I remember how it was -- JR
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
UK: Snooping tsar voices fear over rise of facial recognition school cameras - as education bosses face parent backlash on privacy
Education chiefs drafting fresh guidance on classroom snooping have been criticised as the rollout of facial recognition cameras in schools risks sparking parent fury.
The country’s surveillance tsar has voiced his anger at Department for Education (DfE) officials for failing to consult his office over new advice on using the controversial technology to scan pupils’ faces while they are on school premises.
Almost 70 schools have signed up for a system that scans children’s faces to take contactless payments for canteen lunches and others are said to be planning to use the controversial technology to monitor children in exam rooms.
But Professor Fraser Sampson, the independent Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, said his office was unaware the DfE was drafting new surveillance advice in response to the growing trend for cameras in schools.
‘I find out completely by accident a couple of weeks ago by going to a meeting that the Department for Education has drafted a code of practice for surveillance in schools which they are about to put out to the world to consult,’ he told The Mail on Sunday.
‘And they [DfE] said. “What do you think of it?” And I say, “What code?” We had no idea about it. And having seen it, it would have benefited from some earlier sharing.’
Prof Sampson is also critical of police plans to monitor the public with live facial recognition cameras, branding it a ‘sinister’ development which risks ‘herding’ people’s images on to a database.
‘There is not really a recognition that this is intrusive surveillance, and it’s increasingly intrusive surveillance,’ he said. ‘If people think the use of facial recognition by the police is sensitive and controversial wait until schools start putting it in.
‘Your starting point should be, “Where is the lawful purpose of introducing this clearly intrusive type of technology into a school?”’
He added: ‘How does any of this fit with much wider government obligations on the UN convention on the rights of the child not to be subject to close scrutiny and have the freedom to sit in a classroom without being watched, let alone recorded?
‘The Chinese are training their algorithms on everyone’s faces. Do we want them doing this on our children’s faces?’
In October, North Ayrshire Council in Scotland suspended its facial recognition scheme, supplied by catering firm CRB Cunninghams to nine schools, after concerns were raised.
Amid the growing debate, the College of Policing has published fresh guidance that allows forces to potentially capture images of victims and also of ‘a person who the police have reasonable grounds to suspect would have information of importance and relevance to progress an investigation’. Critics say it represents a ‘hammer blow for privacy and liberty’.
Prof Sampson, who has worked in criminal justice for more than 40 years, first as a police officer and then as a solicitor, said: ‘There is a fundamental difference between rounding up the usual suspects and herding everybody who may possibly have been around.’
At least five police forces across England and Wales, including the Met and South Wales, have used live facial recognition technology which captures people’s faces and matches them with a database.
South Wales suffered a Court of Appeal defeat on its use of the technology in 2020 after claims it infringed people’s human rights. It is currently engaged in another trial of facial recognition cameras.
The DfE declined to comment.
***************************************************
Before Biden Cancels Student Loan Debt, I Have A Few Questions
Scott Morefield
Last week, Bernie Sanders, the most famous socialist in America, tweeted, “Cancel student debt. All of it.” It was just the latest screed in what has become a common theme for radical leftist Democrats, appeals to essentially pay off a key political constituency at the expense of working, responsible Americans. It’s disgusting pandering in the worst possible way, yet media and policy makers continue to treat it as a serious proposal rooted in altruism and the desire for equity, whatever that means.
While President Joe Biden has thus far resisted such calls (other than Covid-related pauses on interest and payments), there are increasing rumblings afoot that he could attempt to erase anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 of student loan debt per person with nothing more than a stroke of the pen. Whether the Constitution grants him this kind of authority remains to be seen, but such questions have never stood in the way of these kinds of leftist power grabs before, and I suspect they won’t this time around either.
Currently there’s around $1.75 trillion of student loan debt out there, a number that would seem far loftier were it not for the many trillions printed and distributed out of nothing for recent “Covid relief.” It’s owed by around 45 million people, upwards of one in four Americans. On average, they owe $37,000 and make payments of around $400 a month, the equivalent of what a decent vehicle would cost these days. Nevertheless, manipulative media portrayals of poor, hapless millennials unable to build a life or buy their daily Starbucks latte because they can’t see their way out from under a mountain of self-imposed college debt abound.
Of course, Americans also owe around $1.46 trillion in vehicle debt, $10 trillion in mortgage debt, and $830 billion in credit card debt. I mean, if we’re going to just continue printing money from nothing, why not cancel all or part of those too? The answer is obvious: There’s only so much outright fakery you can do before the whole house of cards comes down, and since Democrats want to reward people who support them, the fakery that will be done will be on their terms and to the benefit of their constituents.
Most college graduates, particularly those who would willingly dig a crater-sized hole of debt for a useless gender studies degree at Cal Berkeley, tend to support Democrats. And before you think about digging on Republicans as somehow less intelligent, consider that most colleges - and college degrees - these days are absolutely worthless. Just ask your plumber, your local contractor, or the guy who does your HVAC, all of whom probably make as much or more money than you. All of which, ironically, raises plenty of questions about the intelligence of people willing to spend like drunken sailors to obtain a product that barely benefits them.
Now, Biden deciding to erase the debt of his supporters would hardly qualify as the most unfair thing to happen in America under a Democratic president, but it would certainly set an awful historic precedent and be a blunder of epic proportions. It would also raise plenty of questions from fair-minded Americans. Here are just a few:
What about those who have paid their student debts already? Do they get a refund?
What about those who scrimped, saved, and worked their way through college without running up any debt in the first place? Isn’t responsibility supposed to be a good thing?
What about those who could have gone anywhere, yet chose state colleges because they didn’t want to run up debt? Do they award Harvard degrees retroactively?
What about those who eschewed college altogether because they didn’t want to go into debt at all? Would they have been as risk averse if they knew there was no risk?
What about those who partied their way through school, choosing to not work and rack up mountains of debt instead? Are we really going to reward irresponsibility?
What about every college student going forward? Will their debts also be erased?
What about doctors and lawyers (and such) whose mountains of debt also come with mountains of income to pay it off easily?
What about those unjustifiably skyrocketing college prices that certainly won’t be helped by yet another level of de facto government subsidies?
Isn't this just a massive wealth transfer from the poor and lower-middle-class to the college-educated class?
Can we afford it? Isn’t the United States already $30 trillion in debt? Which raises a related question: Isn’t inflation enough of a problem now for policy makers to not want to exacerbate it by basically printing yet more cash (which is what canceling existing debt is essentially doing)?
Why should taxpayers be forced to fund someone else’s debt?
Finally, to circle back to above, what about all the other types of debt that hamstrings ordinary Americans? Why just college debt? Sure, we know the answer, but it’s still good to keep asking. These questions and many more illustrate the absurdity of this latest in a long line of leftist nonsense aimed at destroying the fabric of fairness, responsibility, and social cohesion in America.
****************************************************
Australia: Student behaviour a rising problem in schools
Disruptive behaviour and poor wellbeing among students have emerged as bigger problems in Victorian schools this year than learning loss after two years of disrupted schooling.
Primary school principals say they are grappling with new behavioural issues among students, including new cases of school refusal, alarming social media activity and vaping on school grounds.
An ongoing survey of 12,000 students in 60 schools has also uncovered higher levels of distress about bullying among girls than boys during the first term of school this year.
The survey also found that more than 40 per cent of students have been experiencing problems with sleeping every week.
The worries about bullying, sleep and other wellbeing issues including homework are being tracked in a new check-in tool that more than 50 schools piloted last year, and which has since been expanded to 60 schools.
Boys have reported being less able to ask for help in the weekly surveys so far, both at primary and secondary levels, but girls have registered greater concerns about being bullied at school or online.
Amanda Bickerstaff, chief executive of Pivot Professional Learning, which operates the online tool, said students’ responses also indicated that many children do not know how to ask for help or feel like they have a trusted adult to turn to.
“There is a general understanding from educators that wellbeing has been deeply impacted,” Bickerstaff said.
“We saw that about half of students were either neutral or struggling with their wellbeing every week at the end of last year ... when we start our check-ins in term two we fully expect that we will see some students that need support because it’s been a very difficult start to the year after a very difficult two years.”
Students’ social skills are also rusty, principals say.
Philip Cachia, who heads St Francis Xavier Primary, said students at the Montmorency school had to relearn how to play together. “They were home for so long and suddenly they needed to co-operate with each other and share,” he said.
“We almost had to re-teach them those skills, that you can’t always be first and you can’t always win and you can’t always get what you want, which is maybe what they were used to when they were at home.”
Henry Grossek, principal at Berwick Lodge Primary, said that student behaviour was now a bigger issue than learning loss as schools resumed normal practice after the two years of disrupted learning.
Thousands of tutors have been deployed to schools to help students catch up on lost learning last year and this year, but Grossek said schools were less well resourced when it came to managing students’ emotional wellbeing.
“Social and emotional loss is the big issue and we are all chasing our tails to catch up on that,” he said.
Simply coming to school each day had been “therapeutic” for most students, whose behaviour improved over the course of term one, but a handful have developed serious mental and behavioural issues, Grossek said.
“A few are finding it difficult coming back to school,” he said. “They are almost school refusers; they are anxious and worried about coming back to school even though they haven’t had big troubles in the school.”
Steven Kolber, a teacher at Brunswick Secondary College, said his class of year 7 students were not as socially adept as previous cohorts, but also had an enhanced appreciation for school.
“The students are approaching school with more maturity, as though school is in some respects a luxury, rather than something they are forced to do,” he said.
***********************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*******************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment