
Summer camps use facial recognition so parents can watch from home - wallflower
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Summer-camps-use-facial-recognition-so-parents-14291272.php
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throwaway07Ju19
About 36 years ago I was abused by two camp counselors in one summer. One of
them fractured my sternum when he punched me after I mouthed off. I still have
the bony ridge and slightly deformed pectoral. But the other did much worse
leaving me with lifelong emotional issues.

If you asked pre-teen me how I would deal with a grown man determined to abuse
me, I would have talked tough. But when that time came, I froze like a rabbit
in the presence of a coiled python. Over the course of my life when other
victims shared their story with me, I am always reminded how shockingly easy
it is to abuse a child. For the record, one of them ended the abuse when she
gathered the strength to simply whimper the word "no".

For all the confused commenters that wonder why we have this cameras-
everywhere trend, it is because there are a multitude of adults like me with
their secret abuse stories. There just doesn't seem to be competing ideas on
how to prevent child abuse.

At the very least if you are a dad, tell your child this, "if an adult harms
you, I know it will be difficult but you must tell me. I'll probably get angry
at first but I promise I'll calm down and I won't do anything rash, etc.". I
just assumed my dad would lose his temper and either wind up in the hospital,
jail, or both. But then again given the stigma of being an abused boy I
probably still wouldn't talk which appears to be the norm and why it is so
widespread.

~~~
WA
Sorry to hear that, but gotta ask: Do you think a camera would’ve prevented
the abuse? Or maybe would it have happened somewhere out of view of a camera?

~~~
golergka
Nobody can be certain that it would completely prevent something like that,
and world doesn't deal with absolute. However, it would make it harder to
perpetrate, make potential abuser more fearful, and, on average, would make it
much less probable, this I'm sure of.

~~~
WA
With the cost of many many people feeling observed, many parents being nudged
into thinking it’s okay to observe their kids 24/7 etc.

The old discussion about security vs freedom again. And I don’t think there
are easy answers to that.

~~~
golergka
I disagree that parents are passive objects here - it's them who are subjects.
They are the camp's customers, and they make decision to choose one camp over
another depending on which one has this security and which one doesn't, and
they are able to communicate their opinion to the camp's administration.

It's all in the parent's hands, as it should be.

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hindsightbias
“When a camper isn't smiling or is on the outside of a big group shot,
counselors said they know to expect a phone call from back home. Liz Young, a
longtime camp director now helping oversee two camps on the coast of New
Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, said she now fields as many concerned-parents
calls in two hours as she used to get all month - mostly from parents asking
about how their kids look on camera, or whether they're being photographed”

So they now remind the kids their parents are watching, so they’ll smile.

Time for a new era a camp movies. Not sure if it would be a comedy, black
mirror or horror movie.

~~~
zepto
I don’t know why people find black mirror so interesting- isn’t it just a
humdrum depiction of how things are these days?

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
You may be more tuned in to some of the issues that it's calling attention to
than the typical viewer.

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sverige
The first time I got high was when a camp counselor shared a joint with my
friend and me. There were no photos, and no parents ever knew. Everything was
just fine that way, too. Who knows what my parents and siblings were up to
while I was gone.

It was such a relief to get away from my whole family for a week when I was a
teenager.

That was in the 70s. I would have gone nuts if I'd been raised by the
helicopter parents of the 90s who were always on the verge of calling social
services on my wife and me because we didn't always supervise her every waking
moment. Hell, sometimes we didn't know where she was when she was a teen. And
the psychotic version of obsessively intrusive cyber-stalking parents that
exist now makes me not want to know young parents.

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alistairSH
I don't get it. What drives parents to this level of micro-management of their
kids?

I'm a father, in my mid-40s, and my son just turned 25. So, I definitely
parented though the first wave of helicopter parents. I just don't get it.
Sending my son out on his bike to roam free was the best part of the day for
all of us. And summer camp was a welcome break from the tedium of suburban
life - for all of us. He got to run around outside without concern that we
were watching; we got some time to catch up on our marriage or whatever else
needed tending.

And any time we tried to force control his life, it created more problems than
it solved. We always had more success just letting him do his thing and
trusting that he'd mostly do the right thing (he stumbled a few times, but
most of us have).

~~~
novok
I think there always has been an over anxious section of humanity, but now
they are enabled by technology and society around them to be that anxious.

~~~
liability
I'd say they should chill out and smoke a blunt, but that would probably make
them paranoid as well as anxious. What an awful way to go through life, is
there nothing that can be done for them?

~~~
novok
Anxiety & panic attacks being a common mental illness isn't a high statistic
for no reason, and it tends to skew more female.

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misnome
This is utterly terrifying.

Maybe the kids are used to this level of obsessive control? I’m not sure if
this sounds more damaging for the kids or for the parents.

This also sounds only a _really_ small step away from just having cameras
everywhere that the parents can watch 24/7.

I’d really like to hear a persuasive argument as to why this is at all
reasonable.

~~~
lowdose
This is next level helicopter parenting in action. Kids these days are twice
the age of millennials when they start roaming their surrounding environment
without supervision. When I grew up we had a comedy movie called the Truman
Show and we were actually laughing about a similar situation. This is
guaranteed to set up a generation for failure if kids are never exposed to any
risk taking activities.

~~~
novok
My mom brought up a point, that in the 50s-70s, maybe even the 80s, there was
a vast informal network of housewifes and grandparents that kept watch on the
kids playing outside in the neighborhood, that they felt like they could
trust. Also there were not laws that made it kids had to be supervised by
adults until age 12. Now CPS will be called on you if you have your kids go on
the bus by themselves:

[https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-
bc-l...](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-bc-let-his-
kids-ride-the-bus-alone-and-it-sparked-a-national-debate.html)

In today's dual income norm where you don't know your neighbors, that doesn't
exist anymore. That & the new laws creates helicopter parenting to assuage
these new anxieties.

~~~
lowdose
Sounds like an administration completely out of control. This is the kind of
nonsense you actually sue a government for. Is Canada providing the support
for parents working full time to accommodate these kinds of demands?

> After a weeks-long investigation, the ministry concluded that children under
> the age of 10 cannot be left unsupervised — whether on a bus, riding bikes
> around the neighbourhood or walking to the corner store, he said.

It's so sad our world has never been as safe as today.

~~~
qball
>Sounds like an administration completely out of control.

This isn't an administration completely out of control.

This is a _society_ completely out of control.

The administration simply reflects the prevailing social attitude, and that
attitude is that we want to take away the rights of children to properly
develop (and more to the point, limit the rights of parents to _allow_ their
children to develop) and hand it over to concern trolls and/or the paranoid so
that they may exercise power over their neighbors under the guise of looking
out for them- remember, abuse from CPS is always initiated by a "concerned
citizen". Oppression, after all, is always at its worst when the oppressors
act with the approval of their own conscience.

Societies typically fail to deal with this kind of person appropriately,
because when risk is exposed it both presses emotional buttons _and_ provides
an easy way out (by banning the risk).

The way it's _correctly_ dealt with is to write laws that ban society from
paying that kind of Dane-geld. These laws codify things called "rights"; and
their primary function is to prevent unwarranted risk aversity (be it genuine,
or fake to score political points) by setting down a baseline beyond which
those that spread terror are not negotiated with (that your children will be
abducted unless you pay the ransom of never letting them outside, or that
they'll grow up to be mass killers unless you pay the ransom of banning rock
music, D&D, and video games), _even if the allegations are correct_ (a child
raised in a locked cage will by definition never be abducted).

Utah has passed such a law (I'm not sure about other places, though Red states
are by current definition more likely than Blue ones to do this) explicitly
codifying the right of way of minors of "sufficient age and maturity" in its
state definition of "neglect" so that State power can't be abused to harass
them. While it's not a permanent solution explicitly recognizing the rights of
persons of sufficient age and maturity (as it could easily be changed later,
and even if minors had the explicit right of way they would be unlikely to
realize if it was being infringed), it's a good first step.

------
zaroth
This is entirely overblown.

Several camps my kids have gone to use Bunk1 to post pictures of what the kids
are up to. Sometimes there are several hundred photos (for a large camp they
may have a full-time photographer who is also putting together yearbooks and
social media).

The software can flag which photos are more likely to have your child in them.
It saves a lot of scrolling. That is all.

“Oh look, there she is! Cool.”

There is no way I’m calling the camp unless I see blood streaming down my kids
face. I have never called the camp except for medical issues.

Mostly the pictures make me jealous of all the cool activities they get to do.
They give a topic I can mention in the bunk notes (instead of mailing a letter
you write a message and they print it and hand it out, and your child can
write a reply which gets scanned in and emailed back the next day.)

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ummonk
I well and truly hope the Gel-Mann effect applies here and this is being
exaggerated or misreported.

Cause what is described here is absolutely insane.

------
stiray
This comes to my mind.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)

The first results of this method of parenting are comming in, and I will tell
you only the most hilarious result: some guy, 25 or something, came to a job
interview with his mother (and I am not joking)

~~~
WA
The media reporting about helicopter parents might be way out of proportion:

[https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_...](https://www.salon.com/test/2015/09/04/debunking_the_myth_of_the_helicopter_parent_the_pernicious_cultural_biases_behind_a_collegiate_urban_legend/)

~~~
stiray
Maybe, but this event happened in my company. It is not from the media.

------
winchling
Parents: hanging out with your children is reasonably-priced and can actually
be fun.

Non-parents: starting a family is fun and can actually be reasonably-priced.

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shpx
The parents have to set up automated cameras in their house and car and ask
their employer to set some up in their workplace as well. Then let the kids
get automated messages with the photos. It would only be fair.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

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p4bl0
This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I really think some
technologies should simply not be developed.

Like it or not, engineers have a social responsibility, and this they should
be able to refuse to make certain types of products. In other fields (biology
and medicine for example), there is a notion of ethics. We need that too.

~~~
tdxgx
Social responsibility is great and all, until you are struggling to feed your
kids. Then it goes out the window. In a country of 300 million, I'm sure
someone would be willing to develop it

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nlawalker
Show the pictures to the kids daily and let them choose which pictures get
sent home, and this is a win for everyone.

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grawprog
Sounds like a good way to build up a large accurate database of children's
faces with matching expressions.

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sambull
Getting kids ready for always being under surveillance in an authoritarian
society.

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jgalt212
Obsessed parent or not, the facial recognition is a huge time saver. Some of
these camps post hundreds of pictures a day.

