Welcome To America's New Surveillance High Schools (forbes.com) 101
Beverly Hills High School has deployed an AI-powered surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition cameras, behavioral analysis software, smoke detector-shaped bathroom listening devices from Motorola, drones, and license plate readers from Flock Safety -- a setup the district spent $4.8 million on in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and considers necessary given the school's high-profile location in Los Angeles.
Similar systems are spreading to campuses nationwide as schools try to stop mass shootings that killed 49 people on school property this year, 59 in 2024, and 45 in 2023. A 2023 ACLU report found that eight of the ten largest school shootings since Columbine occurred at schools that already had surveillance systems, and 32% of students surveyed said they felt like they were always being watched. The technology has a spotty track record, however.
Gun detection vendor Evolv, used by more than 800 schools including Beverly Hills High, was reprimanded by the FTC in 2024 for claiming its AI could detect all weapons after it failed to flag a seven-inch knife used to stab a student in 2022. Evolv has also flagged laptops and water bottles as guns. Rival vendor Omnilert flagged a 16-year-old student at a Maryland high school reaching for an empty Doritos bag as a possible gun threat; police held the teenager at gunpoint.
Not every school is buying in. Highline Schools in Washington state cancelled its $33,000 annual ZeroEyes contract this year and spent the money on defibrillators and Ford SUVs for its safety team instead.
Similar systems are spreading to campuses nationwide as schools try to stop mass shootings that killed 49 people on school property this year, 59 in 2024, and 45 in 2023. A 2023 ACLU report found that eight of the ten largest school shootings since Columbine occurred at schools that already had surveillance systems, and 32% of students surveyed said they felt like they were always being watched. The technology has a spotty track record, however.
Gun detection vendor Evolv, used by more than 800 schools including Beverly Hills High, was reprimanded by the FTC in 2024 for claiming its AI could detect all weapons after it failed to flag a seven-inch knife used to stab a student in 2022. Evolv has also flagged laptops and water bottles as guns. Rival vendor Omnilert flagged a 16-year-old student at a Maryland high school reaching for an empty Doritos bag as a possible gun threat; police held the teenager at gunpoint.
Not every school is buying in. Highline Schools in Washington state cancelled its $33,000 annual ZeroEyes contract this year and spent the money on defibrillators and Ford SUVs for its safety team instead.
IN 90210 they have the funds to overpay for shirty (Score:2)
IN 90210 they have the funds to overpay for shirty tech with nice kickbacks
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IN 90210 they have the funds to overpay for shirty tech with nice kickbacks
I bet those wearables are stylish though.
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Wait, Beverley Hills is an actual place?
I thought it was just a trashy 90s TV allegory about pre-millennials from the mid-west mixing with Hollywood nepo-babies.
Your 16 year old twin sister gets hit on by some 22 year old dude named Dylan who has either failed the 10th grade several times or is an undercover narcotics agent. Happy Days meets 21 Jump Street.
Bathroom = Expectation of PRIVACY (Score:1)
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Re: Bathroom = Expectation of PRIVACY (Score:2)
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My high school didn't even allow doors on the bathroom stalls. You might want or expect privacy but you are unlikely to get it.
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Re:Bathroom = Expectation of PRIVACY (Score:4, Interesting)
And those "Listening Devices" are a direct violation of the 4th amendment.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the idea of a listening device in bathrooms creepy and mortifying.
I think it will take a court case to decide whether a minor has an expectation of privacy for their conversations in a public bathroom. While that makes sense, I'm sure someone can make a plausible case that this is OK. Video cameras would be something else.
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Education Funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if those millions of dollars were spent on teaching students.
And 100% focusing on early grade reading skills (Score:2)
The biggest item showing the lack of priorities in education spending, teaching methods, teacher recruiting and curriculum is that there is no concerted national effort to get the earliest grades to advanced reading levels.
Passing students along for 4 years lets them get to 8 or 9 years old and sets up most of the low achieving readers for lower academic performance for the rest of public schooling.
Re:Education Funding (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if those millions of dollars were spent on teaching students.
I'm sure the district would love to spend the money that way, but we live in a society that values easy access to guns more than it values safety, so the district's hand is forced.
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<quote><p>Imagine if those millions of dollars were spent on teaching students.</p></quote>
<p>I'm sure the district would love to spend the money that way, but we live in a society that values easy access to guns more than it values safety, so the district's hand is forced.</p></quote>
Oh, bullshit. That's a great talking point, but it doesn't mirror reality.
Decades ago people were going to school with shotgun racks on their vehicles. Nobody was blowing
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Decades ago people were going to school with shotgun racks on their vehicles.
Heh. My dad used to keep a rifle and ammunition in his school locker. He'd carry the rifle into the school and put it in his locker every morning, and reverse the process every afternoon. Why? He hunted jackrabbits every afternoon, on his way home from school. The local farmers paid a bounty for jackrabbit ears because the rabbits ate their crops. He tried using a shotgun for a while, but the shells were a lot more expensive, so assuming sufficient skill to hit fast-moving rabbits with a rifle, it was
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Oh, I should have mentioned: It was a semi-automatic rifle, with a high-capacity magazine (though the magazine was an internal tube, not a replaceable box). It even had a polymer stock though it was dark brown, not black.
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Heh. My dad used to keep a rifle and ammunition in his school locker.
I am not sure there is good evidence that the current zero-tolerance rules that most school districts have in place for the presence of firearms on school district property (with certain exceptions in some states for law enforcement or trained SROs) have reduced the incidence of mass shootings or of gun violence or injuries on school property. But, I do know that, given the trauma with guns that many young people have experienced, seeing a gun, especially a rifle, casually in your high school hallway is eno
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. But, I do know that, given the trauma with guns that many young people have experienced, seeing a gun
Hardly any young people have experienced that trauma. In absolute terms, it's probably a few hundred nationwide. On a percentage basis it's indistinguishable from zero. A much larger number have been traumatized by people telling them about school shootings and giving the impression that such events are common.
However, I wasn't suggesting that schools should go back to the policies of the 1960s (when my dad was in high school), just pointing out that guns weren't always seen as incompatible with schools
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just pointing out that guns weren't always seen as incompatible with schools.
That's true that was the perception in many places, but that perception was still just as wrong then as it is now. You could make the same argument around smoking. My teachers smoked like chimneys in the "teachers lounge", and the smoke often wafted through the hallways. It was "normal," but it wasn't healthy or safe. Guns are the same: owning a gun has always put you at a high risk of dying from a gun in comparison to non-gun owners; and guns in school increased the chance of accidental injuries or suicide
So the kids aren't being bullied (Score:3)
What it looks like so far is you have a mentally unstable child who has been showing clear signs of mental instability and parents who have been leaving guns lying around because why the hell not we've got a second amendment right?
The parents of that school shooter in Michigan are going to do 10 years in prison for negligence. That seems to be the solution right now. I'm no
In truth it's always boomers doing the (Score:1)
Shootings because they all are right wing violent people with mental problems. They are the direct cause for all our problems. There's a growing problem with baby boomers who just want to kill somebody and they're old so they decide what the hell I'm going to shoot a random person on my property and see if I get away with it and if I don't who cares if I die in prison I'm only going to be alive for a few more years. You keep seeing kids wandering on to somebody's property playing hide and seek and getting b
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I'm an adult, and I legally own several guns, but at no point do I get the compulsion to go shoot up a Walmart.
You don't have that compulsion RIGHT NOW, but should you snap and have that compulsion tomorrow, well, you already have the gun.
Mass shootings are actually a very unlikely cause of death, and are even a very unlikely cause of death by gun. You're much more likely to die by suicide with a gun than be a victim in a mass shooting.
Which highlights that fact that having a gun in your home makes you MUCH more likely to die by gun violence.
Decades ago people were going to school with shotgun racks on their vehicles. Nobody was blowing anyone away.
The murder rate (with a gun) was actually just as high in 1992 as it wa
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Imagine if those millions of dollars were spent on teaching students.
I'm sure the district would love to spend the money that way, but we live in a society that values easy access to guns more than it values safety, so the district's hand is forced.
We've had "easy access to guns" for 250 years. High Schools used to have firing ranges and shooting teams (including girls shooting teams). It was not uncommon to see rifle racks in the back windows of trucks in my high school parking lot. Somehow we managed to not shoot anyone. What's changed is the introduction of ghetto thug culture into schools. If you had a problem with a guy when I was in school, you arranged to meet out back after 3 PM and settle it with fists. Now kids "pop a cap" into students and
Re:Education Funding (Score:4, Insightful)
So what's different now from 40-50 years ago? Aside from the population more than doubling since then, the steady decline in real wages for low-income earners has certainly increased mental health issues. The disappearance of the single breadwinner, two parent middle class family. These days, social media both causing a whole raft of mental health problems and also luring those disturbed kids with the promise of fame. Meanwhile, guns are not any harder for an average kid to access. Just because they're not openly allowed in school anymore, kids can still get their parents untended guns. Unstable adults can still buy all the guns they want. Getting those guns on school is only a minor problem since (a) as TFS states, most of those expensive security systems don't work all that well and (b) if you go in shooting, detection systems don't matter much do they?
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Mass shootings have absolutely NOTHING to do with "thug culture".
"Thug culture" is code word for "black." It's a racist idea and not based in the reality that most mass shooters are white, and nearly all mass shooters are men (https://ammo.com/research/mass-shootings-by-shooters-race).
It would be much more accurate to say it is a men problem than a "thug" problem.
I think you're missing something (Score:5, Informative)
Let's say you are a mentally unbalanced person with easy access to guns 70 or 80 years ago.
If you were black and you went on a shooting rampage nobody cared because nobody cared what the black folks did to other black folks and we didn't let them near white folks.
If you are white and you wanted to go on a shooting rampage well, you had plenty of black folks you could shoot up and again nobody cared.
My point is the violence was there people just didn't give a shit. If you actually read the history of racial violence in America it is terrifying stuff. We do everything we can to pretend it didn't happen.
So by the '70s racial violence was frowned upon and you were likely to get in trouble for it and by the '80s you were definitely going to get caught and thrown in prison. Hell there's a couple who showed up at a black birthday party waving their guns around and threatening people and they're doing 10 years in federal for that.
So what you're seeing is there is no longer a socially acceptable outlet for mentally ill people who want to commit violence and kill people.
It's kind of like how fentanyl became a crisis but crack cocaine wasn't a problem. Fentanyl was a problem because good American white men were taking it and overdosing. But nobody gave a shit about black people just lock him up in prison if you catch one of them. And let the CIA sell them the crack you lock them up for.
And of course pointing any of this out triggers the fuck out of people because we're not supposed to confront or think about all the racial violence that exists in this country today let alone the stuff that existed before.
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You could also stop punching yourself in the nuts. That's going to be real hard to do because you've been doing it your whole life but if you try real hard and maybe take a classic Community College you can figure it out.
And remember if you see an llm remind at the Trump fucks kids!
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Something you probably do not want to think about.
Let's say you are a mentally unbalanced person with easy access to guns 70 or 80 years ago.
If you were black and you went on a shooting rampage nobody cared because nobody cared what the black folks did to other black folks and we didn't let them near white folks.
If you are white and you wanted to go on a shooting rampage well, you had plenty of black folks you could shoot up and again nobody cared.
My point is the violence was there people just didn't give a shit. If you actually read the history of racial violence in America it is terrifying stuff. We do everything we can to pretend it didn't happen.
So by the '70s racial violence was frowned upon and you were likely to get in trouble for it and by the '80s you were definitely going to get caught and thrown in prison. Hell there's a couple who showed up at a black birthday party waving their guns around and threatening people and they're doing 10 years in federal for that.
So what you're seeing is there is no longer a socially acceptable outlet for mentally ill people who want to commit violence and kill people.
It's kind of like how fentanyl became a crisis but crack cocaine wasn't a problem. Fentanyl was a problem because good American white men were taking it and overdosing. But nobody gave a shit about black people just lock him up in prison if you catch one of them. And let the CIA sell them the crack you lock them up for.
And of course pointing any of this out triggers the fuck out of people because we're not supposed to confront or think about all the racial violence that exists in this country today let alone the stuff that existed before.
What gun nuts love to forget is that 60 years ago, guns were more tightly controlled. Black people were restricted (rightly or wrongly) and the type of guns you could get were more limited. Charles Whitman who did the University of Texas shooting in 1966 most powerful weapon was a M1 carbine (.30) as well as a Remington 700 bolt action rifle, 2 shotguns and 3 pistols. He killed 15 and injured 31. He couldn't easily obtain full automatic weapons like an AK47 or western equivalents at the time. Columbine in 1
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You give some interesting information, but you main conclusion seems flawed. Other countries (non-US) don't have the same mass shooting problems, so what about their mentally ill people. Are you implying they handle mental health better in other countries? I guess that's plausible.
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We've had "easy access to guns" for 250 years.
You mean like a musket-loading rifle? Hardly useful in a school shooting.
High Schools used to have firing ranges and shooting teams (including girls shooting teams).
Some still do, although guns for sport is not as popular as it once was, and I doubt any of those teams "practice" on school grounds.
It was not uncommon to see rifle racks in the back windows of trucks in my high school parking lot. Somehow we managed to not shoot anyone.
? What fantasy history are you looking at? The murder rate in the 1980s and 1990s was as high or higher than in the last three years (2021-2025).
What's changed is the introduction of ghetto thug culture into schools.
Oh, now I understand. Blame on on black people. Got it.
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The funny thing about education is when people talk about it an instantly show how uneducated they are on the topic. School shootings in America date back over 185 years now. Whatever you think was relevant back when you were a kid hasn't changed. Additionally precisely none of the school shootings in any recent memory have anything to do with ghetto thuggery or getting into a fist fight with one guy at 3pm. Also gangs fights rarely play out as school shootings.
Fundamentally like everyone in the peanut gall
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Easy access to guns, but where are all the people trying to oppose the government? I mean, that's been the rallying cry for why they need those guns for when government goes rogue.
Since government is going rogue, those people don't seem to be taking up arms, so maybe the whole 2nd amendment thing is just a bunch of lies.
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Imagine if those millions of dollars were spent on teaching students.
I'm sure the district would love to spend the money that way, but we live in a society that values easy access to guns more than it values safety, so the district's hand is forced.
This is Beverly Hills, and school districts are funded by property tax revenues. This school district has money coming out of its metaphorical ears.
That, of course, is also a problem, that some school districts are lavishly funded and others struggle mightily. But if the Beverly Hills school district weren't blowing $5M on questionable safety equipment, they'd be blowing it on something else.
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This is Beverly Hills, and school districts are funded by property tax revenues
Sort of, most districts have a mix of revenue streams (many states use income taxes to pay for a portion of the cost of public schools, for instance), and some communities pool money into a central pool and the distribute it back out again (to try to ensure districts in poor communities have enough to keep their schools functioning).
About 20% of the children (likely the richest 20% of families) in BH send their kids to private schools, so you can't really assume the BH schools are full of extremely wealth
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BHUSD spends over $30k per pupil per year, more than double the national average.
And the cost of rent in BH is more than double the national average, so even if you pay teachers double the salary they still won't be able to live in the same neighborhood as their schools or as their students.
The high percentage of private school students in the area actually gives them more money per public school student -- the wealthy pay large property tax bills and then don't consume public school resources.
That's exactly the problem - most school funding is determined locally, and when a large % of the children don't attend public school it is difficult to get voters to support funding increases for public schools. And if there's one thing I know about the wealthy it is this: they hate paying taxes.
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Seriously (Score:3)
Sorta (Score:5, Interesting)
From people I know who are familiar with the project, it actually does work. Crime trends down on businesses that have the green lights outside. I don't mind it much because:
1. It's opt-in - business owners are under no obligation to sign up for the project
2. It's obvious when a business is using the service - there's a big green light out front
3. Police only get instant access to the video when the owner says there is a problem, otherwise it's up to the owner to give up the video, or the police can get a warrant for it, as it's always been
I'll take a program like this over Flock that tracks everything everyone does everywhere.
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Nah. That is taken care of.
Just shot the "fake robbery" guys on sight and it will not catch on. People are getting shot for less by the police. And if you're taking that risk anyway, you may as well go all the way and grab some cash.
The problem is different: Green light or not, no camera will come down from the ceiling and stop or mitigate a robbery in process. There is a slight advantage of getting surveillance video out on the street slightly faster, but that needs to be faster than the criminal needs to
Re: Sorta (Score:2)
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No laws, cameras, or any type of surveilance ever stopped a crime from happening.
Tell that to Australia who just had their first mass shooting with a fatality in three years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Australia); they have some of the most strict gun laws in the world.
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Well - it happened anyway.
Which just proves the parents point: Outlawing something will not stop it from happening. You need laws to make it MORE DIFFICULT to do.
Make it hard to own guns and you have one mass shooting in 30 years. Make it easy to have them und you'll end up with 30 per month.
And cameras don't make it harder to commit a crime. It just may or may not make it easier for the police to catch you - after the fact.
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I am not sure there is good evidence of cameras as a deterrent for mass school shootings, though. Such shootings happen so infrequently (rela
Re: Seriously (Score:2)
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No laws, cameras, or any type of surveilance ever stopped a crime from happening.
You should just go to Somalia and experience what it's like when there are no laws, cameras, or any type of surveillance.
About 25% of murders in the US are premeditated. Legal ramifications are definitely a consideration for those people.
Sounds like a prison. (Score:4, Insightful)
Schools are just too big. More local schools with smaller buildings and a hell of a lot less administration department. All this weapon detection and eyes everywhere just says school buildings have become too big to manage in any reasonable way. I'm not saying we should go back to the little schoolhouse in every neighborhood, but almost.
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Society: trending down.
Schools are just too big. More local schools with smaller buildings and a hell of a lot less administration department. All this weapon detection and eyes everywhere just says school buildings have become too big to manage in any reasonable way. I'm not saying we should go back to the little schoolhouse in every neighborhood, but almost.
I don't disagree, but all that ignores the fact the the problem with schools is the student body itself: there are too many walking the halls that belong in reform school instead of real school.
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My high school graduating class (Fenger HS Chicago) had over a thousand kids -- all out of the same big building. Its not the numbers but the socialization that has changed. Folks are being conditioned to not cooperate in ways not seen before. Too many glorifications of the lone gunman plotting revenge. And all the cameras will do nothing to prevent these incidents, just contribute video for subsequent entertainment.
False Positives (Score:3)
You have to wonder if the false positives are intentional. If not for false positives, they would hardly flag anything at all and people would think they aren't working.
Yet another price to pay... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Does it also teach students not to eat doritos or play the clarinet [washingtonpost.com]?
AI Camera Analysis (Score:2)
Whoa (Score:1)
Motorola is mostly a fascist company now (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of blending of government and Private industry is a huge component of fascism. It's also all kinds of fucked up do you have a private company giving the cops tens of millions of dollars for a training facility.
This kind of crap here in the school is an extension of that. And you can't say no because they are going to give a lot of money to local politicians and you're going to learn the names of those local politicians and most people when it comes to local races vote based on which name they recognize.
Even if you're somehow smart enough to figure this all out on your own and you do them scroll enough that you're aware of it your neighbors aren't.
Gun? (Score:4, Funny)
flagged a 16-year-old student at a Maryland high school reaching for an empty Doritos bag
"Drop the chips and put your hands up! This school has an exclusive contract with Cheetos."
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If that student had a gun he could have stood up for his rights
Cool story bro. If your world view was correct there'd very likely be multiple dead people in your scenario instead of literally zero dead or injured.
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Yes. But what about the corporate licensing violations?
Let's try to keep our priorities straight</sarcasm>
Decisions, decisions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, the USA could: (1) pass sensible gun laws and get guns off the streets, amending the Constitution if necessary, or (2) permit the proliferation of guns and then build a giant surveillance system that turns schools into virtual prisons and incidentally provides corporations with oodles of data on your kids that they can monetize while making fuck all difference to school shooters.
The USA never disappoints and always chooses the shittier option.
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But but but someone got shot in Australia last week that shows gun controls don't work bro. Someone still managed to shoot someone. Therefore we need to do nothing. We couldn't possibly amend our sacred (and recently very much ignored) constitution for something that doesn't 100% solved the problem in all scenarios. /s
Government putting microphones in restrooms (Score:2)
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It is always adults (Score:2)
Materializing their problems and insecurities into behaviors that hurt kids.
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Well, that comment wasn't at all creepy.
"multiple threats" (Score:2)
"The surveillance system spots multiple threats per day, the district said."
I'm wondering how many of these 'threats' are legitimate and actionable, and not false alarms. But aside from that, surveillance cameras are already pervasive and you can expect to be visible on one almost everywhere you go in an urban or suburban setting. Video doorbells and home security systems have views of the street. Retail stores and any large building will have security cameras. Some big box stores I've visited have a mobile
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But I know for a fact that it can be done cheaply. You can get a decent network-connected surveillance camera for under $100. My home system has several that feed in to a $150 mini-PC running open source software. Yes there will be additional compute horsepower required for real-time AI analysis but annual district expenditures of "$4.8 million on security, including staff" seem amazingly high to me.
Yes.
But you always can do more and spend more money.
And now put yourself in the shoes of the guy responsible for security: Spend more money and be seen as doing your job, or have your head on the chopping block for "not doing enough" when something happens?
It's the tiger repelling stone. If you don't need to kill tigers, you need to show some other proof of work.
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I'm not suggesting that a school district should homebrew their campus security system. I'm pointing out that the components are not expensive and they are getting ripped off.
Get rid of the gun culture to stop shootings (Score:2)
The USA has this pro-gun culture, and THAT is why we have all of these shootings. The CULTURE needs to look at guns as a bad thing, even if some people will still have one for personal security reasons in the short term. This can't happen when Republicans look at the response to shootings with "thoughts and prayers" as their only response. Note that the moment a shooting happens that kills a close relative, they MIGHT finally try to do something, but private schools have fewer cases of shootings, so t
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Well yes, culture is the problem. But not necessarily just a pro-gun culture. Canada and Switzerland have that, too.
It's a "I'll solve every conflict with violence"-culture and "Look at me and I'll shoot you"-culture that is the actual problem. Look at the US current politics. And - as you mentioned - a "Well, too bad we can't do anything here. Thoughts and Prayers"-culture
Pro-gun-culture is merely a big enabler.
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Well yes, culture is the problem. But not necessarily just a pro-gun culture. Canada and Switzerland have that, too.
It's a "I'll solve every conflict with violence"-culture and "Look at me and I'll shoot you"-culture that is the actual problem. Look at the US current politics. And - as you mentioned - a "Well, too bad we can't do anything here. Thoughts and Prayers"-culture
Pro-gun-culture is merely a big enabler.
Do Canada/Switzerland have stand-your-ground laws or Castle Doctrine? Genuinely curious.
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if america was 100% white we would have a lower gun homicide rate than canada, and about half the gun homicide rate as finland.
US gun homicide rates
black: 19.8
hispanic: 6.4
white: 1.7
finland: 3.3
canada: 1.8
school shooting stats intentionally exclude 'gang violence'. if that is included the school shooters by race looks very different than what the media portrays.
in 2023 there were:
4 white shooters
4 hispanic shooters
35 black shooters
A watched pot still boils (Score:2)
This isn't going to stop anything, and the shooters will probably like it since they can get their manifestos about who wronged them or whatever as part of the record.
Can we all agree the 90s were peak civilization (Score:2)
Shows a failed society (Score:2)