Carnegie Mellon’s school safety summit: “Face and object recognition tech can save students’ lives and maintain high standards of privacy when operating within ethical guidelines”

Golan was speaking at Carnegie Mellon’s school safety emergency summit alongside school security professionals and academics. Michael Matranga, M6 Global security, “No doubt that weapons detection technology in combination with facial recognition would have prevented the shooter in Uvalde.”

Student safety and security tech

Following the devastating Uvalde, Texas school shooting, Carnegie Mellon University’s Biometrics Center hosted an online forum of experts in school security, law, and technology for a special “School Safety Emergency Summit.”

Prof. Marios Savvides, the founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Biometrics Center, opened the discussion focused on the topic of, “Student Safety and Security Tech – Courses of Action and Specific Challenges.” 

Trauma due to school shooting

I think that it is impossible to wrap your head around the level of trauma that occurs in a school shooting"

Ben Chapman, the U.S. education reporter for The Wall Street Journal, moderated the event. Chapman was one of the first journalists on the ground at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the aftermath of the shooting in 2012. Chapman stated that “I think that it is impossible to wrap your head around the level of trauma that occurs in a school shooting unless you've been there in person.”

“As a reporter who's covered many heinous crimes over the years, I can say that the level of shock and pain that's generated in a school shooting is on a completely different level from your typical mass shooting. There’s something about the death of children that's absolutely devastating and completely disruptive. These events would take generations for a community to overcome and unfortunately, these events are now occurring more often.”  

Biometric-based access control & facial recognition

Michael Matranga, CEO of M6 Global security consultancy, former U.S. Secret Service agent, and a former director of security for Texas City ISD said, “You don’t send a researcher or an educator to do a warrior’s job. There’s a difference between theorists, scholars, and practitioners.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that facial recognition technology, in combination with other software to detect weapons, would have prevented the shooter in Uvalde, Texas from even breaching that door in an integrated access control system. Oosto’s technology for biometric-based access control and facial recognition of bad actors that we deployed at Texas City ISD was proven to be very effective.”

Purposeful solutions

Honeywell is very focused on developing our technology which is thoughtful, purposeful solutions for schools"

Bruce Montgomery, SLED-FED Market Leader and Schools Security Technology SME for Honeywell Integrated Security law enforcement veteran; Active Shooter Response instructor to law enforcement and schools, “I’ve experienced those same issues in my 25-year law enforcement career on different squad techniques to get the average police officer spun up so that he can now approach a school shooting confidently and walk up to a building to do what they need to do quickly.”

“The tools being given to schools were not good enough and were very inadequate. Honeywell is very focused on developing our technology to answer these questions which are thoughtful, purposeful solutions for schools. I’m looking at that from a law enforcement lens still today.”

Preventing and alerting technology

Avi Golan, CEO of Oosto, the video analytics, and facial recognition technology provider, said, “I was in the Israeli Defence Forces and I saw quite a few terrorist attacks. Over the years, you learn a lot about internal domestic terrorism and how security can help.”

“No doubt technology is one of the biggest elements of prevention or even alerting of situations like this. Oosto was founded on the belief that vision AI was all about preventing and alerting and dealing with these situations.”

More guidance, more communication

39% of parents support access control to school entrances, 29% support video surveillance to detect more threats"

Golan added, “We asked parents how they feel about school shootings. 39% of parents support access control to school entrances. 29% support video surveillance to detect more threats and bring them forward. There is kind of a fear of using advanced technologies.”

“And I understand that. But I think that more education, more guidance, more communication, and sharing how these technologies can help save lives, can go a long way in our journey to bring these technologies online.”

AI technology

Prof. Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Yale Law School, pointed out that transparency and explainable AI technology are critical to building public trust for the technology.

She referenced how the right to privacy is one of the main obstacles that prevent schools from moving forward with these technologies. Prof. Yanisky-Ravid said, “Many mass shootings could have been prevented. Many of the shooters posted on social media and people knew about it.”

Privacy risk

Prof. Yanisky-Ravid added, “Federal laws [for] schools prevent teachers and schools from transferring information and so it’s ridiculous in a way that you want to keep students’ privacy but risk their lives.”

“I think we should take a proportional understanding of these laws. There can be solutions that enable schools to adopt technologies under certain legal conditions.”

Face and object recognition technology

Face and object recognition technology can save students’ lives and maintain high standards of privacy"

Golan responded, “When we deploy technology, we deploy it with an empty database…[with]no pictures, data, or videos of anyone on earth that is delivered with our technology.”

“We call it an empty database because it’s the responsibility of the customer (the school in this example) to work with law enforcement and to upload pictures of suspects into their system. Face and object recognition technology can save students’ lives and maintain high standards of privacy when operating within ethical guidelines.”

All-hazards-type response

Guy Grace, Vice-Chairman of the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools and Unified K12 Life Safety Consultant said, “There is tremendous aftermath for years after a shooting. Uvalde is going to be dealing with this for the rest of their life. It’s a cascading effect and it’s all about how we mitigate through that.”

“Our mitigation is an all-hazards-type response [including] technologies that we use to support the response but also to support the aftermath of how we deal with these situations.”

Detect, deter and deny

Grace added, “Technology that empowers, it’s a tool that we use to deal with the aftermath of these situations. It’s multi-faceted when we’re dealing with these emergencies. The technology measures…are there to detect, deter and deny…there are other security components that we need to have in place to nullify the effects or impact of a failure of one component.”

“We have to be comprehensive when we’re putting in these technologies not to just address an active threat situation so we have to be thinking in an all-hazards sense in schools.”

Unified life and safety system

We have to empower them for self-sustainability because we know that seconds matter in all of these things"

Matranga added, “The first responder is not necessarily the law enforcement officer or the medical professional -’ it’s the person in the classroom right next door or in the hallway; we have to empower them for self-sustainability because we know that seconds matter in all of these things, whether it be in a school, whether it be in a grocery store, or a shopping mall.” 

Moreover, said Grace, “Everything we implement and purchase for schools, they are tools. They are going to be a unified life and safety system. The most important piece is going to be the people and how do the people use those tools that we as security practitioners provide to our school districts and our communities to protect them.” 

Future of security technology

Following the experts' panel, Savvides presented recounted how his lab helped the FBI capture the Boston Marathon Terrorists based on low-resolution footage.

"It was after the fact. Our goal today is to prevent such incidents before they occur." Savvides demonstrated how Carnegie Mellon University’s Biometrics Center sees the future of security technology developing based on machine vision and AI.