ProPublica/Wired: Aggression Detectors: The Unproven, Invasive Surveillance Technology Schools Are Using to Monitor Students

More totalitarian hysteria. Note that the audio-file links didn't survive pasting; go the original to hear:

In the wake of the shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school and other massacres, U.S. schools are increasingly receptive to such pitches. Congress approved more than $25 million for school security improvements last year, and one analyst expects new technology could augment the $2.7 billion market for education security products. Besides Sound Intelligence, South Korea-based Hanwha Techwin, formerly part of Samsung, makes a similar “scream detection” product that’s been installed in American schools. U.K.-based Audio Analytic used to sell its aggression- and gunshot-detection software to customers in Europe and the U.S., including Cisco Systems Inc.’s professional security division. However, an Audio Analytic spokesman told ProPublica that it has since changed its business model and stopped selling the aggression detector software.

By deploying surveillance technology in public spaces like hallways and cafeterias, device makers and school officials hope to anticipate and prevent everything from mass shootings to underage smoking. Sound Intelligence also markets add-on packages to recognize the sounds of gunshots, car alarms and broken glass, while Hauppauge, New York-based Soter Technologies develops sensors that determine if students are vaping in the school bathroom. The Lockport school district in upstate New York is planning a facial-recognition system to identify intruders on campus.

Yet ProPublica’s analysis, as well as the experiences of some U.S. schools and hospitals that have used Sound Intelligence’s aggression detector, suggest that it can be less than reliable. At the heart of the device is what the company calls a machine learning algorithm. Our research found that it tends to equate aggression with rough, strained noises in a relatively high pitch, like D’Anna’s coughing. A 1994 YouTube clip of abrasive-sounding comedian Gilbert Gottfried (“Is it hot in here or am I crazy?”) set off the detector, which analyzes sound but doesn’t take words or meaning into account. Although a Louroe spokesman said the detector doesn’t intrude on student privacy because it only captures sound patterns deemed aggressive, its microphones allow administrators to record, replay and store those snippets of conversation indefinitely.

“It’s not clear it’s solving the right problem. And it’s not clear it’s solving it with the right tools,” said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a University of Utah computer science professor who studies how replacing humans with artificial intelligence affects decision-making in society.

The rest.

Here's an idea to stop school shootings without turning the country yet more into an Orwellian nightmare: pass some motherfucking gun control legislation.