Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
don't you think?
Or just someone holding up someone else's photo?
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.
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.
"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.
Paul Leader
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?"
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens