At the highest level, debates regarding government and enterprise use of biometric technology boil down to a debate about whether to keep people safe, or whether to preserve individual privacy.
In the state of Montana, school safety is winning over school privacy—for now.
The one exception in Montana Senate Bill 397
Biometric Update links to a Helena Independent Record article on how Montana’s far-reaching biometric ban has one significant exception.
The state Legislature earlier this year passed a law barring state and local governments from continuous use of facial recognition technology, typically in the form of cameras capable of reading and collecting a person’s biometric data, like the identifiable features of their face and body. A bipartisan group of legislators went toe-to-toe with software companies and law enforcement in getting Senate Bill 397 over the finish line, contending public safety concerns raised by the technology’s supporters don’t overcome individual privacy rights.
School districts, however, were specifically carved out of the definition of state and local governments to which the facial recognition technology law applies.
From the Helena Independent Record.
At a minimum Montana school districts seek to abide by two existing Federal laws when installating facial recognition and video surveillance systems.
Without many state-level privacy protection laws in place, school policies typically lean on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law requiring parental consent in order for websites to collect data on their children, or the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects the privacy of student education records.
From the Helena Independent Record.
If a vendor doesn’t agree to abide by these laws, then the Montana School Board Association recommends that the school district not do business with the vendor.
Other vendors agree. Here is the statement of one vendor, Verkada (you’ll see them again later) on FERPA:
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was passed by the US federal government to protect the privacy of students’ educational records. This law requires public schools and school districts to give families control over any personally identifiable information about the student.
Verkada provides educational organizations the tools they need to maintain FERPA compliance, such as face blurring for archived footage.
From https://www.verkada.com/security/#compliance
Simms High School’s use of the technology
How are the schools using these systems? In ways you may expect.
(The Sun River Valley School District’s) use of the technology is more focused on keeping people who shouldn’t be on school property away, he said, such as a parent who lost custody of their child.
(Simms) High School Principal Luke McKinley said it’s been more frequent to use the facial recognition technology during extra-curricular activities, when football fans get too rowdy for a high school sports event.
From the Helena Independent Record.
Technology (in this case from Verkada) helps the Sun River School District, especially in its rural setting. Back in 2022, it took law enforcement an estimated 45 minutes to respond to school incidents. The hope is that the technology could identify those who engaged in illegal activity, or at least deter it.
What about other school districts?
When I created my educational identity page, I included the four key words “When permitted by law.” While Montana school districts are currently permitted to use facial recognition and video surveillance, other school districts need to check their local laws before implementing such a system, and also need to ensure that they comply with federal laws such as COPPA and FERPA.
I may be, um, biased in my view, but as long as the school district (or law enforcement agency, or apartment building owner, or whoever) complies with all applicable laws, and implements the technology with a primary purpose of protecting people rather than spying on them, facial recognition is a far superior tool to protect people than manual recognition methods that rely on all-too-fallible human beings.
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