Schools To Get Face-Remembering Cameras

The Skinny: Nashville School District Becomes First In Nation To Get High-Tech Software

(CBS)  The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

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Adolescence is, if nothing else, a time when identity is up for grabs. You can hang out with the football team for a few months and then, if that's not working out, suddenly come to school in Hot Topic mourning garb and win yourself a pack of new goth friends. Do it convincingly enough, and the next time you pass by your old friends in the hall, they might barely recognize you.

So it seems extremely optimistic that, as USA Today reports, a school district in Nashville is planning to become the first in the nation to install security cameras with face-recognition software that can spot intruders.

Starting Dec. 1, the 75,000-student district will equip three schools and administration building with cameras that can detect an unfamiliar face or someone barred from school grounds, a school official said. They cost $30,000.

Nashville will take digital photos of students and workers at three test schools and store them in the new camera system. When a camera spots a face in a school that it cannot match to a stored photo, it will alert security. The system could also detect suspended and expelled students and fired employees, the official said.

But why stop there? If cameras can digitally track exactly who is where, why not use them to see who's cutting class? That's what Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union seemed to fear when he said the cameras' widespread use could let authorities "track you throughout the day."

As Melissa Ngo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center put it, "Schools should not feel like some sort of prison."

A successful test in Nashville could lead other districts to use the technology. But the precendents aren't promising. An elementary school in Phoenix installed face-recognition cameras in 2004 to find sex offenders but never turned them on because of concern they would flag innocent people.

Who's Afraid Of The Ghost Of Walter Mondale?

Are Democrats finally ready to exorcise the ghost of Walter Mondale from their approach to tax policy? The Los Angeles Times suggest they may be.

Mondale's been haunting the party ever since he called for tax increases and lost to Ronald Reagan in the bone-crushing landslide of 1984. Democrats have been skittish about mentioning the "t" word ever since, the paper reports.

But now that's beginning to change, as the growing gap between rich and poor has made the notion of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans more politically palatable.

"Income inequality has become an increasingly salient issue at a time when, amid news of astronomical corporate salaries, many people feel economically insecure about such bread-and-butter items as healthcare, pensions and college costs," the paper reports.

Some leading Democrats are proposing an array of tax hikes on wealthier Americans. They include House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel of New York -- who proposed an additional tax on wealthy people and a levy on hedge fund managers to help pay for easing a tax burden on the middle class. And former N.C. Sen. John Edwards, whose tax plan involves raising taxes on the rich to cut them for the middle class.

"The top 300,000 income-earners in America now make more than the bottom 150 million combined," Edwards said when unveiling his tax plan. "Our tax code has shifted most of the burden onto the backs of working Americans."

But Republicans lick their lips when Democrats talk like this. They have called Rangel's bill the "mother of all tax hikes." And Michael Steel, spokesman for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, suggested the Democrats were "possibly overconfident," adding. "Apparently, after only one or two major tax increases in the past 25 years, they don't remember what a salient issue it is."

How Some Dusty Old Cassette Tapes Axed A Mob Murder Trial

The story started with a post to the Village Voice's website Tuesday, and hit the front page of the New York Times yesterday. By today, it was in all caps across the city's tabloids: how two reporters' decade-old cassette tapes killed a quadruple murder case against an ex-FBI supervisor accused of working for the mob.

The reporters, Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci, former colleagues at the New York Daily News, had interviewed mob moll Linda Schiro 10 years ago for a book that was never published. During the interview, they asked her some questions that were very similar to the ones she was asked on the witness stand over the last few weeks in the trial of ex-FBI supervisor Roy Lindley DeVecchio. But they got some very different answers.

This put the reporters, as Robbins noted in his own account in the Voice, in the mother of all binds. A man was facing life in prison based on the words of a witness they knew to be a liar (in at least one of the two tellings, anyway). But they had promised her strict confidentiality. In the end, Robbins wrote they decided that, "The threat of a life sentence trumps a promise."

And so the charges in the "sensational quadruple murder case," as the New York Times calls it, were dropped yesterday, with much ink spilled today surveying the wreckage for "warming signs" of Schiro's shakiness. Some of that ink goes into looking into the reporters' decision-making process.

In June, defense lawyers issued a subpoena to Capeci, demanding all material in his possession related to a book proposal and talks with Schiro. He and his lawyer fought it, and a judge quashed it, citing shield laws that protect journalists. Robbins was not subpoenaed, but told the Times that had he been, he would have fought it, too.

But then the trial started, and the reporters watched as the prosecution built the entire case on Schiro's testimony. "That was when we realized that we had a problem," Robbins told the Times. He decided he'd be the one to step forward because his beat dealt less directly with the world of organized crime (Capeci writes a weekly column for the Web site ganglandnews.com.), and thus he had less to lose.

The Times writes about the scoop with obvious admiration. "In an industry of recent journalism school graduates competing with young bloggers, the tale of Mr. Robbins and Mr. Capeci is one of two veteran shoe-leather reporters who had old cassette tapes stashed away in a closet." (Full disclosure: I worked with Robbins at the Voice.)

"Some of us old geezer maybe can't move as fast as the younger guys," said Capeci, who is 63, "but we know how to get from place to place."

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[flipantflaw]

'' ... i deserve the option to scream kill all the jews and dare all the kids without whole *** armys screaming, ''girl, yes girl, kill the jews and dare the kids or else, girl, yes girl'' ... ''

'' ... that''s entrapment, congress cannot be a bunch of naked kids running around punishing all the dressed adults they themselves sent out to spank a bunch of naked kids ... ''

[flipantflaw]

'' ... relax, your a dressed educated moral man in the war to take all the tax money market share armor weapons alcohol and parades away from lazy naked ignorant profane blemished promiscuous girls ... ''

'' .. the grape vine drives the podium, not vice versa .. ''

[flipantflaw]

'' .. if not for spankings, then hell .. ''

'' .. tax them & refuse them free food & remind them that, without taxation, there would be no free food .. ''

'' .. first world countys are full of fat lazy folk with no free lunch, third worlds are starving rotting masses w/ more free lunch than the world can swallow .. ''

'' .. invest everything in small, chronically bankrupt medias and governments dedicated to ''tax everyone & feed no one except felons'', most felons being three years old w/ all spankings, no trials, no food, & injury / death plenty .. or, in small, chronically bankrupt paupers, invest, by example, fortunes worth of shortest term time share business plans for the purpose of feeding the masses .. ''

'' .. the countys with the 300 pay-per-meal feeding troughs are riddled with well fed & eager volunteers, while those with 300 free feeding troughs are forever empty .. ''

'' .. as the smallest piece of forever is as big as the largest, removing the smallest just can''t be done, joking .. ''

'' .. even containing me, forever is yours .. not containing me, it can never be .. ''

'' .. shreded by the flimsy breaths of enemys & ceaselessly tickled by the crunching of my bones by friends, & vice versa, & for infinite lines resolution w/ infinite exponents & infinitely fast refresh rates w/ infinitely fast exponents .. ''

[my2centss]

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

---Benjamin Franklin

How much is your freedom worth?

[flipantflaw]

'' ... one way to financial success is to aim for achieving up to 1/33 of a nights pay from at least 33 folk by contributing one''s wares to scores or hundreds or thousands folk each night and soliciting tips ... if rallied around each sick bed are five folk at any one time and a total of 165 folk in a night, then those folk are able to generate and share much song dance skit kit and props with accents and dances with jingles and arts and crafts and knicks and knacks etc etc etc to support the tips applied to that sick bed ... ''

'' ... all my friends blow trillions on baby raping nuclear biological chemical stealth ray warfare and they swear they''ve got it handled, now bend over and kiss the ground i walk on, or i''ll come over there and bend you over ... ''

'' ... if all folk had exactly the same amount of money all the time, then all would be infinitely rich and purchases would be free, and shortages would be built on demand instead of financial accumulation ... ''

'' ... if the folk are not growing too little food, then they are growing too much and poisoning others and need to be spanked, if they are not using too much resource or polluting too much, then they are using too little or polluting too little and need to be spanked, if there''s not too much war then, there is too little and folk need to be spanked ... spankings are forever ... now spank me p p l l e e a a s s e e ... ''

[toolmangler-2009]

How many schools actually have killings and that stuff? 1 out of 5000? I don''t know but I don''t see an epidemic I see a small breakdown in student/teacher/parent communication. I was bullied also as a school kid but my parents taught me a value system that wouldn''t let me kill although I did smack more than one nose with my fist. Too many kids graduate for this to be a huge problem that requires a BIG BROTHER approach to schooling.

[libsluvsuvs]

I think this is a waste of money. Why not hire more teachers and build better equipped schools. Nah, that makes too much sense.


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Posted by cathaleen at 11:25 AM : Nov 02, 2007
+ report abuse
''''******

I agree that this is all a waste of money..we already flooded our educational system with overpaid, underachieving liberal teachers..we pound our schools with money (look at your new california property tax..there is NEW one there for schools)
but if we cannot control our children THEN YES IT IS A WASTE..

do you not agree that it did not have to come to this if we can just take care our children properly??

instead of allowing liberal hollywood to feed society on what is right and what is wrong..for conditioning society to accept teenage parents..

[michellem99-2009]

Go read that story about a teacher running with a 13 year old...than write here..I hate predators...

[willjedi-2009]

Im sorry, but this story doesn''t criticize the President or Republicans enough. This is CBS, isn''t it?

[ninerman168]

gunownerdan:
Nice, I like that.How true that is.If more people felt that way we would be alot stronger as a nation.

[ninerman168]

I''m reading alot of oh no Big Brother is out there.It was a work of fiction!Instead of saying how bad it would be how about coming up with a solution to some of the problems that they''re trying to address.Personally I can''t come up with anything better but I would be very interested in seeing if there is a better solution.So if anyone out there has one let''s hear it.

[gunownerdan]

"Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of American, cannot succeed with any lesser effort."
-- President John F. Kennedy, January 29, 1961

[sevenveils]

Those who are proponents of Big Brother have cloaked themselves in paranoia. It is up to the voters to reveal these people and begin to understand their true motives.

Face recognition software has been used for years in major travel hubs. Its used in a school system seems draconian.

[usprophet]

Like Ron Paul, I believe the biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens'' personal matters. We must stop the move toward a national ID card system (e.g., The Real ID Act). Under this new law, states are currently issuing new driver''s licenses embedded with standard identifier data (RFID chips). Although, some states like Montana are refusing to comply. A national ID with new tracking technologies means we''re heading into an Orwellian world of no privacy. Ron Paul was one of the few members of Congess who voted against the Real ID Act. Also, under current medical privacy protection rules, which Ron Paul also opposed, insurance companies and other entities have access to your personal medical information. Finally, there''s the so-called Patriot Act, which Congressman, Ron Paul also voted against. As originally proposed, it expanded the federal government''s ability to use wiretaps without judicial oversight; allowed nationwide search warrants non-specific to any given location, nor subject to any local judicial oversight; made it far easier for the government to monitor private Internet usage; authorized sneak and peek warrants enabling federal authorities to search a person''s home, office, or personal property without that person''s knowledge; and required libraries to turn over records of books read by their patrons. Ron Paul sponsored a bill to overturn the Patriot Act.

[gunownerdan]

Get Informed.

Get Prepared.

www.infowars.com

www.prisonplanet.com

[cathaleen]

I think this is a waste of money. Why not hire more teachers and build better equipped schools. Nah, that makes too much sense.

[republic1776]

HG Wells was ahead of his time.
I don''t think anywhere in America were the voters asked about Cameras.
It''s too late, big brother has a stronghold.

[gunownerdan]

WAR is PEACE
FREEDOM is SLAVERY
IGNORANCE is STRENGTH

Big Brother is Watching You!