Martin J. Okun, Vice President of Security & Life Safety at Clarity Technologies Group
“As we see more and more violence in schools every day, we strive to find ways for our children to learn without fearing for their own safety,” Clarity Vice President Martin Okun. Okun believes the security measures will a model for other districts concerned about security.
(If schools are that dangerous, more dangerous it seems than any other area of society, perhaps the simple solution is not to go to school and home educate.)
Person-tracking cameras, geo-tracking throughout building facilitates including transport, electronic access control, armed law enforcement and RFID tagging the occupants. Sound like a prison or high security military base? No.
This is a school district in New Jersey and this is Belleville School District’s reaction to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, Newtown, Connecticut as reported in NorthJersey.com and Belleville-Nutley Patch.
Belleville School District seem to be the first school in the US, and possibly globally, to utilize cameras to tracking people in an educational environment. The only hi-tech surveillance technology missing here is biometrics but actually the above surveillance just about covers the complete erosion of students privacy in this instance.
According to the Belleville-Nutley Parch, Clarity Technologies Group are supplying the RFID – and the person-tracking camera system to be used on the students is demonstrated in this Clarity Technologies Youtube clip:
…”more and more violence in schools every day” as Martin Okun states. Maybe the root of this violence should be addressed rather than trying to use technology as a sticking plaster to cover over the more serious issue of criminal disturbance in schools, rather than the student population have to be subjected to such invasive surveillance .
Maybe there are a few of issues at play here. Are schools that dangerous? Or is another ‘education’ taking place? Perhaps this is even a good opportunity to road test a new technology on a student population?
Against RFID in schools 