North Carolina State legislatures are ushering in what could be the beginning of the AI surveillance state for public school children across NC. After more than a year in the works, State legislatures have approved an AI School Safety pilot program to roll out in two NC school districts. The final approval of this AI pilot program is embedded within the plethora of items in Senate Bill 382. SB 382 was recently passed by the NC Senate on Nov. 11. The bill was vetoed by Gov. Cooper on Nov. 26, only to have the Senate override the veto on Dec. 1, it now awaits votes from the House next week. The AI School Safety pilot program was initially created as a School Safety Grant in the State’s budget in the 2023 Appropriations Act (S.L. 2023-134), enacted in October 2023 with revisions made in House Bill 97 and now the final version laid out in SB382, (page 107 & 120).
IT’S ALL FOR SAFETY
The approval of SB382 will give a total of $5.5 million to the Department of Public Instruction who will issue the funds to two NC school districts, New Hanover County Schools and Davidson County Schools, as School Safety Grants for the AI School Safety pilot program. Both school districts must comply with a list of requirements in order to participate in the pilot program. This includes integrating AI into any cameras, videos or other alerting management systems for the implementation of the pilot safety system. The AI safety system must offer the ability to perform all of the following by law: detect threatening objects, detect intruders, detect person down, detect open doors, tag and track, facial recognition, forensic face search and license plate recognition. Both school districts must contract with the same vendor. Results of this AI pilot program must be reported by the districts, in coordination with the Center for Safer Schools, by Jan. 15, 2026 to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee. Missing from the bill is any requirement that parents give prior written consent.
SECTION 7.36.(h) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Pilot. – Of the funds appropriated to the Department of Public Instruction by this act for the grants provided in this section for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the Department shall allocate (i) three million two hundred thousand dollars ($3,200,000) as a directed grant to New Hanover County Schools and (ii) two million dollars ($2,000,000) as a directed grant to Davidson County Schools for an AI School Safety Pilot Program. In conducting the Pilot Program, participating public school units shall comply with the following:
(1) Funds allocated for the Pilot Program shall be used for the implementation of a school safety system that integrates AI technology into existing cameras, video management systems, and alerting protocols.
(1a) The proposed school safety solution must offer the following performance capabilities:
a. Threatening Object Detection.
b. Intruder Detection.
c. Person Down Detection.
d. Door Open Detection.
e. Tag and Track.
f. Facial Recognition.
g. Forensic Face Search.
h. License Plate Reader.
(1b) The participating public school units shall contract with the same vendor for the Pilot Program. The vendor shall be determined by the first public school unit to enter into a contract for a school safety solution.
(2) No later than January 15, 2026, the participating public school units, in coordination with the, Center for Safer Schools, shall report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee the following information:
a. The schools that participated in the Pilot Program.
b. How grant funds were spent.
c. The impact the Pilot Program had on school safety outcomes.
d. Any noted capabilities of the AI system that could not be accomplished by more traditional safety measures.
e. Any other information the participating public school units or the Department deem relevant to the report.
FACIAL RECOGNITION POWERHOUSES
The awarded school districts have many options on an AI company to contract with. One choice is Vyze by Eviden, powered by Microsoft Azure. They can integrate AI into school cameras and create a virtual fence line to scan people and vehicles for potential threats. Vyze uses “deep machine learning algorithms that have been trained for more than 25 years with massive amounts of data to support the identification of potential threats like weapons, objects, and harmful human behaviors.” A second option is Rank One Computing (ROC). They claim to be the #1 global face recognition provider in accuracy and efficiency. They have developed this technology into their Safer Schools Initiative program. To start, they have rolled out the program in 54 West Virginia schools and have plans to move across the country and then around the world. A third option is Clearview AI, they claim to have the world’s largest facial database, collected from scraping some 50+ billion photos from the internet. Clearview AI is used by law enforcement, government agencies and even the Ukrainian military. It was used to identify January 6th Capitol protestors leading to hundreds of arrests.
TRANSFER OF POWER
An additional public school provision in SB 382 SECTION 3J.17 (pg. 117) is the transfer of The Center for Safer Schools from the NC Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI), controlled by the State Superintendent, to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) as well as getting rid of the Task Force for Safer Schools. This means that the School Safety Grants Program will now be controlled by the SBI. This grants program was started in 2018 by the General Assembly and NCDPI to provide grants to improve safety in schools. Of note is that the SBI is no longer under the Department of Public Safety; now an independent cabinet-level department. Could the SBI already be using Clearview AI?
CONCERNED?
If you are a concerned parent or NC resident about the AI school safety pilot program coming to NC schools, reach out to your state representatives and school board members of the New Hanover and Davidson County school districts. Perhaps you can ask them how this AI pilot surveillance program was approved without language to include a parent’s right to give prior consent to scan their child's face using AI technology. NC Senate Bill 49, known as the Parents’ Bill of Rights, prohibits the creation, sharing, or storage of a biometric scan of children without the parent's prior written consent.
Are legislatures and school board members confident enough in these rapidly developing AI technologies that they would approve using schools full of children as testing sites? If New Hanover and Davidson County schools accept this grant money they will be complacent in objectifying their students, parents and community members to unknowingly be test subjects for big tech, who will use that data to advance their AI technology and build up their databases. No more checking in at the school office, showing your ID or swiping a badge, with their real-time surveillance technology everyone’s face will be scanned instantly for admittance and behavior will be monitored. An entire list of harmful scenarios comes to mind.
Invasion of privacy, everyday objects mistaken for weapons or vapes, mistaken identity, pre-crime arrests, false alarms, cyberthreats/breach to AI security system, AI interpreting children playing as threatening behavior….
PARENTS NOT GIVEN TRANSPARENCY
On Oct. 3, 2023, Dr. Charles Foust, the now fired superintendent of New Hanover County Schools, announced the approval of the State’s budget, including the award for the $3.2 million grant for the AI pilot program. However, parents were not made aware of what this AI program would really entail as he gave no specific details, other than saying, “It’s really good for us.” New Hanover Schools finished last school year with a $20 million shortfall. With mandates from the State to increase salaries for the 2024-25 school year, a $3.2 million grant for a pilot safety program is questionable when school funding is not sustainable. New Hanover County Schools is already a supporter of “Big Brother” AI surveillance. In May 2022, they signed a two year contract with LightSpeed AI Systems to monitor what students are doing online. The contract, in the amount of $211,346, was funded by unsustainable COVID19 ESSER funds. Why the school board thought surveilling students online would prevent the spread of coronavirus or make up for learning loss is unclear. Parents have no idea what LightSpeed Systems has done with the student data it has collected. As one concerned New Hanover citizen warned these AI data surveillance collection programs are just a “red herring and a feel good measure that tramples on our 4th Amendment rights.”
Parents want safe schools. They want law enforcement and schools to have a partnership. However programs like these further increase the police and surveillance state that has been slowly encroaching upon NC public schools, creating an environment that is more like an institution than a school.
AI technology is rapidly advancing and school districts are a prime target for experimentation and data mining of children. When school board members are charmed with grant money they will easily sign contracts. They lack any real understanding of the products or evidence of potential irreversible harm that comes with them. All they see is that it’s ‘free’, not knowing that they are the ones being sold. The children will be the AI learning experimental pawns all funded with taxpayer dollars. Voice your concerns and flex your rights.
Additional Reading:
60 Years Ago, Congress Warned Us About the Surveillance State. What Happened?
The Rise of the Surveillance State
Ukraine’s ‘Secret Weapon’ Against Russia Is a Controversial U.S. Tech Company