Digital Smarts - Fusion Centers, School Safety and Privacy
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A national network of "fusion centers" -- secret facilities that gather information to help support public safety -- are working to help stop school shootings before they occur. While this may sound like a big advancement for school safety, EdSurge reports that the work that includes culling social media and data to identify threats and predict where school shootings may happen has actually created debate among privacy experts and advocates. They worry that there is a risk of misidentifying students as threats. Experts note slang words that are not threat related often appear in texts such as ‘I killed that test’ or ‘these shoes are the bomb’. Calls to open more of these monitoring centers are increasing as the number of school shootings rises.