Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:
EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should've looked into posting this in a different community.. It's closer to a silly "innovation".. soo.. is this considered FUD? I also don't support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had "privacy-violating" before the "solution".
Unless there will be disciplinary follow-up ( -> no reason for this design), I only see this going the way of de-facto scoreboards among kids.
Considering it only detects if someone in the bathroom is vaping and not who, disciplinary action just isn't really possible with your typical school restroom.
The main picture says "Vape Sensor in Simon's Desk", so it sounds like each pupil's desk is going to have a sensor.
That's what I thought at first, but the person who wrote the article is named Simon, and based on the context given in the article I'm assuming that was a test unit he had on his desk, but the planned implementation is in bathrooms.
They can send people to investigate. Also you could just have someone outside. It should be fairly obvious.
It doesn't replace humans but it can compliment them. I'm not sure why people see this as a privacy issue. We aren't talking about some scary mass surveillance system here
This is taking the route of individual monitoring and public shaming to prevent vaping. That doesn't work, especially with teens.
It isn't individual monitoring. It is an alarm in the bathroom. It can also detect smoke from a fire.
And if there's one kid in the bathroom or a person posted by the bathroom watching the monitor? This feels very police state, monitor and enforce not educate and encourage.
Then how is the social pressure thing meant to work?
Then why publish detection events like this? If they do start following up, all it does is warn perpetrators, and allow for fast iteration of anti-detection, to say nothing of other concerns people have mentioned (tripping other people's detectors etc.)
They can just send in security to investigate. Maybe not every time the alarm is tripped but if they start seeing often they can start making connections. They can basically plan a bust once in a while.