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America’s children are being treated like suspects in a surveillance state, and the latest Forbes investigation makes that painfully clear: schools from coast to coast are installing AI cameras, drones, license-plate readers, facial recognition and even bathroom audio devices under the banner of safety. What sounds like a Hollywood-level security show is being sold to taxpayers as necessary protection, yet the reporting shows there is little proof these gadgets actually make students safer.
Take Beverly Hills High — a symbol of celebrity and privilege that now boasts a multimillion-dollar surveillance apparatus, according to Forbes. Cameras with behavioral analytics, drone patrols, HALO-style sensors and bathroom listening devices are all being installed while district leaders boast about “multiple threats per day” without offering clear evidence. Parents should be alarmed that a school that spends nearly $5 million on security treats our kids as raw data to be harvested and scanned.
Meanwhile, the tech that’s supposed to stop weapons has been shown to be far from infallible. The Federal Trade Commission has taken action against Evolv for overstating what its AI-powered weapon scanners can do, citing incidents where knives weren’t detected and sensitivity tweaks produced massive false-alarm rates. If regulators are calling out this marketing hype, school boards should stop signing multi-year contracts on the sales pitch and demand hard proof before handing over public money.
The human cost of false alarms is not theoretical — students have been pulled out of class, traumatized, and in some cases arrested because over-eager monitoring software flagged innocuous posts or images. Reporting from AP and local outlets shows districts getting thousands of automated alerts, the bulk of which staff later deem non-issues, yet those alarms still wreck kids’ lives and record permanent data points on school files. This isn’t a safety upgrade; it’s a surveillance dragnet that punishes clerical errors and adolescent mistakes.
Big Tech and vendors pitch shiny AI as the answer to every problem, from vaping to school shootings, and districts are lapping it up — including sensors that peer into bathrooms and listen for “keywords.” Wired and other outlets have documented how vaping detectors and audio sensors proliferate in restrooms, turning what should be private spaces into monitored zones under the guise of public health. Conservatives should be the first to defend privacy and common-sense boundaries against this creeping normalization of surveillance.
Let’s be blunt: throwing more technology at complex social problems is a convenient dodge for policymakers who don’t want to fix the root causes. School systems report huge sums spent on cameras and AI while counseling programs, teacher support and real mental-health services get sidelined. Even security directors admit that technology is a tool, not a solution — so why are taxpayers footing the bill for panopticons instead of investing in people who actually help children?
This is about more than inept spending; it’s about power and who gets to decide how our children are raised. Parents must demand transparency: show the data proving efficacy, explain retention policies for biometric and audio data, and guarantee parental consent before any intrusive tech is deployed. If vendors are allowed to sell unverifiable claims and school boards rubber-stamp them, we are complicit in turning schools into surveillance sites that train kids to accept constant monitoring as normal.
Conservatives believe in both safety and liberty, and defending both means insisting on accountability. School boards should release audits, allow independent reviews, and pause deployments until there is clear evidence these systems reduce harm without trampling rights. Parents, taxpayers and local officials need to act now — push back at board meetings, demand votes, and refuse to let our children be converted into data points for Big Tech experiments.
