Schools test how far they can go for security

SANTEE, Calif. -- As Mike Brooder pulls into the student parking lot outside West Hills High School, wireless cameras record his face and license plate--doing the same to every car that follows. The cameras then track the 17-year-old senior as he walks up a concrete path, studies his schedule, scratches his chin, waves to friends, and then wanders to class.

Every move Brooder makes -- and every move of his 2,300 classmates -- is captured and stored in the campus' database.

In the wake of last September's terrorist attacks and years of school shootings, West Hills High sits on the cutting edge of the emerging surveillance society.

Each bathroom door is monitored. Sensors that detect the smoke of a single match send alerts to campus security. By Christmas, four more cameras will be installed and hall monitors will carry wireless computers that can pull up a student's school picture, class schedule and attendance record. School officials are considering whether to expand the SkyWitness surveillance system by adding facial recognition software that will allow a computer to filter out who should -- and who should not -- be on campus.

Uses for technology

Technology, once viewed primarily as a learning tool, is building a wall of electronic security on campuses. "People are saying they expected this to happen after the shootings and the terrorists last year," said Brooder, an honor student who plays on the school baseball team. "Still, it seems a little overwhelming and extreme."

And likely to become far more common -- not just in schools, but everywhere.

Schools are among the first to embrace new technology, often because companies view campuses as perfect testing grounds before rolling products out to corporate America. At West Hills, for instance, one of the companies behind West Hills' system, PacketVideo Corp., predicts demand for products like SkyWitness will grow to track people at manufacturing plants, office parks and sports stadiums.

Companies like the fact that students enjoy fewer Constitutional protections, and have lower expectations of privacy than their parents. For the students, such surveillance is standard fare. Their generation has grown up believing that such constant monitoring is normal, with cameras at every bank ATM and fast-food drive-through.

But the desire to protect has led to an erosion of individual privacy, civil liberty advocates argue.

"Once privacy is gone, you can't get it back," said Dale Kelly Bankhead, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial counties. "This is not just about schools, but about a broader social attitude."

Unusual move

Relying on such high-tech systems is an unusual move for high schools, but is expected to become a more popular trend in the post-September 11 world, said Kenneth S. Trump, president and chief executive of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm. At Tewksbury Memorial High School, a suburban campus located about an hour outside of Boston, the push for security went so far as to result in a video-surveillance system that lets both educators--and local police -- to watch the hallways.

"Cameras are everywhere someone wants to watch over," Trump said.

The technology at West Hills relies on advanced hardware, but basic, off-the-shelf technology already is used by both parents and educators to watch kids.

Software programs take snap-shots of every Web page they visit, and every e-mail they send. Devices like AutoWatch can be popped into an automobile and programmed to record a car's speed, as well as times, dates, and the length of time it is driven. Even cell-phone bills list the calls a student makes and receives.

Such devices can just as easily watch adults.

"You might call it control," said Joe Schramm, head of security at West Hills. "We call it keeping the kids safe."

Tucked into the scrub-rush valley of Santee, West Hills High appears to be nothing but safe. The average SAT score is nearly 1,100 and 70 percent of last year's senior now attend either a community college or a four-year university.

But West Hills High has not gone untouched by fear. Less than three miles away, Charles "Andy" Williams went on a shooting rampage last year, killing two students and wounding 13 others at Santana High School.

The community was stunned when nearly two weeks later another student launched a shooting spree at another school in the Grossmont Union High School District. Jason Hoffman, 18, wounded five people at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon.

Hoffman committed suicide while awaiting trial. Williams this month was sentenced to prison for 50 years to life. Despite the violence, the school district was forced to cut its budget across the board; the security group lost three of its 10 employees, including two of the staff members who helped patrol the 76-acre campus. Hoping to offset the pain of the staff cuts, the district started to look at technology already had in place on its various campuses and explore how the tools could be used for security purposes, said Sue Mangiapane, education global account manager for the Cisco Systems Inc.

The San Jose computer giant had been hired to install the core routers, switches and servers that formed the computer brain to link campuses with the district's offices and, in turn, to the Internet. Initially, the technology had been designed for instructional use, such as creating digital lockers where students could store their electronic art projects.

Suddenly, the focus shifted toward security. At a technology conference this spring, executives from Cisco and San Diego-based PacketVideo began discussing the school shootings and tossing around ideas of how the tragedies could have been avoided. "Schools aren't a key security market for us," said James Carol, chairman and co-founder of PacketVideo, a privately owned software company that creates wireless video networks. The company, along with Cisco and Sony, donated the equipment and handled the installation of the $50,000 SkyWitness system.

"This was the right thing to do for a school that's essentially in our back yard," Carol said.

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Tech companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Co. have a long history of donating software and hardware to schools. The motivation is partly the push to be a corporate good citizen, and partly the desire to influence the consumer habits of future shoppers.

"If you want to stress-test a technology, particularly a security system, a school is a good place," said Trump, of the National School Safety and Security Services. "Most often, the biggest obstacle a company must overcome is the issue of cost. If (the technology) is free, many schools will be open to it."

Aiding the decision is the fact that kids have fewer rights than adults, said John Pescatore, research director for security at the industry-consulting company Gartner.

"If the system gets too intrusive, the school and the technology companies are likely to get fewer complaints and fewer legal actions filed over it," Pescatore said. "You can do things on a school campus that you could never do in an office building."

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But the security system could not have prevented last year's school rampages, as the shooters actually were supposed to be there. Such reliance on technology to create a protective wall horrifies privacy proponents, who insist that the West Hills High system is not only invasive, but gives parents and school officials a false sense of security.

"No one's even asking the question: Is this truly going to make my child safer?" said Bankhead.

To 66-year-old grandfather Jerry Parli, the answer is moot. Lingering at the entrance of West Hills, Parli sits patiently in the hot August afternoon, waiting to pick up his two sophomore granddaughters.

"It's about time they do something like this," he said. "It's a terrible thing, but it's time to embrace Big Brother."