Member-only story
Spying on Kids to Prevent School Shootings Will Backfire
Politicians want to impose tech surveillance in schools. If they do, we’ll lose the one thing necessary to stop attacks.
“As a busy parent, reading every text message, post, and email just isn’t realistic.”
If you’re a parent, this line, which comes from the website for a service called Bark, sounds correct. But Bark isn’t talking about the texts and emails that you receive—it’s talking about the ones sent to your kids. Bark is a surveillance tool that uses language detection to monitor text messages, emails, and social media interactions for any “potential safety concerns.” And the company markets its product to schools.
Following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, Bark offered its surveillance services, for free, to all public and private K-12 schools in the United States. The company now claims to have a presence within more than 1,300 school districts.
Bark isn’t the only technology finding its way into school districts across America. Schools are either installing or at least considering everything from facial recognition to iris scans to gunfire-detecting microphones. And if Senate Republicans have their way, these kinds of programs will soon…
