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If we are to believe the purveyors of school surveillance systems, K-12 schools will soon operate in a manner akin to some agglomeration of Minority Report, Person of Interest, and Robocop. “Military grade” systems would slurp up student data, picking up on the mere hint of harmful ideations, and dispatch officers before the would-be perpetrators could carry out their vile acts. In the unlikely event that someone were able to evade the predictive systems, they would inevitably be stopped by next-generation weapon-detection systems and biometric sensors that interpret the gait or tone of a person, warning authorities of impending danger. The final layer might be the most technologically advanced—some form of drone or maybe even a robot dog, which would be able to disarm, distract, or disable the dangerous individual before any real damage is done. If we invest in these systems, the line of thought goes, our children will finally be safe.

Not only is this not our present, it will never be our future—no matter how expansive and intricate surveillance systems become.

Read more about the failures of this thinking at the link in the bio.