THE ISSUE:

A school district has installed a security system that uses facial recognition technology.

THE STAKES:

A moratorium on its use in schools would give the state time to set some rules — and weigh privacy concerns.

These days, privacy seems a quaint notion: We give it away for convenience and online perks.

But we don't have to dive off the "Big Brother is watching you" deep end to be unnerved by the implications of facial recognition technology. And a Western New York school district's adoption of the tool in the name of school security should be a heads-up to state officials: New York needs to get out in front of this technology and set regulations for its use.

Lockport, in Niagara County, is the first school district in the country to make facial recognition tools part of its security plan. The system was paid for with funds from the Smart Schools Bond Act, approved in 2014 to help schools update their technology.

A bill introduced by Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, D-Cheektowaga, seeks a one-year moratorium on using facial recognition in schools so the technology can be studied and rules prepared. The measure deserves consideration. Questions abound about this technology's accuracy — it seems to work pretty well if you're white and male, not so much for other demographics — and its potential for misuse.

Yes, cameras are everywhere, and for better or worse we've grown used to that. But a system that can track and record an individual's daily movements, down to their facial expressions — that's a deeper cut to civil liberties.

We'd like to think that's not something we have to worry about here. Government tracking ordinary people going about their lives? That's un-American. But then we remember NSA surveillance under the Patriot Act, or the NYPD's surveillance of some Muslim communities after 9/11, or authorities monitoring civil rights activists, or Albany police keeping files on demonstrators — and concerns about facial recognition tools don't sound so far-fetched at all.

Even if New York deems this technology appropriate for schools, we'd need policies governing its use: How will the data be secured? Who will be able to access it? For what purposes? How long will it be stored? No school district should use this technology until these questions are answered.

And this needs an answer, too, especially if state funds are used to pay for it: Is it really going to make schools safer?

In a message on her district's website, the Lockport superintendent cites mass shootings as a reason for launching the facial recognition system. The district, she writes, will track only certain categories of people: sex offenders, students and staff who have been suspended, people barred from district property, and "anyone believed to pose a threat based on credible information presented to the District."

And if a school shooter doesn't fit into one of those categories? They'd be just another face in the crowd.

To be sure, murderous intent isn't the only reason to want a person barred from a school. But the accuracy problems plaguing this technology curtail its effectiveness.

We all desperately want our children to be safe in their schools. This won't make schools safer.

Concerns about facial recognition technology reach beyond Lockport, and beyond schools. New York's schoolchildren should not be out in front on this issue. Press pause, please, till we have a chance to set some rules.