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

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.

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.