A New York school district will move forward with its facial recognition pilot program next week, despite an explicit order from the New York State Education Department that it must wait until a standard is finalized for data privacy and security for all state educational agencies.



On Friday, the Lockport school district said it was "confident" that the data collection policy for its facial recognition system was sound enough that it could begin testing it on campuses June 3.

"[State Education Department] representatives previously communicated to the District their recommendation that the System not become operational until the dialogue between the District and SED with regard to student data security and privacy is complete," the statement, sent by the district's director of technology, Robert LiPuma, to BuzzFeed News, said. "However, the District’s Initial Implementation Phase of the System (which will commence June 3, 2019 and continue through August 31, 2019) will not include any student data being entered into the System database or generated by the System."

Two hours after this story published, JP O'Hare, a representative of the New York State Education Department, said in an email, "The district has assured us no facial recognition software will be used next week while it tests other components of the system." NYSED and Lockport did not respond to multiple follow-up questions about what specific parts of the system would be tested and what would not, though it's clear certain components of the facial recognition system will be tested next week.



The Lockport pilot comes amid increased scrutiny of facial recognition’s efficacy across the US and growing concerns by civil rights activists that the tech may serve to further entrench societal biases. Earlier this month, San Francisco banned police from using facial recognition; now, similar bills that would do the same are emerging in other cities. Amazon has endured persistent pressure — including from its own shareholders — for its aggressive marketing of its facial Rekognition system to law enforcement agencies. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has expressed concern in a congressional hearing on the technology last week that facial recognition could be used as a form of social control.