Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - They're Putting AI Cameras In School Busses

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

AI Surveillance is taking over our schools. Support my independent journalism:🙏 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz 🗞️ Buy a paid subscription to my Substack: https://www.usermag.co Kent Myrtle, a Wichita bus driver, has been blowing the whistle on AI-powered cameras being installed on school buses. From Wichita to Massachusetts, school districts are partnering with companies like Samsara and BusPatrol to implement "real-time monitoring" and "hazard detection." But is this actually about safety, or is it a massive privacy violation? We discuss how this footage is being sent to the Amazon Web Services cloud without parental consent. We also look at the "safety" claims, like AI systems mistaking bags of chips for weapons, and how these buses are being turned into roving surveillance machines for law enforcement.

Well, I first decided to speak out in the safety meeting. When the opportunity came up for questions and comments, I stood up and I was concerned about, you know, where this footage is going and how it's being used. And pretty quickly, I was being asked to leave the room. Every morning, parents across the country are dropping their kids off at the bus stop. But what they might not realize is that invasive AI tech companies are surveilling their kids from the moment they step onto the school bus. AI powered cameras are being installed on school buses across the country, recording, analyzing, and uploading footage of children and school bus drivers, and most parents have no idea that it's even happening.

Kent Myrtle is a school bus driver in Wichita, and he's been one of the few bus drivers to raise concerns about how school buses are being transformed into mobile surveillance vehicles. Today he's joining me to break down what's happening in his school district, discuss why it's so dangerous to integrate AI surveillance tech, into kids' school experiences and what parents, educators, and workers can do to fight back against these invasive tech companies. Hi, Kent.

Welcome to Free Speech Friday. Hey, glad to be here, Taylor. So I think it's so funny for people that weren't in my live stream to know, I was actually covering this story and talking about these, you know, AI systems on school buses. And then you came into my chat and you are one of the school bus drivers in the story that I was talking about. I think you had flagged it to me and I appreciate it so much. I posted the link.

I am the school bus driver. I was sitting there going crazy waiting for you to notice. I am so bad at checking the chat. But can you just back up a little bit and tell us a little bit about your career and how did you become a school bus driver? Well, I decided to get into school bus driving because my previous job kind of sucked and my dad did this. So I was pretty interested.

I'm curious if you took the bus to school growing up then, if your dad was a school bus driver. Well, my dad wasn't a school bus driver until I had already learned to drive for myself and graduated, actually, but I did ride the school bus and I really enjoyed it. There was a couple very memorable bus drivers. I also took the bus to school. I grew up going to public school and would get dropped off at the bus stop every day, take the bus to and from school. When I took the bus, this cool bus was sort of this like, I don't want to say like lawless zone. Obviously, there was a bus driver in the front, but like there were certainly no camera. I mean, people like eventually you would have like a Nokia smartphone, but like, you know,

there wasn't a lot of like surveillance or anything. It's like kind of like a safe space, I guess on the way to school where people could like sometimes get in fights, but also gossip and chat. And I feel like all of that has changed a lot. So tell me a little bit about when you rode the school bus. Were there cameras in the school bus already, you know, when you wrote it? And also how old are you for people that don't that are, you know, can't see you on screen? Yeah, I'm 23.

And since the time. I started going to school in kindergarten, there was always a camera in these buses. And that system has stayed basically the same up until now where we are adding in addition to the regular cameras inside the bus, an AI-powered SAMHara camera system. Yeah. So I feel like these regular cameras were mostly just recording plain video, I guess, in case anything went wrong or in case you needed to like document something. I mean, this has become pretty normalized. I live in LA where everyone has a dash cam and, you know, to kind of like document what's going on as well outside the car.

How did you find out that AI was being incorporated into the school bus experience and that these AI cameras would be put inside your bus? The first I started to hear about it was just some of the scuttled bet between other bus drivers hearing about how they were being installed in the South lot and how they were increasingly being installed in more buses at the North lot where I worked. So nobody, you never got any sort of like announcement. They never had any sort of like big rollout or anything. We did get an announcement and some more information about it after it had been installed in most of our buses already. And that came in the form of the regular monthly mandatory safety meeting, which last month in February was just all the Samsara PowerPoint instead of the usual safety content. it was trying to sell us on the awesome benefits that the AI camera system would afford us.

So explain how the AI camera systems work and what SAMHSARA is. So SAMHSARA is a camera systems company which works with trucking companies and delivery vehicles and also now school buses, particularly with my company first student. This camera system has a inward, outward facing camera mounted on the rear view mirror

so that you can see what's happening outside and inside instantaneously as a manager and also receive flagged alerts about what's happening on the road and inside the bus and with the driver by AI power notification. Is there anything else you can tell us about what they communicated to you about the company and how this technology works? Like, I mean, is it just recording and deleting files? Like, is it recording and using AI to detect threats? Like, what is happening exactly with these AI cameras? Yeah. First and foremost, they took. told us that these camera systems were going to be used to increase safety by giving us an opportunity to review the incidents that are happening around us on the road and also to alert us

and take note of our drowsiness or inattention or hands off the wheel moments. Oh, so there are basically like surveillance cameras for you, the driver, as well as the students that get on the bus. Yeah, primarily it's focused on the driver in his activities as it relates to traffic. especially because it has the ability to provide instantaneous access to footage, which can be used in the case of an incident, so that they can prove who's at fault when an accident happens. I mean, it reminds me of kind of what a lot of Amazon delivery drivers were told when they got

surveillance systems installed in their cars where it was like, well, this is to protect you. This is for safety. This is in case you get in a crash. We'll know what went wrong. And that all sounds good enough, but why do you need AI involved in that, I guess? And also, I feel like, you know, the fact that it's monitoring your behavior and your moments while you're at work seems kind of terrifying and concerning. Definitely, because most of our drivers had a similar concern relating to that monitoring of ourselves because we are worried if we need to blow our nose while we're driving or take a drink from our water bottle or even look around.

not as much as we're supposed to or where we're supposed to, possibly even just distractions counted as time interacting with the children, speaking to them excessively. Yeah, let's talk about the children and kind of like this level of surveillance. Like to me, I don't know, the best school bus drivers that I knew were so friendly to the kids and would take time and say hi to the kids.

And like, I feel like being a school bus driver, yes, you have to stick to your route and get to the stops on time and stuff, but you're also interacting with children that are leaving their parents and on the way to school and like they want to feel safe. And I feel like this kind of surveillance software that's so focused on productivity and optimization

maybe could make interactions like that harder. And also I'm concerned about the privacy of the students on the bus with these cameras. I mean, especially if they're inside of the bus. I mean, doesn't that violate the students' privacy as well? Yeah, they would also be captured on the cameras and have their same footage communicated to servers in a different state.

I think about these AI systems that are being rolled out across schools. And I've done some reporting on this where we're increasingly seeing these AI-enabled sort of cameras that are sometimes framed as like productivity things, but they're sort of being repurposed as general use cameras around schools or buildings or retail environments

that are meant to capture, you know, dangerous situations or some AI systems claim that they can detect guns by the way, you know, a student is walking. And we've seen these things go wrong. I mean, just a few months ago in Baltimore, a child was tackled to the ground after one of these AI systems misidentified a bag of Doritos as a gun. And, you know, I just think it's really concerning as well.

I mean, you mentioned data. Where is this data going? How is it being stored? How is it being used potentially for training models? I mean, do you have any sort of insight into this? Did the school district communicate any of these sort of nuances to you? Well, the nuances and technical details really weren't communicated. But I did some of my own investigating, especially on their own website, which provided

me some insights, especially looking at their legal section. I got some information that related to Amazon Web Service and Amazon's camera ID facial recognition system to give you a sense of who's working with Samsara for her student. Yeah, I mean, somebody, I don't know if it was you or somewhere else I read, but in some school districts, parents even have like apps that can tell them when the kid got on and off the bus. This seems crazy to me. And are they like scanning the kids faces when they get on or do they check a button on the app? Like, how do these systems work? So to explain how the GPS works on our bus, we have a routing system, which has the stop locations and the student's names. And so as we go along our route, we click on who's picked up and who's

dropped off. So the related app can tell the parents where the bus is at, how close they are to arriving to pick up your student or give them some insight as to when they'll be dropped off. I mean, that seems fine enough, I guess, but I could imagine that same system being automated, especially with these cameras. And I think of even just like workplace check in software where it used to be enough to just check in, tap a button or your manager would click off, you know, on a little spreadsheet of like this person's here, this person clocked in for their shift, this whatever. And then soon with facial recognition and AI rolling out, it's like, oh, you don't even need to do that. We're taking that, you know, we're lessening your workload so you can be more productive. just going to use facial recognition to and to me like that it I guess would be a concern potentially with putting these AI cameras in you know in the school buses I mean how do parents feel about

this kind of surveillance software being incorporated into school buses have you talked to any of them about it I have talked to a few people and anyone who's heard of this that I've discussed with it on a personal level is either indifferent because they're not interested they don't have school age kids it doesn't matter them but if they do they're all very very very very very very very concerned and like, wow, if that comes out, I might have to consider enrolling my students elsewhere. Yeah, it seems scary. I feel like, I mean, unfortunately, a lot of parents love surveillance and they sort of think

of it as this safety tradeoff. What about the media? I mean, I found this article. I think that was the one that you were quoted in where it's like a parody level article because they write it as if like you're just some like sort of random school bus driver that has like privacy concerns, but then they don't really address any of the privacy concerns that you bring up. But I guess, yeah, like, what made you want to sort of speak out and talk to the media and sort of pay attention to these issues? Well, I first decided to speak out in the safety

meeting. When the opportunity came up for questions and comments, I stood up and shortly explained my concerns relating to the privacy of our children above and beyond the inconveniences and surveillance of our bus drivers. I was concerned about, you know, where this footage is going and how it's being used and whether or not it's secure up to a standard of all of the students across all of our buses across the country. My concern relates to the fact that Samsara has already settled a lawsuit in Illinois relating to the breach of privacy and the collection of facial recognition data without any consent. And pretty quickly I was being asked to leave the room.

In their own marketing materials and the footage on their website, they show blurred faces of drivers and in another lawsuit related to their competitor motive. They provided us footage of their CEO and C.O. in their own cars using the Samsara system. And they showed us their faces. But they'll pretend like they can't see ours. I managed to conclude what I had to say as I was being ushered out of the room. What? By who? It was a member of management. So I was told by HR.

It wasn't a person I'd ever met before or even recognized. The managers usually wear orange vests. And so this was apparently a dispatcher at the other lot. And they immediately asked me to start leaving the room saying that wasn't the appropriate place for this discussion. Okay, that's actually ridiculous. I'm so sorry that happened to you. That actually does not give me a lot of confidence in, you know, their ability to answer some of these tough questions. I mean, in light of that, how are you feeling about things now?

Have you been able to get any other school bus drivers on board about this? Tell me about how your colleagues are reacting to this and responding to it. Well, as I left the room and the doors closed behind me, there was a great roar and applause. through the door I could hear questions like, well, didn't you ask for questions? Like, why is he being asked to leave? That seems like a very reasonable concern to raise. And they didn't have very many more answers. They just at the following safety meeting the next day added a final slide that said there will be no questions or comments at this time. Speak to your manager individually. Wow. So not exactly a dialogue. who approved these cameras? How did this get enacted? Do you have any visibility into that? I mean, I know in the News 12 article, they were talking about this is like a decision made on behalf of just Wichita Public Schools Transportation's Director, but do you have any kind of insight into how it came to be? Was there any public comment process? Were parents involved? Was anyone involved in this decision to put these cameras in the school buses? Or was it really just this Wichita Public Schools decision? Well, first student is the corporate contractor who operates the school bus contract on behalf of Wichita, U.S.D. 259 school system. And so first student operates at a interstate national level. And the decision to use Samsara, a department with them, was decided at an upper corporate level.

Got it. So basically, it just sort of comes down from on high that, you know, this is going to be integrated. as a worker and somebody that is, you know, obviously driving every day, you have a lot of responsibility picking up, dropping off kids, et cetera. What are your thoughts on surveillance software in the workplace? Because it seems like we're just seeing more and more of it. Like I mentioned, retail employees dealing with these cameras. Amazon drivers have long dealt with this, but even workers in the warehouses as well. Now we're seeing it in schools. Now we're seeing it on school buses. I recently found out actually garbage trucks are also becoming surveillance machines and have

license plate readers on them that go to the government. It just seems like there's more and more mass surveillance. And I don't know why it offends me so much to know that this is being incorporated into school buses, maybe because it's so charming. And I'm like, wait, not the precious school bus. But at the end of the day, you know, you are a worker being affected by one of these AI systems. And how are you sort of feeling about that? Well, I'm feeling fairly discouraged, to be frank. I've spoken to a school bus driver briefly who stated that he used to work at a traditional shipping company who introduced the style of cameras and was so frustrated at how the system was implemented and how it influenced how he drove that he preferred to come drive school buses for lesser pay instead. And another friend I know who works in the trucking industry has a sleeper cab. And so according to liability in law, because that's his abode, basically, they don't have internal facing cameras like that.

And so for him, if they did implement such a system, he also would be interested in quitting his job. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, more and more workers want privacy. They want the ability to do their jobs without this sort of like surveillance and oversight. But at the same time, I mean, if these people quit, like you mentioned your friend that worked in shipping, quit. and then now these same cameras are being put into his new job. And it's increasingly feeling like it's inescapable. I mean, I don't know, I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for these workers that are getting squeezed, you know, like, I mean, the tracking software, it's, it's bad on the kids. I don't like that the kids are being surveilled by AI.

I don't like that, you know, even in this news article, they're talking about how like, oh, this AI system can detect threats or whatever, like that all raises alarm bells. But just the idea that school bus drivers need to be like hyper productive is kind of seems crazy to me. It's like some of these jobs I think deserve a little bit more leeway in how they operate. And I don't know. It's like it's I don't know that AI is going to lead to a better experience for these children, you know. Yeah, because I understand and appreciate honestly that we do already have cameras on board our buses, which are just stored in a hard drive on the bus. so that in the case of an incident or in the case of a problem, that we have the security of accountability

and being able to review what happened. But having this footage transferred over the internet is a little bit more concerning. Yeah. What do you think, I mean, are you trying to mobilize other school bus drivers? Like, what would you say to other workers out there that want to speak out against this stuff? Because it seems like you're going up against these corporations

and these companies, you're speaking up in a meeting, you're getting thrown out. Like, it's so hard to do this sort of individually. But yeah, I guess like what is your message to other workers out there that are dealing with surveillance, including even just white collar workers. White collar workers are also under increased scrutiny and surveillance, especially if they're on work laptop, et cetera. As far as other workers go, I would have to say that you should just take solidarity

in your coworkers knowing that nobody really is interested in this. But more importantly, in terms of school buses, I think it's important to reach the parents on this matter because there is only a limited extent to which our school bus drivers are able to bargain. And so we need more support if we're going to take the best care of our students. That involves the school bus drivers, the teachers, the parents, and the management being able to cooperate. Well, talk to the parents for me a little bit. Like, what would you say to them? Because I think, I mean, it's so hard, as I was mentioning earlier, just with the AI surveillance systems within the schools. A lot of parents are on board with that. They're being packaged

along with these cell phone bans. They're banning cell phones all across these schools. And of course, the primary objection from parents to these cell phone bans is like, well, there's school shootings. What if I don't get to say goodbye to little Johnny, you know, before something happens? And a lot of these schools are saying, well, don't worry. We're also rolling out these AI surveillance systems that can detect school shooters that can detect problematic behavior, problematic kids, which to me just, again, raises alarm bells. And so parents think, okay, well, well, then, you know, my little child is safe with more AI cameras. And not only do I think it has the potential to misidentify threats, but I worry how that data could be used to target children, you know, children that walk

the wrong way, children that behave the wrong way, like also just gets probably psychologically damaging for kids to grow up, you know, feeling like they have no privacy and that they're surveilled 24-7 from the minute they step out of their house, you know, to the minute they get back, like that also seems counterproductive because they need space to grow and learn. Yeah. In short, for parents, I'd have to say that we should ask for security, ask for privacy, and ask for the right to consent because we didn't have the opportunity to have any say about this. And I absolutely echo your concerns relating to the use of AI in surveillance over our children because there are increasingly more and more cameras that do this in public and in our institutions

like schools and now are school buses, but also digital infrastructure is being used for surveillance too. Related to cell phone bans, partial reason for the interest in that is because it leads children to use school devices, which are typically included with surveillance software, which oftentimes by default, especially, isn't turned off at home and is always active. And it, I think, creates a culture of always being surveilled and knowing that you're being surveilled and similarly to drivers and our actions, it relates to the children and how they act. They have to think about who's watching them and what they'll think about it before they say or do or ask anything. I'm so glad you brought up the surveillance on ed tech like platforms and the school devices because this has been a big thing

for companies like Google and other ed tech companies that sell huge amounts of hardware and software to these school systems that is truly just surveillance software and it harvests massive amount of data on children. They don't want kids to be able to use a personal device that they can't surveil. They want to capture every single bit of data. Something else that I saw actually that just came out this week today, news broke that 150 schools in New York City are going to be instituting digital hall passes. And these digital hall passes are going to track bathroom breaks and gather data on how students leave the room. It's called Smart Pass. It allows them to track exactly where in the school the student is going for how long. Again, it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be to protect

children so that there's no, you know, disruptive bathroom meetups is what they said. Again, it's just this like micromanaging surveillance and also like that they're trying to kind of track and monitor bathroom breaks seem so invasive. It's like they don't even get to have like a private moment alone in the bathroom. Now they have to have this like smart surveillance thing with them. It's disturbing. Yeah. I used to just be able to ask teacher, may I use the bathroom? And they would say, okay, and let me go. If I'm gone too long, they'd have to ask if it was way too long, why it was, or if I'm asking to go too often, they can deal with that in the same way that you would just deal with it rather than asking the teacher. And then they ask the AI, whether the student has

an appropriate score to use the bathroom or whether they need extra vigilance in that act or they need to be followed. Yes. And this is what they're talking about. I mean, these people in the school system are saying that they're praising the full visibility that the app gives into students' whereabouts and their bathroom behavior. It's wild. Yeah, it's just, it's disturbing.

And also just it reminds me of these, like, efforts to surveil kids online as well with digital ID and track them with, you know, the age verification laws and everything. I just, I feel so. for children that are young and growing up in that world. Because to be surveilled when you go to the bathroom, to be surveilled when you step into school, to be surveilled when you're just on the bus to school, it just all seems like increasingly oppressive and disturbing.

Yeah, I tend to agree. It's all generally eroding our culture of privacy so that we don't even think anything that there's a microphone listening inside of our house and that there's a camera on our doorbell, watching who comes and goes and when they come and go and what their facial expression and mood indicates about them at that time. And discussing this camera system issue with my family in the

kitchen, the Amazon Alexa kept piping up saying things like, why should you be so worried about security? You shouldn't have to be concerned about how I'm listening to you. Three or four times a similar nothing statements just mollifying you to consent to releasing your data. Kent, that is so disturbing. It is horrific. Oh my God. I refuse to have an election. Alexa in my house, no matter how many times the PR team, it said various tech companies have sent me those types of devices. There's a reason Amazon sold those devices at a loss. Yeah, seriously. Kent, I'm so grateful to have you on. And I also just want to give you the opportunity to share a few things that the local media station that interviewed you that I thought did a terrible job on their interview didn't include. What are some things that got cut out of that interview that you feel like should have been included in the news coverage on this. AI camera rollout.

Yeah, they cut out all the meat and the bones of my concerns. I wanted to demonstrate the extent to which that they can see and track what is happening with the students. This is an example of the types of camera views and perspective that they would have of our children and from their own website demonstrating that they are tracking. Oh, wow. Okay. So it's a lot.

It's well, so the cameras are on the outside tracking the students coming on all. It's like a 360 type camera. Yeah, and according to their website, most of the promotional footage that is immediately available on the front pages includes like glassy boxes over the people's faces. But in another part of their website regarding their lawsuit with a competitor in the industry called Motive,

they included this image, which is the CEO and CPO of Motive using their system in their own vehicle, which is pretty concerning to me because it suggests that they can review and investigate and access some of this footage for their own purposes should they wish to. Wow, that's so scary. That reminds me of, honestly, this case with Google recently, what Google, I think it was a Nest camera or something.

This woman, Nancy Guthrie, who was the mom of a famous NBC journalist, was kidnapped. We still don't know what happened to her. but she stopped paying for her Google Nest subscription, and yet somehow they were able to pull the footage. It didn't lead anywhere, but I think everyone was asking, like, wait a minute, you said you don't have access to this footage. It turns out you do have access to the footage. It's all in their backend systems.

Because you can't use the footage, but that footage can use you. Yeah, it be used against you, exactly. And probably it will never be used in your favor. Another point which I had to raise, which the local news disincluded, was another legal issue with Samsara called Carling v. Samsara taking place in Illinois resulted in a $3.95 million settlement. The judge states that Samsara collected his facial geometry through its dash can system, used AI software to process that data to recognize them

in its cloud-based dashboard. It further stated that theoretically a company like Samsara could create truck safety technology that complies with the Biometric Information Privacy Act, which is in our country, Illinois has the best data privacy protection of any other state by far. Basically, the subject of this lawsuit was that the trucker that was represented didn't have the opportunity to consent, which violated the state law in Illinois. Yeah, that's so concerning. Because while other states don't necessarily have that same legal protection afforded to its citizens, I think we should still want for that, especially for our children.

And related to that on their website under their legal forms, they have an example of a consent form stating, in part, the face recognition information used by camera ID is processed using Amazon Web Service cloud-based software. And it also relates to a copy of our biometric data policy is available on request. And so none of us had the opportunity to see that, not the bus drivers, not the students nor their parents.

And so I wonder why if there is the opportunity to consent, it's only afforded to the people with the protections legally over their own privacy. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. Or like the corporation that signed the contract, not the people that are actually being surveilled. It's definitely concerning because first student is a nationwide bus company servicing cities and states all across the country,

including in Illinois and Chicago. And so I wonder whether or not even they had the opportunity to consent to this school bus system and how that worked in their districts and why we don't have the opportunity to consent in that same way here. Absolutely.

No, these are all really good questions that you should be bringing up in a safety meeting or, you know, some forum. Well, Kent, I can't thank you enough for coming on today and talking about all of this. It's so great to hear from somebody that's actually a worker that's affected by, you know, this surveillance. And I just think it's so impressive that you have been able to stand up and speak out about it.

Even if the local media is shading you and not including your concerns and even if you, you know, are getting dragged out of these meetings, like I really think that people like you who are using their voice to fight back against these really predatory AI surveillance systems deserve so much credit. So thank you so much for coming on today. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for picking up the story. And I'm such a huge fan of your show. I'm very glad to have been here.

Thanks, Dayway. All right, that's it for this week's episode of Free Speech Friday. If you like my work, please, please, please support me on Patreon or via the link below. I cannot continue to produce this podcast without your support, and it makes such difference. On my Patreon, I do a monthly bonus Q&A live stream. I send out a biweekly newsletter of everything that I'm reading and following and more. You can also get that newsletter on my substack at usermag.com. That's usermag.com.

If you like this show, please give it a positive rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. I'll be back with a brand new episode of FreeSpeep. speech Friday next week. See you then.