<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unproven-facial-recognition-...> The facial-recognition cameras installed near the bounce houses at the Warehouse, an after-school recreation center in Bloomington, Ind., are aimed low enough to scan the face of every parent, teenager and toddler who walks in. The center’s executive director, David Weil, learned earlier this year of the surveillance system from a church newsletter, and within six weeks he had bought his own, believing it promised a security breakthrough that was both affordable and cutting-edge. Since last month, the system has logged thousands of visitors’ faces — alongside their names, phone numbers and other personal details — and checked them against a regularly updated blacklist of sex offenders and unwanted guests. The system’s Israeli developer, Face-Six, also promotes it for use in prisons and drones. “Some parents still think it’s kind of ‘1984,’ ” said Weil, whose 21-month-old granddaughter is among the scanned. “A lot of people are afraid we’re getting too much information. . . . But the biggest thing for us is that we protect our kids.” An expanding web of largely unknown security contractors is marketing face recognition directly to school and community-center leaders, pitching the technology as an all-seeing shield against school shootings like those at Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Tex. Although facial recognition remains unproven as a deterrent to school shootings, the specter of classroom violence and companies’ intensifying marketing to local education officials could cement the more than 130,000 public and private schools nationwide as one of America’s premier testing grounds — both for the technology’s abilities and for public acceptance of a new generation of mass surveillance. The surveillance firms say little about how they designed, tested or safeguarded their facial-recognition systems because, they argue, it is proprietary information. They also play down privacy concerns, despite worries from parents over the lack of oversight into who controls the children’s facial images and how they can be used in the long term. “We’ve gotten no answers to all these questions: Under what conditions can a kid’s face be put into the system? Does the district need parental consent? Who can do a facial-recognition search?” said Jim Shultz, whose 15-year-old daughter goes to a high school in Upstate New York that is paying millions to install a surveillance network offering facial recognition. “It’s as if somebody presented them with a cool new car and they didn’t bother to look under the hood.” It’s unclear how the systems could have thwarted past attacks, many of which involved shooters who were students allowed on campus. But companies have nevertheless built sales pitches around the promise that campus administrators could block or track undesirable guests — wanted fugitives, problematic parents and expelled students, such as the Parkland suspect — before their violence could begin. “We were all waiting for something like the Parkland school shooting, for better or for worse,” said Jacob Sniff, the chief executive of Suspect Technologies, a facial-recognition start-up working with a few unidentified universities. “It’s quite clear that a facial-recognition system could have . . . prevented it.” Parents and privacy experts worry, however, that schools are rushing to adopt**untested and invasive artificial-intelligence systems with no proof of success. /[Amazon is selling facial recognition to law enforcement — for a fistful of dollars <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/22/amazon-is-selling-facial-recognition-to-law-enforcement-for-a-fistful-of-dollars/?utm_term=.700801b46499>]/ Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, said surveillance companies are preying on the dread of community leaders by selling experimental “security theater” systems that offer only the appearance of safer schools. “These companies are taking advantage of the genuine fear and almost impotence of parents who want to protect their kids,” he said, “and they’re selling them surveillance technology at a cost that will do very little to protect them.” [...]