UK School Introduces Facial Recognition

Penguin_me writes "A UK school has quietly introduced new facial recognition systems for registering students in and out of school: 'HIGH-TECH facial recognition technology has swept aside the old-fashioned signing of the register at a school. Sixth-formers will now have their faces scanned as they arrive in the morning at the City of Ely Community College. It is one of the first schools in the UK to trial the new technology with its students. Face Register uses the latest high-tech gadgets to register students in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds.'"

Comments

Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you think?

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a Guy Fawkes mask?

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[ShieldW0lf]

Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea, don't you think?

You make a good point.

This "school"... it has high-tech security, guards, biometrics, no one learns much there and they call it an "institution".

What makes it different from a prison?

You know there's a huge push on to try to get kids into elderly care? They'll throw money at em, pay for their school, pay em a salary to go, and yet, the kids don't want to have anything to do with it. It's a real crisis, cause there's not enough kids to wipe all the elderly assholes' assholes, so to speak. Final result of all this womb-poison being shoved down peoples throats, I guess.

I told my folks and their friends this was going to happen when I was 17, and that it was inevitable that we would abandon our parents generation to die without care because there weren't enough of my generation. Man you want to see some pissed off people with a sense of entitlement.

But I'm starting to think maybe I was wrong. With shit like this being done to children by their own parents in their own nation, abandonment seems a little too turn-the-other-cheek to be realistic. The way things are going, demand for retribution and revenge seems inevitable...

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[Anonymous Coward]

-6, spelling nazi regulations flouted

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

What makes it different from a prison?

The fact that people learn a lot from there, and that's what it was built for. Prisons were built to keep criminals from the streets, schools were built for giving kids educations (and keeping people off the streets).

I see a lot of people come out of the schooling system saying they didn't learn anything, but in truth, they've picked up and cemented in some vital knowledge for every day life. That's not to say you can't get it elsewhere, but school serves its purpose to a certain degree.

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[ShieldW0lf]

All I see are people being kept estranged from that which keeps them alive, and specialized to the point where they are useless to themselves, suitable only to be a cog in the machine, pets to entertain the oligarchy. It's not the things you learn, it's the things you never do learn. These institutions create estrangement and a lack of self-determination, not wisdom or knowledge.

Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea,

[mahadiga]

Do you know historically berka was wore by prostitutes in Nawab's Court.

I wonder how it copes with twins?

[adnonsense]

Or just someone holding up someone else's photo?

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Big Hairy Ian]

RTFA it scans the face using infra red. You are right about twins though also how will it cope with beards/Mustaches/Sun glasses. Not such an issue at a 6th form college I know plus this a voluntary system which I'm sure the students support because it saves them about 40 mins a day sitting their whilst a teacher goes through the register.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[sakdoctor]

This absolutely sucks. In my day, all we had to do to sneak out of class, was wait for teacher to turn their back.

Now days kids have to wear Thermoptic Camouflage armour. What is the world coming to.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Ashriel]

Most facial recognition systems can determine the difference between identical twins - there are small differences, y'know.

Actually, if you pay attention, you should be able to tell one twin from another yourself, assuming you know a pair. I've known a few, and I've always been able to tell the difference. One dead giveaway is when one twin has a slightly slimmer face than the other.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[amias]

i wonder how it copes with the catastrophic outbursts of acne and spots that afflict
people in the 6th form college.

It would be serious embarrassing to have to
be scanned again and again because of your
spots.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[CrimsonScythe]

Twins? Easy! The evil twin always has a goatee.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[ijakings]

Not so easy when you can buy a magnetic goatee!

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[MatthewCCNA]

The "good" twin will say kill us both!

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[mdwh2]

In my sixth form, I don't think anyone bothered turning up for registration :) The teachers didn't care. It's not like this is compulsory school, if you don't turn up it's your loss, not theirs. (US readers may not be aware - 16-18 is optional in the UK, and my experience was that they treat you much more like an adult student at University, rather than still a school kid who has to follow rules. Although some colleges may be stricter than others.)

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the female ones.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Anonymous Coward]

facial recognition systems? A Chien de Saint Hubert can tell identical twins apart at the distance of 110 yards.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Anonymous Coward]

how will it cope with beards/Mustaches/Sun glasses. Not such an issue at a 6th form college

You underestimate how quickly a beard can be grown with proper determination.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Hordeking]

The "good" twin will say kill us both!

Not if they're both the evil twin!

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Morkano]

I do believe twins actually have different IR signatures. Furthermore, I doubt they're too broken up about wasting the time in the morning.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[TheLink]

Sure there are small differences, and that's the problem, often those small differences aren't good enough for the "1.5 seconds scans".

I wouldn't be able to tell which twin was which if one just ran past me.

If the system is that sensitive to small differences in the face, then it is more likely to get confused with normal facial changes. Many girls/women do actually look different over the course of their "monthly cycle"[1].

Also, what happens if the twin with the fatter face slims down a bit or the other twin puts on a bit more weight in a different part?

[1] http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1560017

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Dan541]

Because effective time management, is high on the priorities list of any kid.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[Chabo]

Must be awkward for female twins...

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[julesh]

I'm sure the students support because it saves them about 40 mins a day sitting their whilst a teacher goes through the register

I may be misremembering, but I don't remember it taking this long at my school. Nor do I think somebody was spending "an hour and a half a day" recording data. In fact, I think 1.5 seconds per student is pretty freaking slow; you could easily get that down to 1 second each using a "shout out name and check box" system, I'm sure. But that wouldn't be "cool". And wouldn't cost the taxpayer anywhere near as much.

"Only today (Thursday, 05 March) we had a fire alarm test and the administration staff were able to quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site."

Of course, in my day the records were held on paper anyway, so there was no nead to "quickly and effectively print data off the system": just pick up the already-existing record sheet. I see no compelling reason why this needs to change.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[xaxa]

But if you're being paid to go to 16-18 college (which many UK students are) then you have to go to school or you don't get the money.

A college near me had RFID cards for their registration system. One student would offer to scan cards at the door, he charged for it. 20 people marked present by the registration system, one guy in class with £50, 19 out of class claiming the money from the government for being educated.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[mdwh2]

But if you're being paid to go to 16-18 college (which many UK students are)

Blimey, things have changed since my day :) Though I shouldn't get too envious, as I presume the amount they get is all taken back in tuition fees when they go to University... Not to mention that I had grants. Talking of which, even though I received a grant to go to University, there was never any need to prove that I attented every single lecture and class, so it's not clear to me that such a system requires this kind of daily registration system.

Re:I wonder how it copes with twins?

[xaxa]

Education Maintenance Allowance http://ema.direct.gov.uk/
It's only £30 a week.

I don't know how many people abuse it, I went to an independent school and only a few were eligible for EMA (those with 100% scholarships whose families were poor). They had to get a bit of paper signed by the teacher every lesson, but there was at most one per class.
The problem I mentioned was at the nearest state 16-18 college.

£30/week wouldn't make much of a dent in my £24000 of student loan debt. I wasn't required to register attendance for much at university, but there was always the feeling that missing a lecture was a waste of £20 (or whatever we worked it out as, that figure might be what the non-EU students were paying with their many-000s fees).

How will it tell between Asian kids?

[Laser_iCE]

We all know they look the same!

Why do this?

[__aashqr1992]

Why do this? What possible advantage is there? It seems like a completely gratuitous database. Besides which, when I was at college (in the UK age 16-18 normally) they didn't take register - If you didn't turn up, that was your own problem; the lecturers took it up with you when you finally did turn up for class.

Re:Why do this?

[SlashSlasher]

Now the police will have a full biometric database of the entire population. They used to have to make up a baseless accusation to add you to their database and take your DNA. That's very useful when you run your country like a supermax prison. London has more camera surveillance than most of the prisons in my country. If they wrap George Orwell's corpse in wire they can power the whole thing by how fast he's spinning in his grave. To everyone who thought I was a paranoid freak: I'll take that apology now.

Re:Why do this?

[montyzooooma]

Besides which, when I was at college (in the UK age 16-18 normally) they didn't take register - If you didn't turn up, that was your own problem; the lecturers took it up with you when you finally did turn up for class.

Except when you get hit by a bus the college then gets into trouble for not knowing where you are when you're supposed to be under their care. We're a nanny state, remember.

Re:Why do this?

[Xest]

Same reason they're making DNA databases of kids, fingerprint databases of kids and so on.

Because most head teachers are power hungry muppets with not a single bit of respect for liberty in their blood.

It's no suprise then that Jacqui Smith was a teacher before coming totalitarian dictator in chief for the Labour party reporting only to comrade Brown and torture master Milliband.

I don't know what the deal is but so many people in the teaching profession in the UK seem to have this power hungry attitude. I don't know if it's years of being in charge of and having power over kids that oddly in their own minds gives them the same feeling as other corrupt dictators running countries over the years or what.

Seriously though there's a bigger point to be made here, regarding this sort of thing and the DNA/fingerprint databases of kids as well as swipe cards and that sort of thing that schools implement and the government supports. I'm concerned the Labour government is pushing and supporting this kind of thing on kids because they can do it at school where many parents are oblivious to it and such that kids become used to it and wont be opposed to it as they grow up because it's all they've ever known. Coupling parental ignorance with "It's to protect your children" seems like Labour are trying damn hard to make the next generation of voters assume it's normal to suffer this kind of surveillance.

Re:Why do this?

[AHuxley]

Social conditioning, get the young into the 'cool' new future. Only saddo's who lived in 1984, quote 1984. The gate way drug for more and more tracking. Later used in public places, your part time job, full time job, taxi, public transport ... at home with google, Apple, Sony, MS..

Security services love it. Can passively track you for your productive life. No more funny codes on tickets or 'numbers', just you in front of any networked camera.

ID the skull in the shallow grave? Rebuild a skull and find out its name?

Any Irish students?

Re:Why do this?

[digitig]

Age 16-18 you are not "under their care". At 16 in the UK you are old enough to marry (with your parents permission; not needed in Scotland), leave school and set up your own home or join up with the military. You're considered enough of an adult to look after yourself (though not enough of an adult to go and see a film showing stuff that you're pretty much expected to be doing if you're married. Err...)

Re:Why do this?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Mod parent -1 Sensationalist tabloid rubbish.

Disclaimer: I work in the education system, and the Headteacher here is fantastic.

Re:Why do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

though not enough of an adult to go and see a film showing stuff that you're pretty much expected to be doing if you're married. Err...

You must not be married.

Re:Why do this?

[Xest]

Lucky you. You'll note I said "most" headteachers, that means, not all.

I've worked in Education also, albeit not in a single school like you appear to by referring to a single head teacher. I worked in IT support covering 171 schools for a few years so have witnessed first hand the types of people I'm talking about in countless schools and it absolutely was the majority that would fall into this definition.

It is not therefore sensationalist rubbish. Just because you personally haven't experienced or witnessed it does not mean it's not true.

I would however be intrigued to hear why you believe so many schools have implemented student ID cards (often including RFID tracking), fingerprinting, CCTV, or showed strong support for the child DNA databases if you believe there is not a culture of over the top control amongst most British headteachers? Or are you simply trying to deny the fact that most schools have between 1 and all of these measures in place?

Re:Why do this?

[digitig]

Oh, I am, and am well aware of the difference between what is expected and the reality.

Re:Why do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. You aren't fit to govern yourself, you need the government to do it for you. This starts in school, for you need to be conditioned that big brother is a good friend.

Ranting? Off my tea? Me? You bet. But besides that, recall that kids from 6 on up are to be fingerprinted for their ID cards (and put in large leaky databases for their own protection), and schools like to use fingerprints for paying for lunch too. Easy!

Some parents protested. The data protection watchdog said they couldn't, because this was between their kids and the school. Think about that one for a moment. Parents have no say because as being the legal guardians of their kids does not actually make them a party to this sort of thing, sayeth the data protection watchdog. Brilliant.

Re:Why do this?

[BrokenHalo]

Only saddo's who lived in 1984, quote 1984

It must be a sad world you live in then. Fortunately I have had the pleasure of meeting other spotty little whippersnappers^W^W^W persons born post-1984 who are less content to live in a cultural vacuum.

What on earth prompted you to adopt the handle of an equally illustrious dystopian?

Oh, and BTW one might suggest you go and look up how to use apostrophes and commas.

Re:Why do this?

[reddburn]

For all the gloom & doom - and I'll admit that I agree with some of it - nobody seems to have actually read the article and seen any of the pluses. Yes, it's somewhat suspicious that the biometric registration is being applied only to sixth formers (I assume this is akin to our senior year of high school), whose adult features have pretty much developed, but honestly, who the hell thinks that it will be any easier to spy on them than it is already, given the astonishing amount of privacy they give up via facebook or similar sites?

For those who don't read, here are a few of the stated positives to give a bit of balance to the proceedings:

"Not only a hit with the students, who enjoy signing themselves in, the system is saving a member of staff about an hour and a half each day in recording data."
[...] Principal Richard Barker said: "With this new registration technology, we are hoping to free up our teachers' time and allow them to spend it on what they are meant to be doing, which is teaching.
[...] "Only today (Thursday, 05 March) we had a fire alarm test and the administration staff were able to quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site.

There's a long history of technologies being used for purposes unintended by the designer - it's one of the marks of a useful tool - and as long as we are users of tools, this will continue.

Re:Why do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Age 16-18 you are not "under their care".

You are if you're in their building. Just the same as your employer has a duty of care for you when you are on their premises.

Don't belive me? Go ask a council official. My source - some of my friends that used to work for City of Ely planning department (I live in the Isle of Ely, City of Ely is at the centre of this Isle (which is not an Island)).

Funny that I should read about this first on Slashdot and not see/hear it on the local media (although I did miss the local news TV last night).

Re:Why do this?

[digitig]

Of course anybody has a duty of care to anybody in their building. But the case in question is when the pupil fails to turn up, in which case they are not in the building. If the 16-year-old is getting hit by a bus then they are presumably not in the college (unless it's a very determined bus) and so not within the college's duty of care.

Re:Why do this?

[L4t3r4lu5]

I've worked in four schools.
ID cards with RFID cover access control to buildings and cashless cafeteria systems.
Fingerprinting I disagree with totally.
CCTV has been used to prevent vandalism in IT Suites, and aiding in investigating reports of violent behaviour and burglary. Its use in classrooms I do not agree with.
ContactPoint database should never, EVER be brought about, and I will do all I can do prevent it. Vote for opposition, write to my MP, join organised demonstrations, donate to NO2ID-linked charities etc.

FYI, we also have total monitoring of any and all computer use within the school. Every keypress, every website is logged and checked. It is used to prevent incidents of online bullying or access to objectionable material. Remember that we're talking about a school, not general public internet access.

Re:Why do this?

[Threni]

> Why do this? What possible advantage is there?

"Stevens?"
"Yes sir"

Is the teacher going to look at each students face and work out if Stevens is actually in, and it's not someone else pretending to be him.

There's a "big brother" aspect to anything related to identity/privacy, but don't let that blind you to possible advantages.

Re:Why do this?

[Xest]

I've been to schools where ID cards have been used for toilet access and to monitor where kids are in the school with the aim of making sure kids aren't spending too long in the toilets avoiding lessons or to make sure they're not elsewhere in the school they shouldn't be.

How well does your monitoring work? The schools I covered were all attached to the Yorkshire and Humberside Grid for Learning which is effectively an ISP for all schools connected in that region. They offered filtering which was pretty ineffective because it'd take 24hrs or more to get a site blacklisted. Some schools used their own filtering solutions on top, usually Censornet. There was certainly no problem kids getting round most censorship regardless but certainly many teachers getting wound up about it when the end result of the kids getting where they wanted anyway had questionable negative effect regardless.

The problem is that as with the real world and CCTV cameras, monitoring to stop bullying and such merely just moves the problem elsewhere. It doesn't deal with the core issue, it just hides it away better.

I wouldn't argue kids should have the right to view porn, they should certainly be taught it's not accepted behaviour to browse stuff in public places, but I would question what the actual problem is if they do look at that kind of thing. I mean, how many kids have mobile phones now anyway that can access the internet and browse stuff like that if they really want to? Monitoring seems like a futile band aid that just hides the problem. It does have the side effect of discouraging people from using the internet in case they run into something that may get them in trouble. A lot of kids also just used proxy sites to bypass filtering, if required, using another kids password or even in the odd case, getting hold of the teacher's.

Of course, you can blacklist everything and whitelist what is required but again this just ruins the internet for the kids, there'll be little point to it for the most part. Even Wikipedia has content people might not want kids seeing and you either go through trying to block every questionable page or you let them have full access. You then do that for every site you allow.

Re:Why do this?

[D Ninja]

the lecturers took it up with you when you finally did turn up for class.

Psh. Here in the U.S. you wouldn't even get that much. It's more of the mindset, "You already paid us. Whether you come to class or fail out is your own freaken problem."

Actually, I kind of liked that mentality. Make people responsible for themselves. Let the professors teach.

Re:Why do this?

[Ihmhi]

When they put it everywhere in the country, people will say "Well we had to do that for school, it's not that bad".

The friendly face of Big Brother...

Re:Why do this?

[mdwh2]

who the hell thinks that it will be any easier to spy on them than it is already, given the astonishing amount of privacy they give up via facebook or similar sites?

Some people choose to give data to someone, therefore it's okay for someone else to forcibly take data from everyone?

Not that I'm overly concerned about this (I've more concern about applications of the technology in other contexts, e.g., Government CCTV that's all over the place), but your reasoning isn't valid here. It's the same sort of excuse that Blunkett used to justify compulsory ID cards, by saying "But some people choose to give information to supermarkets when they sign up for a loyalty card!".

Re:Why do this?

[mdwh2]

You're considered enough of an adult to look after yourself (though not enough of an adult to go and see a film showing stuff that you're pretty much expected to be doing if you're married. Err...)

Nor enough an adult to make a private film of your own body. And with the Coroners and Justice Bill currently going through Parliament, it'll soon be illegal to possess a privately made drawing of your marital acts at that age... Any inconsistencies in restrictions on viewing films are nothing compared to what's being pushed through in new laws.

Re:Why do this?

[knutkracker]

Age 16-18 you are not "under their care".

Unfortunately, you are. The relevant legislation is in-loco parentis which means that teachers are acting as stand-in parents for the duration of the time the students are with them, right up to age 18.

It does seem silly, especially as I have to fill in risk assessment forms for my 16-18 year old students who are going to a revision conference where they will be 'crossing roads' (might not look) and 'taking the bus alone' (may get lost). I seriously have to write that down.

Re:Why do this?

[digitig]

Except that the case in question is when the students are not with them.

Re:Why do this?

[Albanach]

Again, you also missed the point that the poster referred to a student not in school. Attendance at school beyond leaving age is, I believe, a matter for the pupil.

I think your forms for 16-18 year olds are more to do with normal Health and Safety (andprobably insurance concerns) than in-loco parentis.

Re:Why do this?

[Canazza]

dont be silly. anything other than full stops belong to oldspeak.

Re:Why do this?

[HTH NE1]

That's very useful when you run your country like a supermax prison. London has more camera surveillance than most of the prisons in my country.

I'd rather visit their former prison colony than the prison they've become. Apparently though this has not generally affected their World Tourism rankings.

Then again, people still visit zoos.

Re:Why do this?

[FatdogHaiku]

Possibly being correct does not mean you aren't paranoid... Just as being paranoid does not mean no one is out to get you.

Re:Why do this?

[Gordonjcp]

London has more camera surveillance than most of the prisons in my country.

I'd rather have harmless CCTV cameras than armed police everywhere who are allowed to shoot you for any reason. It must be terrible living in the US, with armed police aiming a gun at you wherever you go, knowing you could be arrested or just shot and killed for crossing the street at the wrong time.

Re:Why do this?

[bob.appleyard]

Authoritarian policies are permanently pushed by the various gov't departments (particularly the Home Office), for a number of reasons that are easy to guess. When they get their way, it is because the respective minister is too weak/naive to stand up to them. For instance, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett, both seen as very authoritarian Home Secretaries, have all given statements expressing quite different views... when out of office. They were essentially inept ministers, not authoritarian ones.

Re:Why do this?

[reddburn]

I have yet to have a student (in 4 years) not subscribed to Facebook (I teach college students). My evidence? Inevitably each one of them asks to "friend" me (and is turned down). It astonishes me how willingly they plug information into an online form - and how indifferent they are to the idea that anyone can find out anything about them with the right searches. The reason? They presume it as a fact.

Poke around in a few respected sociology publications - they'll confirm a number of my observations, as will any number of faculty.

Honestly, what I said wouldn't be questioned by most of my colleagues, hence my flippant phrasing. I assure you, I'm far more concerned than my offhand remark might indicate: we have a generation grown up accustomed to giving up information without question online - not to many phishing sites, mind you, but to companies, schools, and state entities. Yes, some students are careful - most of the geeks are - but the majority by far aren't geeks, and they've been programmed. Lessig was right in Code - once corporations drive online development for commerce, architectures of control will become so entrenched as to be accepted as the norm.

Thanks for calling me out - I should have taken the chance when I first posted to explain what I see as the greater threat: not the shiny new intrusion, but the trusted tool we've had in our lives for years.

Re:Why do this?

[pluggo]

Wow.

Do people actually think this is what the US is like?

I'm not so much saying guns should (or should not) be carried by police as saying they don't shoot you for jaywalking.

Re:Why do this?

[Gordonjcp]

That *is* what the US is like, I read it on the Internet. Just like how London has CCTV cameras everywhere. That was on the Internet too, so it must be true.

Re:Why do this?

[julesh]

Besides which, when I was at college (in the UK age 16-18 normally) they didn't take register

I'm guessing you're about the same age as me (~30), or maybe even older. Health and safety regulations started getting really serious a few years after I left school, and now schools have a legal obligation to know who is in their buildings at all times.

Re:Why do this?

[mdwh2]

I have yet to have a student (in 4 years) not subscribed to Facebook (I teach college students).

I still don't think it's a good argument. The anecdotal evidence that everyone you know is on Facebook doesn't mean that everyone necessarily is. Even if they are, just because they choose to give some information to Facebook doesn't make it acceptable for another entity to extract that information forcibly - and this is even more true if they are after other kinds of information true. I'm on Facebook, but I strongly oppose schemes like this. This isn't a contradiction, as I'm careful about what information I put, and more to the point, I choose to put it there.

we have a generation grown up accustomed to giving up information without question online

Oh don't get me wrong, I do agree; whilst I would hope that younger people would be more aware of such issues, I fear that actually they will be a lot more comfortable at giving over data and not caring about privacy. That's all the more reason to oppose schemes like this: even though it might not be problematic in itself, it gets young people used to handing over their biomerics, and facial recognition. (Perhaps it's a good thing to have employers doing Facebook searches - it'll make them realise the downsides soon enough:)

But it's not easy to blame Facebook in the same way we can blame this - I mean, it would be reasonable to say this scheme shouldn't be allowed (as it's in schools, and forced upon people), but I wouldn't want Facebook banned, and I like it being around as it can be useful. I think the main problem with Facebook is its policy of requiring real names (which they appear to have not bothered about enforcing in recent years, but it means that most people still now sign up with their real names, and some like me signed up when we had to use our real names, because you had to verify it with a University email address).

Re:Why do this?

[BrokenHalo]

So old farts like me aren't allowed to speak English any more?

These aren't the pupils you're looking for...

[Anonymous Coward]

These aren't the pupils you're looking for...

Why?

[houghi]

When I was in school, many moons ago, the teacher just wrote up who was there and who wasn't. Is Johnny in class? No? Report it. No matter if he was in school roaming the halls. Why solve a social problem with a technical solution?

The bad thing is that these are the people who should teach your children.

Re:Why?

[JohnFluxx]

It's not particularly even a social problem. At 18 you should be old enough to decide whether to go to class or not.

Re:Why?

[grodzix]

Why solve a social problem with a technical solution?

Well said. What's more, it tries to fix problem that no one has. It's not like there is gazillion kids and it's impossible to count them in normal way. And besides, it takes all the fun from morning presence check.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a 6th form of 16-18 year olds, and the school has a legal requirement to ensure attendance.

Re:Why?

[wisty]

All the more reason to have a real human being check that they are OK when they enter the school.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am aware of no law that requires them to ensure attendance. Can you quote which law it is?

Education is compulsory until 16 in the UK. It increases to 18 in 2013 iirc.

I'm pretty sure that even if they are now required to note who is present/absent they are not required to ensure attendance as that would be outside of their remit.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its in the Education Act. LEAs have the responsibility, they devolve it to schools.

Re:Why?

[GreenTech11]

the school has a legal requirement to ensure attendance.

It does, yes, but how does creating a system that makes it EASIER to skip clases fufill this reuqirement?

Re:Why?

[rarity]

Why solve a social problem with a technical solution?

You're misapprehending the problem. If the problem was "how do we know who's in class?", then there's nothing wrong with the simple signing of the register. The problem that this is designed to solve, though, is "how do we collect facial-recognition data on as many people as we can while they're still to young to do anything about it?"

Re:Why?

[Ashriel]

The problem that this is designed to solve, though, is "how do we collect facial-recognition data on as many people as we can while they're still to young to do anything about it?"

Bingo.

Re:Why?

[Bloke down the pub]

Post 16 education (such a this example - a 6th form college) is voluntary.

Seems you skipped reading comprehension rather often.

Re:Why?

[nullhero]

That is the real question. So how long before the UK is a Totalitarian State?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how long before the UK is a Totalitarian State?
-2 years.

Re:Why?

[rarity]

That is the real question. So how long before the UK is a Totalitarian State?

What do you mean, "before"?

Re:Why?

[GrumblyStuff]

I thought it was about doing it while they didn't know any better and to get them use to it.

Re:Why?

[Candid88]

Why solve a social problem with a technical solution?

It's not, it's replacing one technical solution, of having the teacher fill in a register at the start of every lesson, with another technical solution, which does that task automatically.

The benefit is obviously the elimination of a task which often takes up the first several minutes of lessons!

I agree the distopian-1984 take on this story is definitely the more interesting & exciting. It just doesn't make much sense considering the government will already have access to most people's facial features via their passports anyway, whilst there is a clear practical use for the system by the college in student registration.

Bloody idiots

[ledow]

I work in schools, in the UK, in IT. This is just incredibly stupid.

You are now RELIANT on that system being accurate to safely evacuate the building in an emergency. That automated system is NO GOOD for that purpose - and you're relying on it with little to no manual backup. You WILL get students with photocopies of their friend's faces (and/or other similarly low-tech solutions to allow the automated system to recognise and register them) in order to get out of lessons, lectures, etc. that they are made to attend. Then when you have a fire, and they are actually somewhere else (or vice versa, logged out of the system but actually still on the premises) you are going to put people's lives at risk. Seriously, give me a week, and I could probably find a way around it that a sixth-former could manage.

Not only that, you are opening yourself up to enormous DPA issues, because this is a irrevocable biometric - much like the UK government and education in general currently condemns and advises against fingerprint recognition systems in schools. It's also completely unnecessary, extremely expensive, probably quite unreliable (any identical twins go to that college, or even just two people who look alike?), potentially discriminatory (What if someone's face isn't recognised? What if they have disfigurement? What if they deliberately obscure their face or object to the system? Do you allow a bypass to that system for them?). The cost of implementing and *maintaining* and *renewing* that system probably far outweighs an hour or so a day at minimum wage for a member of admin/support staff who has some free time, before you even consider the future problems you've opened yourself up to.

Tell me... did the head of the school come up with this idea? I very much doubt it was the staff who were handling the registration systems in the first place.

Re:Bloody idiots

[peterprior]

Not only that - but who has the time to "quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site" when there is a bloody fire alarm. When I was in school we were told to leave everything and get out, not wait for a laser printer to warm up or an epson stylus to clean its printer cartridges.

Re:Bloody idiots

[thermian]

Tell me... did the head of the school come up with this idea? I very much doubt it was the staff who were handling the registration systems in the first place.

Most likely it was someone who looked at the amount of physical registers needed for the current system, thought an electronical system would be cheaper/more efficient, and it got pushed through. I agree with the fire safety side,. Its a shame that people will likely need to die in fire even to start an 'urgent review' of the system if it gets widely adopted.

Whenever I read of things like this I'm always reminded of the university office of a lecturer whose research speciality was issues around the paperless office. Her room was so full of piles of papers, boxes of papers, books and other processed tree junk that she only had around a third of her desk available for her laptop. She also had *really* nice legs, but thats off message somewhat..

Re:Bloody idiots

[peterprior]

Replying twice as I've just thought of something else.

"What if they deliberately obscure their face or object to the system?"

In todays multicultural Britain, what if a Muslim wearing a Burqa wants to enroll at the college?

Re:Bloody idiots

[pmontra]

Spending public money sometimes is a way to get rich, so the real usefulness of the expense is not important as long as it gets approved. I'll answer your last question with another one: who's getting paid to implement the system and which decision makers are close to some of those companies?

Disclaimer: I'm sure these things don't happen in the UK so any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental, etc.

Re:Bloody idiots

[AHuxley]

It looks like you're trying to write about computers..
I work in schools, in the UK, with MS. This is just incredibly stupid.
This is not about you. This is about the next generation feeling happy about facial recognition.

Re:Bloody idiots

[ledow]

Alright... on the same topic... what happens if THE SYSTEM is the cause of the fire? Hence, you have no records and can't gather any? Not likely, but there are things such as *power cuts* when fires occur (even enforced by the fire brigade etc.), LOTS OF WATER from sprinklers, etc. How is the system going to "print off" a nice piece of paper when it's in six inches of water and the paper is soaked?

Re:Bloody idiots

[ledow]

Agreed, in part. It's just a dumb idea.

However, that system is undoubtedly NOT under the control of the IT department, or only minimally via their contractors, when it should be - nobody else really deals with the policy regarding DPA issues except for the IT department and possibly a Data Manager in the larger schools. Unfortunately, it will also tie into their IT registration systems. In doing so, they've given no thought to maintenance or integration costs, whether it satisfies the requirements of such a system, potential interactions (how quickly do "expelled" students get removed from the database, or new students get added?), etc. It's based heavily on similar IT that I have supported (card-swipe registration) where the same problems came up and nobody cared - you even had kids stealing staff cards in order to get into the school at lunchtime because it could take a week to get them cancelled. Each card cost a LOT of money to print and it's a certainty that this system is only slightly undercutting their nearest rival systems (cardswipe reg system) in order to make most profit - for a job that takes FIVE MINUTES for a good teacher and is actually quicker done on a bit of paper. Yes, even some modern schools with thousands of pupils are still using "old-fashioned" registers. And bloody right, as well.

And I have to second the comments made by others on school procurement processes in the UK... I have to say that I *have* worked in places in the past where things were bought purely on the basis that the head was sweet-talked without consulting staff, or where the head was actually a family member / golf buddy / old army colleague of the supplier, as were all the governors (or they were suitably ejected, or otherwise not part of the decision-making process). I've seen IT companies, just like this, with "new" products which were set up entirely on the basis of selling to a handful of schools under the control of a single person, only to disappear shortly after delivery of shoddy, inadequate products with falsely-stated claims and zero other previous clients. Some of them even get as far as BETT...

Re:Bloody idiots

[itsdapead]

You are now RELIANT on that system being accurate to safely evacuate the building in an emergency.

Using any sort of register for this purpose, is a great idea for an office with 20 people and one front door. Anybody with an ounce of practicality should be able to see that applying this to a situation with thousands of students and hundreds of staff moving around multiple buildings is going to result in firefighters chasing false positives in building "A" while false negatives are trapped in building "B".

If a school building is on fire during the working day, you have to assume that someone might be in there - end of story.

However, this probably ticks a box on somebody's regulations - which are usually designed to produce a nice paper trail for inspectors rather than to actually help in an emergency.

Where I work, we don't have a register (it would be impossible), although we do have some high-tech automatic fire doors with tiny windows triggered by the alarm. These completely transform the look of the corridors and hide the stair wells. When the alarm sounds and you step into the corridor your first reaction is "Where the fsck am I and who moved the stairs?" Brilliant.)

Re:Bloody idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

In todays multicultural Britain, what if a Muslim wearing a Burqa wants to enroll at the college?

its slightly flame-baity of me but surely if you believe enough of the bullshit that you think you are required to wear a burqua, surely you beleive the other bit that says you should stay at home and not try to be educated above your station?

Re:Bloody idiots

[ZeroExistenZ]

what happens if THE SYSTEM is the cause of the fire? Hence, you have no records and can't gather any?

You're thinking too localized. For missioncritical systems, you'd use an offsite datacenter with a decent SLA-contact. It's up to the datacenter to take the precautions to not have their servers go up in flames (that's why some of these datacenters are bunkered and have high security) and preferably have a redundant setup, spread over more then 1 location which is easy these days with virtualization.

Re:Bloody idiots

[AHuxley]

Remember back to the end of the "troubles"?
With all that truck tracking CCTV?
Now the security services want to track people.
As for your 'contractors', think well connected ex GCHQ

Re:Bloody idiots

[L4t3r4lu5]

A school I used to Tech in had an electronic registration system using a system called PARS. All staff laptops had the registration software which updates a central database. Admin staff can amend these details as required.

Located in three seperate offices in three seperate buildings were three laptops, designated "Fire Modules". These pulled updated registration information from the central server for whole school every minute, and were constantly running during the school day. In the case of fire, the three staff who's office it was obtained these laptops (if safe to do so). The redundancy of three laptops in different locations ensured there would always be one laptop available. They held all of the information required for a comprehensive registration check, and you check off each class as complete as the tutors tell you. It is remarkably effective.

This system with the face recognition is a POS.

Re:Bloody idiots

[peterprior]

I said nothing about being required to wear one.

Re:Bloody idiots

[peterprior]

You're thinking too logically. This is the UK education system we're talking about. Hell the government loses half the populations details in the post - this isn't going to be much more advanced than a PC sitting in an office.

Re:Bloody idiots

[ArsenneLupin]

You'd still need to get the data back to the site. What if at the datacenter, nodoby is reachable, or what if all faxes and phones of the school (needed to receive the list back from the datacenter) are submerged in water too?

Re:Bloody idiots

[ledow]

I assure you, every fire drill, every fire visit and every actual fire, the registers are the FIRST things checked in a school situation. Fire inspectors are usually very hot (forgive the pun) on it in schools - my last school were rebuked for not having a register of temporary staff (of which I was one and had complained incessantly about it), so even the in-for-an-hour book-readers were made to sign in and out on a physical piece of paper that was collected for every drill afterwards. The fire services are not going to send people into a fire just because there's a *possible* risk... they want to know who, how many, ages, likely locations, etc. because a school is a big place for a fireman to be trapped in, even in a full-on fire suit and breathing apparatus.

I've been present at a real school fire (a canteen had their air conditioning catch fire - I have *no* idea how). It was tiny, the fire was small, controlled, in an outbuilding, extinguished within seconds... the very first thing that happened was that the fire engines arrived (EXTREMELY quickly, because they prioritise schools and hospitals) and before they even got their foot in the gates, they were asking for details of how successful the evacuation was. A single fireman put the fire out with nothing more than an ordinary fire extinguisher, but the chief of the 14 crew that arrived was interrogating the headteacher over their registers before they'd even seen a flame.

You need to be able to clear a school in under two-three minutes and know exactly who's supposed to be present - 1000 students, 100 staff, various visitors and temporary/part-time staff out within two minutes, with a complete record of who's missing (or present when they aren't recorded) is NOT impossible (or even that difficult with proper training) - I've seen it done. Even my wife's bookshop had the same needs when it was inside a large department store - you can't count the customers (obviously) but you have to ensure that all staff are out and that the store is and the only way is to have a physical list of staff and assign them to check *every* corner on their way out. You could be penalised or shut down if you didn't do this satisfactorily by the shopping mall owners.

I don't *care* if it's legally mandated or not... it's possible, it's easy and there's a DAMN good reason for doing so. Don't mess with fire drills - how many other things in your life are ordinary people and children asked to practice (by law in some cases)... this and airline emergency procedures. The difference between trained, recorded staff and chaos can easily cost them ALL (including you, whether you know what to do or not) their lives.

Side note: I'm rarely responsible for children in the schools I work, I have about one fire drill a year if I'm lucky and am often working in unfamiliar surroundings because of the nature of my work, but on the one occasion that the fire bell went off while I was supervising ten primary-school-age children (who all had headphones on in the middle of a computer lesson with loud music blaring) the timing was as follows:

0 seconds - Alarm rings
2 seconds - Alarm has rung long enough to distinguish it from a test, or lesson change, or other siren noise. (if it hadn't, I would have now been standing in the corridor looking out for signs or to ask other staff to investigate what it meant on my behalf).
4 seconds - Children's attention focused 100% on me without panic.
5 seconds - Instructions for headphones off, stand up behind chairs, don't bother to hang headphones up or shutdown or anything. Corridor checked personally by myself while they do this. Children head-counted (there is only one exit from the room they are in, and I'm standing in front of it, so I know they are all still there). List of children under my supervision in hand.
10 seconds - Every child has followed instructions to the letter. There is slight giggling, but no concern from the children. Instruction to queue in a line issued.
13 seconds - Children lined up.

Re:Bloody idiots

[hobbit]

This system with the face recognition is a POS.

Why? Does it not just take the part of the "central server" in the system you describe, from which the "fire module" laptops pull their updated registration information every minute?

Re:Bloody idiots

[hobbit]

Then there isn't a problem, is there? If you choose not to expose your face at registration time, you choose not to attend this particular college.

Re:Bloody idiots

[ZeroExistenZ]

You'd still need to get the data back to the site.

That should be no problem, there are alot of options.

What if at the datacenter, nodoby is reachable

Pay nodoby a bit more to be present or pick a good datacenter, there should be at least one person physically at the datacenter and a few on call to make sure they can meet their SLA's.

or what if all faxes and phones of the school (needed to receive the list back from the datacenter) are submerged in water too?

When I drive to work I browse the web on my cellphone and check my email, even email. (texting and phoning is bad and dangerous!)
In this day and age, nearly everybody has a cellphone. Why not setup a PBX too on the datacenter with a female voice so you can run down the list? Or a SMS portal: "text class2bstudents to 555-555 for a list of present students. It's easy to hook up. You could also train a pigeon, put it in a glass windowed box with a hammer and the text "break glass in case of *icon of a burning computer* *icon of a floating computer* *icon of someone throwing around computer* *icon of someone shooting a computer* *icon of teens screaming and running around in panic* *black icon indicating power outage* So in the case of such an emergency, you will have the pigeon fly to the datacenter, performing a pre-trained task to have another pigeon print out a list by the push of a button, and then subsequently presses a button preparing another pigeon (with a little conveyor belt) with the printout and releasing it (catapult launching mechanism) to fly back...

The possibilities are endless, to each problem there is a solution... I'm a consultant btw, you could hire me for all your technical problemsolving and projectmanagement. Currently we are training dolphins (after a proof of concept, we went away of the idea to use sharks after overseeing some variables), in case of a ship sinking, unable to send an emergency signal, the challenge here is still to have the dolphins walk to the datacenter once they reach a shore.

Re:Bloody idiots

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's a POS because it relies on the student not purposefully submitting false information.

When you were at school and the supply teacher handed around a piece of paper for you to write your name on as they didn't have the register, did nobody write the name of their friend? Or "Mickey Mouse" for that matter. Same principle applies. Kids will mess with stuff they're not supposed to.

Re:Bloody idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter when it occurs, it's still grounds for discrimination

Re:Bloody idiots

[cbeaudry]

Though I think the idea of using Biometrics in a school is utterly rediculous this is how these things usually work. 1. Its called Mustering. 2. You need to setup an Anti-Passback location (Entrances and exits). 3. You register who comes in and out based of credentials (keypad, biometrics, smartcards, proximity cards etc...) 4. When an emergency occurs (fire alarm, bomb scare, you name it) that system (fire panel, etc...) automaticly triggers an input on the access control system which tells the server to start printing and e-mailing reports every few minutes for X period of time. 5. These reports can be printed to multiple printers accross a network (offsite too)and sent in CSV format to Blackberry's, smartphone etc... Reports contains the list of names in the facility and every few minutes (configurable) you get a new report showing if people are still left and who. Seriously This is slashdot and people are wondering WHO is going to go MANUALY print out paper reports and start handing them out in times of emergency? They let anyone in here dont they? :)

Re:Bloody idiots

[snspdaarf]

... (after a proof of concept, we went away of the idea to use sharks after overseeing some variables)...

Why? Can't you even get sharks with frickin' laser[printer]s on their heads?

Re:Bloody idiots

[itsdapead]

I don't disagree with anything you say - but most of it boils down to you taking your responsibilities seriously and acting sensibly. That is not a state of affairs that follows magically from centralised record-keeping (especially of the high tech variety).

Its also important to remember the statistics and not fall for the old fallacy that if you have 1000 staff & students and your record keeping system is 99% accurate then only 1% of people unaccounted for will be false alarms. In reality, most people unaccounted for will be false alarms.

If there *was* a fire and someone who I *know* was sitting near me ended up dying in the fire, I don't want to have that on my mind, especially not children.

...and if the firefighter who could have saved that person if they'd talked to you was on a wild goose chase after a visitor who had forgotten to sign out? That will inevitably happen in a system that prioritises record keeping over individual responsibility. The trouble is, record keeping is much easier to police.

Re:Bloody idiots

[Candid88]

The standard procedure at most schools & colleges is for the teacher to either call out everyone's name for them to respond or if it's a smallish class maybe check around the room for absentees. This task is performed in every first lesson of the morning and afternoon by every teacher, so the task obviously impacts on the teaching of a lot of lessons, not just the support staffer who correlates the registers.

You are now RELIANT on that system being accurate to safely evacuate the building in an emergency. That automated system is NO GOOD for that purpose - and you're relying on it with little to no manual backup.

Why? At the vast majority of colleges, there is no manual system it's replacing (registers don't tend to get collated till the end of the lesson or day). Besides, I don't see why this prevents escape during a fire, surely the college will have emergency exits!

you WILL get students with photocopies of their friend's faces

The system uses infa-red to examine facial features making doing such near-impossible.

Besides it's already been in use for some time by a number of businesses who obviously haven't had too many problems with it; and most businesses care far more about whether or not their employees are present at work!

Re:Bloody idiots

[Still an AC]

So how much does that cost a year? Especially when the government is broke because they bailed out a bunch of banks....

Re:Bloody idiots

[ledow]

"Why? At the vast majority of colleges, there is no manual system it's replacing (registers don't tend to get collated till the end of the lesson or day). Besides, I don't see why this prevents escape during a fire, surely the college will have emergency exits!"

Then they DON'T need an automated registration system anyway. But those who DO are replacing an accurate, recorded system with human input and decisions with a machine. I'm in IT and that scares me.

"The system uses infa-red to examine facial features making doing such near-impossible."

Like the fingerprint scanners that "make it near impossible" to use Gummi-bear-moulds of fingers or photocopies of fingerprints printed onto raised PCB's that are then licked? Or the laptop facial-authenticaiton systems that make it "near impossible" to use a photograph to authenticate a user? Or...

ALL of those types of systems are trivially bypassable - nobody has yet demonstrated one that isn't. "Infra-red" isn't magic - it's just taking a photo of someone's face. The infra-red bits can be easily faked, so much so that even just a simple snapshot-and-printout might well copy them accurately enough for it to work if the ink is of a certain, common, bog-standard type without the person trying it even knowing or caring that they are "infra-red". Even if they were depth-measuring, you're looking at nothing more than a papier-mache model, the sort of things the kids will build to have a laugh with the system. And STILL, despite all this technology, even if the users DON'T do these things or the system copes with them, your system STILL has many critical flaws that all lead towards legal and ethical problems.

Re:Bloody idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't read all that because you don't know how to use
or

.

Re:Bloody idiots

[CrimsonAvenger]

I said nothing about being required to wear one.

Though didn't I read recently that one of the European paradises (France, maybe?) would not allow someone to become a citizen because she chose to wear a Burkha?

Re:Bloody idiots

[hobbit]

What on earth are you talking about? The facial recognition system is the exact opposite of relying on the student not purposefully submitting false information, because the student has to be present, unlike with the piece of paper on which anyone can write anything.

It's been a while since I've seen an argument so ass-backwards as yours, and on Slashdot that's really saying something.

Re:Bloody idiots

[hobbit]

What do you mean by "it's still grounds for discrimination"? Do you mean that you think it is, or that you think that it ought to be, or both?

Re:Bloody idiots

[ZeroExistenZ]

product incomptability, also, we found sharks get easily distracted. Research on the internet showed dolphins would be more compatible with landspecies.

Re:Bloody idiots

[xaxa]

When you were at school and the supply teacher handed around a piece of paper for you to write your name on as they didn't have the register, did nobody write the name of their friend? Or "Mickey Mouse" for that matter.

...at my school we wrote "Ben Dover" and "Mike Unt".

Re:Bloody idiots

[xaxa]

My school caught fire (relatively badly, destroyed everything in a storage room and a classroom in the basement) at about 12:52-3 one day when I was 11. The bell allowing the children to go inside for the first lesson had sounded at 12:50, a lot of people were still moving round corridors, a lot of teachers weren't yet in their classrooms (including mine). Even without the teacher, we all left our stuff in the room, went out of the fire exit and lined up (though we lined up in the wrong place, as only the teachers knew where each class was meant to line up).

The school (well, the children!) were praised by the fire brigade for getting out quickly and safely, especially good when the rear main entrance was blocked by smoke. It made up for all the waiting outside anyway.

I'd like to think any school would be similar, but mine was an independent school full of clever kids.

For the watchful...

[yibble]

Great, so we now have a picture of the student demoing the machine, and her PIN (6447). What did we learn today?

Re:For the watchful...

[AHuxley]

.NET, C# and silverlight.

Re:For the watchful...

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET, C# and silverlight.

You are indeed a moron!

Brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

"UK School Introduces Facial Recognition"

This is very good progress. It is important to keep up with the development of various sexual perversions in our modern fast-paced society. Therefore, recognizing facials as a new part of the curriculum of sexual education in schools is a good thing, even if only in one school in the UK for now. But it is a start, and hopefully facials are recognized soon in every school. It is about time to introduce the recognition of facials!

Re:Brilliant!

[laejoh]

First the UK, then later on, when they have the courage and the technology (Beowulf?) Japan!

CCTV in schools

[jez9999]

There are also reports of schools installing CCTV cameras in UK classrooms to monitor both teachers and pupils. Very depressing stuff, that this is even considered, let alone allowed to go on.

All I can say is, I'm glad I went to school 10+ years ago. I wouldn't want to learn in such an invasive environment. It's disgusting, and those who think it's appropriate should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Re:CCTV in schools

[BSAtHome]

And there is no money to renovate the buildings or hire more/better qualified personnel. But, there is money for tech to watch^H^H^H^H^Hspy. Says something about the priorities nowadays...

Re:CCTV in schools

[Savage-Rabbit]

There are also reports of schools installing CCTV cameras in UK classrooms to monitor both teachers and pupils. Very depressing stuff, that this is even considered, let alone allowed to go on.

All I can say is, I'm glad I went to school 10+ years ago. I wouldn't want to learn in such an invasive environment. It's disgusting, and those who think it's appropriate should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

It seems to me that the UK is becoming a bigger surveillance society than East Germany was.

Re:CCTV in schools

[L4t3r4lu5]

In the last school I Tech'd at, there were CCTV cameras in the ICT suites. There were issues regarding students damaging property on a daily basis. This stopped it overnight.

You also have no idea how effective it is to assist parents in disciplining unruly children when they are faced with a video recording of them starting a fight. It empowers them beyond any backlash the child may have. Sometimes these systems are beneficial. You should stop making sweeping judgements.

Re:CCTV in schools

[AndyboyH]

At one of the schools my fiancee did supply work at, they had CCTV in the staff room. Not because they were worried about the staff's behavior - but because in the past few years several students had went into the staff room to assault the teachers.

The students didn't want to be there, and had very little intention of doing anything after leaving school except working the dole system for their own gain.

Re:CCTV in schools

[Xest]

Quite a lot of schools have CCTV, out of the 171 I used to support I'd say around 95% had some CCTV and around 60% extended it into classrooms rather than just as a security tool. This was a couple of years back and I can't imagine the situation has improved.

There's an argument for CCTV, it's certainly one of the lesser issues in schools- I'd be more concerned about the ID cards some schools force students to have to be able to go to the toilet and that come with RFID tracking capabilites. Fingerprinting is also a bigger deal I'd argue.

It all comes down to the same tired old argument that it helps control the kids but really it doesn't, kids are as they've always been regardless. What would help control the kids is better teachers and that's the biggest issue in the majority of cases but it's not entirely the fault of teachers, it's very much partly down to the politically correct attitude of giving kids the benefit of the doubt and putting teachers at threat of suspension if they dare even do the slightest thing to upset little Timmy who just kicked someone and threw a bunch of books on the floor. This leaves the teachers somewhat powerless unless they just have good kid skills at talking to and calming down the most unruly kids but also by making the kids like them, good teachers with those kinds of qualities aren't overly common though.

Re:CCTV in schools

[meyekul]

My high school had CCTV in the hallways, and this ways nearly 10 years ago.  They would have been really handy once when I got hurt in school.  I was walking down the hallway and someone shoved me into a textured wall and cut my head open.  I don't know who did it, if it was malice or accident, and there just happened to not be a camera pointed at the spot where it happened so no one got in trouble for it.

I could see this being a good thing in classrooms for similar reasons, and I find it hard to imagine what you'd be doing in class that you're afraid of being recorded on camera...

Re:CCTV in schools

[PReDiToR]

So you're saying that all sweeping judgements are wrong?

Couldn't resist. karma--

Great!

[bursch-X]

How good to know that our tax money is spent in schools for things that benefit the education of our children! I think they should also introduce retina scans and millimeter wave scanners. That'll make all the difference at the next PISA test.

Re:Great!

[Xest]

I've been to schools that have had boxes of thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of software sat in not being used because the teachers didn't have time to install it all and couldn't afford to pay for technical time to get it installed (because they'd spent their IT money on the software).

I don't have a problem with the teachers not having time to install it, but I do have a problem with them buying it all in the first place knowing full well they wouldn't have time to install it, or at least not balancing out the software and support time to install what they did buy.

Laptops for teachers is arguably a more frustrating waste of money, one thing that really used to annoy me a little was when teachers would use their tax payer purchased laptop to play games, browse the internet and get infected with viruses so that it took more tax payers money to clean it all up and fix it all. Some of them just can't draw the distinction between something that has been bought for them by tax payers to use for work purposes and something they've paid for themselves to get viruses, install games and browse porn on.

Yeah this sounds like a waste of money, but in the grand scheme of wastes of money in UK schools it's nothing. Politicians have a habit of lying, but when you hear election promises of "We can save £20bn by efficiency improvements" they're not actually lying, technically they could probably save more than that by efficiency improvements across public sector and education. It's just a shame none of them have yet actually managed to put it into practice ;)

Yet another kettle of worms opened...

[misterjjones]

... Muslim head scarves / veils, anyone?

Re:Yet another kettle of worms opened...

[expat.iain]

... Muslim head scarves / veils, anyone?

Not for me, thanks. They don't match with my complexion.

Re:Yet another kettle of worms opened...

[hobbit]

Don't worry about kettles of worms -- they're much easier to close again.

Saving staff time?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may well do, but is there going to end up being a queue during peak times that just wasted the time of the staff and students.

Misleading summary (shock!)

[NoNeeeed]

"A UK school has quietly introduced..."

If by "quietly" you mean, "telling everyone about how good it is and getting it in the press" then yes I guess so. Ahem. Did the submitter actually read the article they submitted?

It's worth RTFA and watching the short little video to see what the system does (I know, this is /. etc).

This is not some Big Brother style camera system covertly watching the students. This is a box on the wall which the students have to actively use to sign themselves in and out. They have to actively press buttons (well a touch screen) to use it.

While I am nervous about using biometrics for this sort of thing, the data being collected is exactly the same as would be recorded by the class register, the only difference is that it uses a computer rather than a teacher. Some schools have been using swipe-card systems for a few years, this is just a step up technologically.

There is a wider argument about the way schools are run, and the creeping use of biometrics, but this is primarily used to see who is in the building if there is a fire, so I'm not really sure that the "OMG, BIG BROTHER!1!!!!1!!" spin is warranted.

Especially since they have not exactly kept it quiet.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[thermian]

this is primarily used to see who is in the building if there is a fire, so I'm not really sure that the "OMG, BIG BROTHER!1!!!!1!!" spin is warranted.

Especially since they have not exactly kept it quiet.

Any system to be used in the event of a fire *cannot* be optional, or under the control of those subjected to it. Thats a fact, one learned the hard way in the past, that cannot be argued. Give people the option of not doing something, and they won't, at least not always, because 'nothings going to happen'.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Plunky]

If by "quietly" you mean, "telling everyone about how good it is and getting it in the press" then yes I guess so. Ahem. Did the submitter actually read the article they submitted?

There is a difference between 'quietly introduced' and 'announced its launch'

You can scheme quietly to make something happen that you know will be controversial, then implement it and announce the fait accompli. The amount of objections to cause a deinstallation will be vastly more than the amount of objections needed to prevent its installation in the first place.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[houghi]

"Quietly introduced" means without consultation before the introduction. It was the introduction that went quietly. Learned that in a school without this stuff and English isn't even my first or second language.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Great way to spread germs.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Penguin_me]

Actually the "quietly" was referring to this article being a very small piece in a local newspaper, with no other coverage anywhere of it being planned or implemented. And yes, I did read the article before I submitted it.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[migla]

Mandatory facial recognition is not "OMG, BIG BROTHER!1!!!!1!!"?

And war is peace?

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Xest]

To be fair, based on that this system may actually be better than many swipe card systems, as quite a few schools swipe card systems implement RFID and track kids movements around the school (to see if they're not in lesson, spending too long in the toilets etc.).

If this simply stores biometrics for the period a child is at a school and is used for nothing else than sign in/sign out then it's certainly less evil than many other schemes in schools.

There's still a good argument to be had that this is an expensive way of sign in/sign out compared to say, a classic, paper based register or similar though. There is also the danger of feature creep and the biometrics being used for other reasons or simply stored indefinitely and such of course too.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Buttons are very easy to remove. Attitudes, acceptance and habituation stays.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[D Ninja]

Especially since they have not exactly kept it quiet.

Keeping something quiet or projecting something to the world has nothing to do with it being "Big Brother" or not.

In fact, I would worry more about the things that are being projected and accepted by supposedly rational people. Those are the things that scare me.

Re:Misleading summary (shock!)

[Penguin_me]

By quietly I actually meant it's been given very little coverage - this was a small article in the middle of a local paper. And yes, I did RTFA before I posted it, that's *why* I posted it.

Coming soon...

[WhiteHorse-The Origi]

All schools will have the teachers behind bullet-proof glass with microphones/speakers. Every student will submit their work through document feeds and must make appointments to see teachers. Furthermore, after scores are tallied, individual students will be assigned permanent roles in society such as "butcher", "baker", etc. Anyone who works in roles other than their designation will have their biometric identity cancelled and will have to go to labor camps.

Re:Coming soon...

[hobbit]

Bags I the candlestick maker!

How large are those schools??

[captainpanic]

Even with 1000 students, teachers will personally know the pupils soon enough.

When I was still in school, and you didn't show up, the teachers found out soon enough. The
system seemed unbeatable.

You might be able to fool a computer, but people (teachers) are very good at finding out who is in class, and who is not. Also, people are better at face recognition than any computer.

Are pupils really just a number in that school?

Re:How large are those schools??

[Sad Loser]

I live very nearby - it is not very large.

It is a non-academic holding pen for chavs and pikies until they can claim benefits. This is the purpose of education in the UK.

If the kit has not been stolen and is still working in a month's time I will eat a hat shop.

Will the economic crisis save freedom?

[Exitar]

I've read somewhere that UK financial situation is quite bad recently (similar to Iceland).
Any chance they'll bankrupt and cut founds to such silly projects?

Re:Will the economic crisis save freedom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if Germany before WWII is any indication, bad economy can be succesfully used as an excuse to institute a totalitarian regime, so I wouldn't bet on UK reducing surveilance.

Re:Will the economic crisis save freedom?

[RMH101]

Um, no. The *world* economy is in the toilet. The UK is arguably in a similar state to the US: it's not comparable to Iceland.
Besides, look at history: when did a recession last breed peace and freedom?

What problem, exactly, is solved by this?

[jonaskoelker]

Sixth-formers will now have their faces scanned as they arrive in the morning at the City of Ely Community College. Face Register uses the latest high-tech gadgets to register students in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds.

Erm... what problem is being solved by this?

If you want to know whether the kids are in class, as opposed to in school, you have to look in every classroom. Except that it doesn't really work; you have to look where the students are supposed to be, which the system may not know (or be able to adapt to).

Is it fire safety and evacuation? So you have one of these machines at every exit, and it can perfectly well identify everyone in a screaming running horde of people?

It doesn't seem to solve any useful problem. Does anyone know what it's intended to accomplish, and whether it actually accomplishes anything?

Re:What problem, exactly, is solved by this?

[Inda]

Fire evacuation, as others have mentioned the same in this thread...

We don't use a system like that in the UK. Swipe cards do not prove you left the building. Your mate saying "yeah, he went to the doctors" is not enough. A register of names is not good enough. Everything you can think of is not good enough.

The Fire Service, in the UK, recommend that sweeping searches are the only method to use to guarantee everyone has left the building. We use fire marshals at my company. If there are no fire marshals in the building, leave it to the Fire Service to conduct the searches.

What good is this system..

[pisto_grih]

..unless it's implemented in EVERY classroom? It's all very well knowing the students are on campus, but generally a register is to monitor who was actually IN class.

Yes, I work in a sixth form college, so I know how registers work.

Re:What good is this system..

[Anonymous Coward]

..unless it's implemented in EVERY classroom? It's all very well knowing the students are on campus, but generally a register is to monitor who was actually IN class.

Well then I think it is time for some sort of sub-dermal implant to track the little buggers.

All in the name of public safety, think of the children. What is that you say? Can you remove the implant once you've graduated? No you can't, it discharges a deadly electrical current through your heart when you try, but don't worry we promise we won't use the implant to track you after you leave school. We promise. *cheesy grin*

big brother is not the issue here

[captainpanic]

The issue seems:
1. that the system can possibly be tricked, meaning you'll have conflicting data
2. Possible dangers (you walk into the building, but forget to register - a fire breaks out and nobody comes to search for you because the system says you're not there)
3. that it might not be necessary to have the system in the first place - people are pretty good at face recognition last time I checked

There is no privacy in school anyway, with teachers watching you all the time... so this is no concern at all.

Re:big brother is not the issue here

[raynet]

Also, perhaps the class has too many students if teachers need machines to keep track of them.

Fire in the server room.

[Martin_Stevens]

"Only today (Thursday, 05 March) we had a fire alarm test and the administration staff were able to quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site." You gotta say it's lucky that there wasn't a fire in the server room. I can just imagine getting a tech support call during a fire saying "my printers not working"

Brilliant idea

[KlausBreuer]

Get them used to having their faces scanned. Get them used to the state collecting info that way, and storing your appearances anywhere.
Get them used to being scanned, watched. They'll need it.

And for heavens sake, ban the "1984" book.

Re:Brilliant idea

[hobbit]

And for heavens sake, ban the "1984" book.

Don't worry -- nobody's actually read it anyway.

Re:Brilliant idea

[kent_eh]

And for heavens sake, ban the "1984" book.

And Little Brother and probably dozens of others which are below most people's radar.

Well, I guess face recognition isn't AI anymore...

[javilon]

...Every time AI researches find a working algorithm for something that the human mind does, the ability coded on that algorithm stops being thought of as "Intelligence" and becomes "just a calculation that any computer can do".

So I guess pattern recognition in images is not AI anymore, right?

"in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds."

[perryizgr8]

well, i don't know about nowadays. but in my school it took me exactly 0.00 seconds to get in and out. is this any better than that?

Re:"in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds."

[Anonymous Coward]

instant cast teleport?

Fingerprints

[TheP4st]

Next they'll probably follow the lead of a Swedish school that use fingerprint scanners in the canteen as a method of avoiding non-students freeloading. Amazingly since they first introduced this at the school in 1997 only 10 students have refused fingerprinting.
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_1673627.svd (Swedish article)

1.5 seconds.. how many millions did this cost?

[plasmacutter]

I can sign my name in 1.5 seconds, and type it even faster.

I can depress my thumb onto a (now 2 decade old) biometric reader for the same result in the same amount of time.

This is an excellent example of stupidly wasted money.

Heck, even if its tied to stimulus spending, the new deal wasn't just about putting people to work, but putting people to work building infrastructure which would improve the efficiency and cut the costs to businesses in the long term.

This does not do either.

If it's not tied to stimulus spending this school should be chastised for buying this expensive system in a time when a few more jobs would be more valuable to the community.

Re:1.5 seconds.. how many millions did this cost?

[julesh]

I can sign my name in 1.5 seconds, and type it even faster.

Or, I'm guessing, shout "here" in response to somebody calling your name faster still.

they're surveilling the teachers too

[RMH101]

Check this out: high def, remote controllable cameras in the classroom, with the head teacher monitoring teachers' every move. You couldn't make it up:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/education/s/1100128_class_cctv_comes_under_fire

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[ledow]

You certainly couldn't - I worked in another school in Essex that does exactly the same. I assure you it is not only real, but *nobody* in the school understands the problem with it except the bad teachers who accept it but get tetchy that their bad teaching is being recorded... not the fact that they are bad teachers, or that they/the staff/the students are being recorded - but the fact that they might have thier gravy-train ended.

I was asked to design and build systems to do just this too, because I could CCTV up a room cheaper than their suppliers. I built one to cover the ICT office which *we* turned on and off overnight or during the holidays to help spot where our laptops were disappearing to, and had no further part in anything else. Not only does it exist - it is happening, it is accepted and it's not being questioned by ANYONE, staff, students, parents, heads, local authorities, etc. even when they are made aware of it. That's more scary than merely "it's possible" or "it exists".

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[RMH101]

We have few enough teachers that we're incentivising going into teaching by giving graduates 6000UKP if they stay in teaching for a few years, and shit like this is meant to encourage people to join the profession? Your boss sitting on your shoulder for 8 hours a day telling you what to do? Like that'll encourage a lively, interesting and friendly environment?
Even burger-flipping at McD's is less invasive than that.
The poor teachers are probably afraid to do *anything* for fear that it'll be interpreted wrongly and used against them.
I'm surprised no-one's used the "stop looking at my kids, you pervert" approach to try and torpedo this, though.

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[ledow]

Teacher's are not very worried about this at all... stress factors for teachers I've spoken to (based on eight years of working in state schools in the UK, but not necessarily experiences of EVERY school I've worked in):

Ofsted Inspections (where you get several days warning, once every few years or so, for an hour of someone watching you do your job, and writing one sentence on it in the school's report). I have seen teachers (even men) break down and cry, be prescribed tranquilisers etc. during Ofsted inspection times.
Dealing with kids (because 90% of teaching staff can't control even one child sitting on their own in a room to the same standards that ALL of my teachers did with a class of 30).
Internal squabbling (being set up for a fall by fellow staff, backstabbing, gossip, etc.)
Not getting their holidays (because, believe it or not, almost all teaching staff are contracted to work the summer holidays... they just take it off and the culture of education just "accepts" that... support staff with identical terms and conditions are denied the same privileges or paid pro-rata).
Having to justify themselves (wages, hours, skills, qualifications etc.)
Dealing with parents (because they are made to and don't want to because the parent's you NEED to speak to don't care, almost by definition)
Everything else.

You have never seen people so bad at their jobs as you see in teaching. I know of a person who set up a private school with fully-qualified, experienced teachers who were all working in other UK schools at the time. The school flopped within two years because the teacher's couldn't mark, couldn't set questions, couldn't plan, couldn't teach, couldn't even speak understandable English in some cases. Parents complained and the school shut - and ALL of these people went back into teaching careers in state schools from which they had come.

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[RMH101]

From TFA: "the move has enraged teaching unions who have labelled the scheme "intrusive" and "unnecessary"

"Under national guidelines, teachers can be monitored only three hours a year following complaints that excessive monitoring was putting them off.
Dr Mary Bousted, head of the ATL teaching union, said she had "major reservations" about the technology being used to monitor staff.
She said: "It would be hard to see how teachers or support staff will behave naturally if they are being monitored. They are likely to be quite nervous if they feel they are being watched on camera. It does seem a bit Big Brother-ish. Although schools say that the process is voluntary, it would be quite difficult to stand out and say 'no' if other people are agreeing to it."

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT union, said: "More and more schools are wasting thousands of pounds of tax payers money on CCTV cameras which all available evidence shows are not the most effective method of maintaining school security, neither are they an appropriate way of monitoring classroom practise.
"We do not support the use of cameras in this way and see no professional security or educational benefits to such systems."

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[kabocox]

I was asked to design and build systems to do just this too, because I could CCTV up a room cheaper than their suppliers. I built one to cover the ICT office which *we* turned on and off overnight or during the holidays to help spot where our laptops were disappearing to, and had no further part in anything else. Not only does it exist - it is happening, it is accepted and it's not being questioned by ANYONE, staff, students, parents, heads, local authorities, etc. even when they are made aware of it. That's more scary than merely "it's possible" or "it exists".

I work in a city government building. Within the last six months, the building has been wired up with 16+ cameras and a DVR for supposed building security. Every manager has been given shortcuts and use it to spy on employees in the morning, at lunch, and when they get off, or when they are just in the public areas of the building.

Oh, they don't care about the general public, unless it's someone that they actually know. It's one of those things where they like having the little bit of extra power over someone. What's really bad, is the building already and still has vericard readers all over and all employees have to use those cards to even get to work so we've already been tracked on our entrances/exits and mostly where we've been at in the building for the last 10 years or so.

There isn't any way for us to complain about this. They could just use the its your employer's building and that they aren't recording the bathrooms excuse.

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[Anonymous Coward]

it is accepted and it's not being questioned by ANYONE, staff, students, parents, heads, local authorities, etc. even when they are made aware of it. That's more scary than merely "it's possible" or "it exists".

So, are the majority (the students, parents, heads etc) all crazy and your fears are perfectly rational, or is it more likely that the majority are in fact sane and that you are more than a little paranoid?

Furthermore, could you please explain (and I think you should, considering you're apparently the only one with the problem) why you think that the situation is 'scary'?

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[ledow]

That people aren't questioning *why* data that they have to *specifically* sign and authenticate the collection use of at the start of a school term (if the school does things by the book), but will happily kick up a fuss about other similar subjects with little to no real impact:

At least 2% of primary school students aren't allowed to go on the Internet, even under supervision, because the parents have "opted out" in a similar manner.

But you can store their fingerprints and other biometric data (under uncertain terms that some legal experts have concluded can *easily* be used, legally, by the police to perform whole-school fingerprint tests against every student in the school without prior notification) in order to allow them to have a library book from the school library. Nobody complains about that.

You can give the students a canteen card that lets the parent look up every meal/snack their child has bought in school (and some schools are even considering banning students from leaving the premises at lunchtimes) and nobody bats an eyelid.

Try and stop the children posting their personal details on web forms in school and signing up to all sorts of websites, all sorts of instant messaging programs, etc. and you face nothing but opposition from staff, students and parents.

It's scary that people are happily marching towards 1984, not for themselves, but their children, removing every liberty they can have.

Re:they're surveilling the teachers too

[xaxa]

Dealing with kids (because 90% of teaching staff can't control even one child sitting on their own in a room to the same standards that ALL of my teachers did with a class of 30).

How would you solve that?
You can't do anything to stop a disobedient pupil other than talk to them, and raise your voice. You can't touch them, can't stop them walking round, can't stop them leaving the classroom, etc. They're fully aware of this.

15 years ago my dad -- regarded as one of the best in his school for getting kids to behave -- would occasionally have the police visiting him. A pupil would have lost an argument with him, and goes to the police to accuse him of assault. Back then there was sure to be some better kids to back up my dad. He's since retired, but now there are times when the whole class will try and lie to the police.
(Probably makes teachers in some schools supportive of CCTV in the classroom.)

The problems we face with children (and that children face) in this country are much deeper than some poor teaching in schools, as you touch on when you say it's the parents that need to see the teacher that are least interested.

You guys are missing the point...

[denzacar]

It is ONE school. How useful could data from only one school in the entire UK be for a forming of some BigBrotherTM database?

Nah... It's something much simpler.
Same reason the face-recognition companies practically gave away their hardware to selected locations in India so they could get better at recognizing the "darker" faces.

Fine tuning.

Teenagers have a tendency for two things more than any other age group.
Growing up and changing their facial structure very quickly in a matter of months AND they "play" with their faces more than anyone else.
Makeup and cosmetics for girls, facial hair for boys, piercings etc. for both.

The point of this "experiment" is to teach the machines how to successfully identify people even if they change their hairstyle, hair color, eye color, grow a beard or a mustache, do some light plastic surgery or heavy makeup to alter their faces, etc.

Now, when they put this in every school - THAT is for making the Great Britain's Good Citizens Glorious Database or GBGCGD.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[diskis]

>It is ONE school.

It's the FIRST school.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[zwei2stein]

What about fine tuning ... population?

You need start with frog in cold water. One experiment here, deploying in whole district there ... small steps until it is everywhere.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[D Ninja]

Makeup and cosmetics for girls, facial hair for boys, piercings etc. for both.

Maybe the UK is a bit more conservative than the US, but, here, it would be more like: "makeup and cosmetics and facial hair and piercings for all boys and girls."

Okay...hopefully no facial hair for the girls...

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[Seq]

light plastic surgery

High school sure is different now days, and I'm only in my 20's!

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[drewvr6]

These scanning tools use feature relationships to validate identity. Distances between eyes, brows to nose, etc. Dozens if not hundreds of evaluations. As long as the person's face has matured to a point that it will not deviate from the scanned metric such things as piercings and make-up should not affect it. Plus, if the students are scanned at regular intervals you can keep the database up-to-date. Whether the tool is robust enough to differenciate between a real face and a printer image remains to be determined.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[Canazza]

We have Goths and Bearded ladies too

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[sootman]

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Cory Doctorow's awesome book Little Brother is a great read and can be downloaded for free from the author's site.

The first order of business were those pesky gait-recognition cameras. Like I said, they'd started out as face-recognition cameras, but those had been ruled unconstitutional. As far as I know, no court has yet determined whether these gait-cams are any more legal, but until they do, we're stuck with them...

Your personal, inch-by-inch walk is yours and yours alone. The problem is your inch-by-inch walk changes based on how tired you are, what the floor is made of, whether you pulled your ankle playing basketball, and whether you've changed your shoes lately. So the system kind of fuzzes-out your profile, looking for people who walk kind of like you.

There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What's more, it's easy not to walk kind of like you -- just take one shoe off. Of course, you'll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it's still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition).

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[denzacar]

As long as the person's face has matured to a point that it will not deviate from the scanned metric

Exactly!

And what better place to study how slight and not so slight alterations of those factors on a real persons face affect the scanner then a institution full of growing teenagers who can come from a summer vacation not only couple of inches taller but also with a longer or wider face?
Plus you get all those kids that will try to trick the machine with a photocopy/video recording on a laptop/plastic 3D model/paper mache head etc. - as an added bonus.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[denzacar]

I actually referred to the fact that teenagers faces continuously change over a period of time - a process that would require plastic surgery with adults.

But yes... Teens do "fixes" these days too.
In some cultures and families it is akin to visiting a dentist.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Add also the ability to test across a generation. You don't think they'll actually erase the data they collect, after all these are minors with limited rights in an already overly camera'd country. Fast forward 13 years when the government needs to "find" one of these ex-students.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[jtgd]

Seeing as how this is the UK, I assume this is the alpha test for the eventual deployment on the streets, tracking every citizens every movement.

Re:You guys are missing the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

is a great read

I miss the time when fiction didn't read like someone's whiny blogposts...

Right now, in Manchester UK

[RMH101]

Check this out: high def, remote controllable cameras and microphones in the classroom, with the head teacher monitoring teachers' every move. The teachers have an earpiece where they get instant criticism of their teaching methods, live. Sound like job satisfaction to you? You couldn't make it up:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/education/s/1100128_class_cctv_comes_under_fire

Until...

[Arancaytar]

Some of those kids are going to get into a schoolyard brawl and have to be excused for the next week until their black eyes recede sufficiently for the system to let them in again. :P

So, what you are REALLY saying is...

[denzacar]

You WILL get students with photocopies of their friend's faces (and/or other similarly low-tech solutions to allow the automated system to recognise and register them) in order to get out of lessons, lectures, etc. that they are made to attend.

(any identical twins go to that college, or even just two people who look alike?), potentially discriminatory (What if someone's face isn't recognised? What if they have disfigurement? What if they deliberately obscure their face or object to the system? Do you allow a bypass to that system for them?).

... that it is a great testbed for determining the flaws of the system and fine-tune it against deliberate ways of obscuring one's face or missidentification due to either deliberate attempts to present oneself as someone else or accidentally through changes in facial structure due to puberty?

What better group to test your system on then a bunch of teenagers.
They ARE smarter than anyone else anyway (or so they think) and it is in their nature to go against the system and find a way to "play it".
Plus their faces change through puberty on their own.

Perfect test subjects I'd say.

perfect alibi!

[Kaukomieli]

Sign in, sneak out, wreak havoc - and prove you were at school when it happened. priceless!

Sounds like Manna to me.

[Dr_Barnowl]

Manna

Fingerprint Recognition.

[Penguin_me]

On a related note, another Cambridgeshire school introduced fingerprint recognition for registration in 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/4056829.stm

Some teachers could use this, too

[petes_PoV]

I had a teacher in one subject for five years, who didn't ever get to know my name. There were only 20-ish in the class (one lesson a day, 5 days a week). I *did* attend the classes, just sat there keeping quiet, never volunteering anything or rocking the boat.

Makes you wonder about the amount of attention some of these people have.....

Substitute for human attention

[jeorgen]

Using face recognition like this is a substitute for human attention. Ideally in a school, teachers and other staff should recognize you and know your name, and notice if you are absent. It is about people actually communicating with and caring for each other. This system in the school sounds more like a prison surveillance system, used in an environment where trust cannot be built.

Re:Substitute for human attention

[betterunixthanunix]

I'm not sure about the school in question, but my high school (here in America) had more than 3000 students. There was simply no way for the staff to know every student, so we had to show an ID card to enter and leave the building (the cards had out lunch period printed on them, so we couldn't leave during class hours). I do not see how facial recognition is any better than the ID card system at my school, but I can understand why school administrators need to use a system (when it involves humans or machines or a combination) to keep track of students rather than "building trust."

Of course, times have changed. I hear that these days, students at my high school need to swipe their ID cards and pass their bags through an X-ray before entering the building...

Giving them the habits of being checked

[aepervius]

Giving them the habits of being checked and scanned, possibly print them and get DNA at school, as an adult they will have the habits of it getting done, and won't protest as loudly as those which are used to normal freedom. Start with the children, and when they are adult, they will get used to it, and some might EVEN ask for it as a security measure.

Re:Well, I guess face recognition isn't AI anymore

[RegularFry]

Yup. You absolutely cannot get funding for anything called "artificial intelligence". I think that's right, too - it's too broad a term to be meaningful. It's OK as an umbrella term for related(ish) areas of study, but when it comes down to getting a bank loan (or VC cash) you need something a little more specific.

Re:Substitute for human attention/ Machine Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Nanny State we are becomming! I mean shit, something analygous has already been attempted and given the boot in the states because the PARENTS felt it was too much of a "Big Brother"/"Nanny-state" thing. [Citation: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/16/2341200 , where there are more, just search "school RFID tag" in slashdot.]

So, in short and simply put: people will not put up with being controlled by a machine. Period.

Except that the schools take the blame

[fantomas]

"At 18 you should be old enough to decide whether to go to class or not"

But if you say you'll turn up and don't it's the teachers that the newspapers scream about rather than the slacker teenagers who got wasted the night before and don't turn up.

I don't know what they pay teachers but whatever it is, it's not enough.

fuck off

[Anonymous Coward]

who fucking cares if they show up

who wants this nanny state seriously? its 1984, and its not just in the UK

"1984", "Brave New World", "Animal Farm"

[peter303]

What did you expect fromt he UK?

What about identical twins?

[wiedzmin]

It's funny that less than a month ago there was an article here on Slashdot, about some researches that showed that most facial recognition systems can be fooled using photographs. Also, I wonder how this works with twins :)

what is this all about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transferring money from the public purse to corporations bottom line.

GB = Great Bootlickers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Are Brits great NWO bootlickers or what? Tell me they would have acted ANY differently than the Germans did living under A.H....

When do people say ENOUGH!?

eggs over my hammy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would moon this thing.

photos and biometrics

[talcite]

I understand why people say biometrics is a poor use of security, but with a few adjustments, would it really be?

For example with a facial scan, you could require the user to set a "password" with a sequence of facial expressions. Instantly by using expressions, you change the requirement for forgery from static images to video, which is much more difficult to fake (refresh rates of monitors and CCDs are easy to detect). In addition, the movement of facial qualities provides much more data, including underlying muscle control and structure.

Same idea for retinal scans. You could define a series of eye movements as a password. Can't fake that with a picture.

Re:Well, I guess face recognition isn't AI anymore

[julesh]

...Every time AI researches find a working algorithm for something that the human mind does, the ability coded on that algorithm stops being thought of as "Intelligence" and becomes "just a calculation that any computer can do".

So I guess pattern recognition in images is not AI anymore, right?

Doing it in a way that works is. Current facial recognition software has about a false positive rate of about 0.1% and a false negative rate of 1%, when comparing randomly selected people against a single sample. Obviously the false positive rate climbs as the number of sample images to match against climbs. In a school environment, I doubt they're getting better than about 3-5% false positives. This is clearly much worse than a person would achieve: looking at a person's face for 1.5 seconds while looking them up in a book of pictures of students should be a relatively easy task, and I'd expect substantially less than 1% false positives with no false negatives from a person doing this job.

Of course, these statistics (based on random face matches) are meaningless if somebody's actively trying to deceive the system, and I'd expect a person to better still in such a situation.