are you blaming the CEO because the software license agreement didn't require users to NEVER escalate anything uncovered to law enforcement? Really?
You understood the comment! Good kenh!
Re: So what's the license say? (Score:2)
He has a point though. If I sell a gun, is the burden on me to make sure that the buyer doesn't murder someone with it? That sounds unreasonable.
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Yeah, he's not a fucking moron, he know exactly how this system will be used. He's just not allowed to say it out loud. Give it a few years though.
This is a symptom (Score:4, Insightful)
Of the numerous school shootings and legions of hungry lawyers. The school would rather see a child arrested than be the site of a mass shooting or lawsuit.
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The school would rather see a child arrested than be the site of a mass shooting or lawsuit.
Setting aside your "or lawsuit", would you rather have a school be the site of a mass shooting than see a child arrested?
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The school would rather see a child arrested than be the site of a mass shooting or lawsuit.
Setting aside your "or lawsuit", would you rather have a school be the site of a mass shooting than see a child arrested?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Bemjamin Franklin
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The school would rather see a child arrested than be the site of a mass shooting or lawsuit.
Setting aside your "or lawsuit", would you rather have a school be the site of a mass shooting than see a child arrested?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Bemjamin Franklin
Yep. We all know that quote, and probably most of us agree with it.
There's a huge difference between "a little temporary Safety", though, and an absence of mass shootings.
Re: This is a symptom (Score:5, Insightful)
What an asinine hypothetical.
What did the 13 year-old say? It's not in the summary, so we have to imagine what she might have said...
Explain to me why calling the police to roll a cruiser to the middle school, pick up a 13 year-old, put her in a jail cell over night and deprive her of any contact with her parents for 24 hours was the right thing to do?
Can't the district call the parents? Doesn't the school have counselors/social workers? Psychologists? Why was the immediate response incarceration?
That district should expect a HUGE lawsuit.
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You don't have to build a new school every time there's a shooting, that's just done to protect the guilty.
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It was the cigarette. They don't let the teachers smoke on school grounds any more, and that makes everyone way more on-edge.
The Hellmouth is active as ever (Score:2)
This is the first of several rightly famous Jon Katz pieces:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
greater good (Score:5, Interesting)
> Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good
> a 13-year-old girl ... was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell ... A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl ... over an offensive joke
The person that made the greater good statement is an idiot and should be subjected to the same treatment because I find it offensive.
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> Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good
> a 13-year-old girl ... was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell ... A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl ... over an offensive joke
The person that made the greater good statement is an idiot and should be subjected to the same treatment because I find it offensive.
I suspect if they or a family member received that treatment they would not say the same thing. Where I live the parents would lawyer up a lawsuits start flying; so the school district would never pull that stunt. What I don't get is why does teh school have access to their social media accounts? If a school asked for it they's get a big F off it's none of your business. I suspect many kids ahve the 'offical' account and a real account. What happens when a bunch of students decides to monkey wrench the sy
Re: greater good (Score:2)
Gaggle is a tool to monitor activity on SCHOOL DISTRICT provided social media applications, she used a school device to access a school social media app and made her comment that was picked up by gaggle.
I think schools offer their own social apps to 'protect' the children from predators, and the district monitors their own app for abuses.
The reaction was over the top, the oversight was appropriate.
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Gaggle is a tool to monitor activity on SCHOOL DISTRICT provided social media applications, she used a school device to access a school social media app and made her comment that was picked up by gaggle.
I think schools offer their own social apps to 'protect' the children from predators, and the district monitors their own app for abuses.
The reaction was over the top, the oversight was appropriate.
Thanks for the clarification. I understood the part that sd:
The 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students’ accounts.
just to mean she signed up using a school email and the school had access to what was otherwise a private account, not a service run on behalf of the school. TFA was somewhat vague about the exact circumstances. But yea, they over reacted.
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The word offensive was a euphemism. It's not about what you (or a judge) "finds" offensive such as a "yo mamma" joke you didn't find funny. There are thresholds and threats of a mass shooting is clearly beyond.
Now of course I don't support the surveillance and jailing a 13 year old but don't pretend this was about a joke. When read literally, these were serious words. Apparently the context enables to understand that the words were not to be taken seriously, and that's the duty of a child psychiatrist to fi
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The solutions to childhood and school problems do not need to involve mass surveillance.
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Anyone that thinks its okay that some innocent 13 year old girls will be treated like dangerous criminals, for whatever reason, has crossed a threshold too.
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Schools are hyper-vigilant about school shootings now.
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She actually threatened to kill "Mexico's".
This is obviously not a true threat. [wikipedia.org]
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That document is in contradiction to this document, which takes precedence. However, even taking it to be a "low-level threat", that would usually not, according to your document, result in a law enforcement investigation. [congress.gov]
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I don't feel qualified to form any further of an opinion on the topic, since information about the event is sparse. I don't know what happened.
bully comeuppance AI software (Score:2)
Re:bully comeuppance AI software (Score:4, Interesting)
Just as likely that she was the one being bullied. IDK why you would assume that an incompetent software package being implemented wrongly by a public district would have been correct. This claim that it was all done automatically without any human intervention is also just wrong. There's no way to perform an arrest without the officers involved making a determination of probable cause.
"Hurr durr, computer said you're guilty" isn't a defense.
As expected (Score:4, Insightful)
This is always the way it goes
Something bad happens. People demand solutions. Poorly thought out and ineffective solutions are implemented, along with a press conference
Innocent people are overwhelmingly targeted while the guilty find workarounds
The problem persists
Panic culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech companies guard their data on false positives, but that secrecy isn't the root issue; it's the broader erosion of rights under the guise of safety. We've let fear of rare tragedies justify a surveillance state that assumes every child is a suspect, policed by unyielding laws and overzealous administrators. The First Amendment crumbles when words are criminalized without due process. The Fourth Amendment vanishes in strip-searches over bad jokes. This is a deliberate stripping of liberties, using tech as a convenient excuse. The blame falls squarely on the systems and people who wield it recklessly. Liberty won't return until we dismantle these policies, not the tools they hide behind. In fact liberty won't return until we do away with the safety/panic/cancel culture injected by idiots misled by authoritarians.
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Indeed. In civilized nations, a 13 year old cannot even be arrested and making an inappropriate joke cannot get you arrested either. Sounds like an advanced form of surveillance-fascism to me.
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And which civilized countries are those? Britain? Where about a thousand people a month get arrested as a sanctioned form of state repression for political dissidents? The EU? Where they just said journalists can be arrested if it's in the "public interest"?
Why does Snapchat do this? (Score:2)
Why is Snapchat so dead set to be spyware for authorities? I see no commercial value in it, they can't really use snap content for anything else given their privacy policy. All they are doing is harming their brand, Whatsapp does not get brand damage from having E2EE.
I hate to see... (Score:2)
I would hate to see what my school record would look like if I went to school today. I might even have a criminal record.
Sounds like surveillance-fascism (Score:3)
And not the "light" variant anymore, but already an advanced form.
Don't remember it like that. (Score:2, Informative)
School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. "Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good," said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting.
So it's better to throw a 1000 innocent people in prison than let 1 guilty one go free? Don't remember that saying like that. On the upside, sounds like a good motto for ICE...
Re: (Score:2)
So it's better to throw a 1000 innocent people in prison than let 1 guilty one go free?
Pol Pot only said arrest one innocent rather than freeing one guilty. So, this is 1000 times worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes it really does make sense to sacrifice some privacy for the greater good. And sometimes it doesn't. You have to look at the evidence. What are the real benefits? What are the real harms? The answer isn't always the same.
Oh, the evidence is secret? The companies consider it proprietary information and won't let anyone see it? You'll just have to trust us then. We Know Best.
This story seems fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe AI played a role. But AI didn't sentence the girl to eight weeks of house arrest. A court did that. Courts don't order house arrest based solely on an AI report, or for an offensive joke.
The story as presented, doesn't pass the smell test.
Re: (Score:2)
The article and summary don't do a very good job of explaining any of it. The house arrest was a bail condition, not a sentence. You have to read the attached lawsuit to get enough actual understanding to grok the article.
So, do you kids ... (Score:2)
Careful (Score:3)
If things get out if hand online, we sometimes recommend the parents to press charges with the police since our hands are tied. If it happens outside the school system, we have no authority. Kids usually are smart enough to avoid our platform for these things.
There is a very small percentage of kids that are emotionally neglected by their parents by being spoiled. It once resulted in a lengthy newspaper article about how our school "sent the police to the kid's home for something completely innocent" . (daddy had political connections)
My advice with these things? Whenever a sensational article about school turns up, tread carefully. It may be a very single sided story.
Profit first, child second (Score:2)
The evid
Homeschool (Score:2)
This is why homeschooling rates are increasing. The public schools are a joke, and increasingly a threat.
Always remember, if it's issued to you, it's not p (Score:2)
If you didn't get it yourself, it's used to surveil you.
eliminate (Score:2)
This is very wasteful. What needs to be done is to eliminate the principal's office altogether, and just automatically detonate the explosive devices all students are required to carry.
Re: (Score:2)
How about... maybe the kids don't need to be on social media? The kid doesn't need a $500 cell phone, and a tablet, and a computer in their bedroom, and a TV, and a PS5.
Back in the day, we went to eachother's house or picked up the wall-mounted phone if we wanted to talk to a friend.
Where were the parents? Why did the kid have unsupervised (or no parental controls) social media time? Does a public school need 'surveillance software' to monitor a student... isn't that kind of a parental thing?
Re: Sagan lamented credulity among the masses (Score:2)
Gabber is run by the school, a 'safe' social media app for students, I assume.
The district pays for it.
The district gave the girl the account.
The district gave the girl a device (laptop, tablet, chromebook?) to access the device.
The district had every right to monitor what students do on school systems using district assets...
Imagine the district didn't keep an eye on the site they operate and offer to the students, when one student starts cyberbullying another on the site, the district would have no idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Not every place on this planet does this sort of crap. In fact, most do not.
Re: (Score:3)
> Sure we do. Universal background checks for all transfers. Check that included criminal and mental health issues, the latter is currently lacking. As is the universal part. The system already exists, providing near real-time info to dealers (a YES/NO to proceed with transfer). Then have required safety training, as we do with hunting licenses. Again, the system exists, state approved instructors and curriculum exist, hunter safety training is mostly general firearms safety training. Drop the hunting bi