Deployment of facial recognition in 9 schools for canteen payment

Deployment of facial recognition in 9 schools for canteen payment

In the UK, nine schools have recently introduced facial recognition systems for paying students in canteens. If officials specifically invoke it for health reasons, some are concerned about the trivialization of this controversial technology.

expedite payment

All installations implementing the device are in North Ayrshire, Scotland. The faces of thousands of students will be scanned there when they reach the canteen to pay for the food. Earlier, payment was done there by card or fingerprint. Now, the students just have to choose their meal, look at the camera and leave.

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, It’s the fastest way to recognize someone at checkout – it’s faster than a card, faster than a fingerprint. In a secondary school, you have about 25 minutes to serve potentially 1,000 students. That’s why we need fast throughput at point of sale The company that installed the system, says David Swanston, managing director of CRB Cunningham, is financial Times, This rate decreases with the device down to five seconds per student.

He also claims that facial recognition is better in the times of Kovid-19 as it reduces contact. According to North Ayrshire Council, 97% of children or parents have given their consent, but some of them fear their children have not been adequately informed about the implications of such technology. David Swanston nonetheless assured that the system used by CRB Cunningham is different from live facial recognition, allows identification of people particularly in crowds, and that children’s biometric data is encrypted. and is removed upon leaving school. Parents can additionally use a PIN to verify payment.

student in a class.

Some parents fear that their children have not been informed enough about facial recognition. Photography: Sam Ballie/Unsplash

a very controversial technique

The proposed system in these schools seems to have convinced the entire channel, as sixty-five other establishments have registered to receive one. However, voices are raised against this application of facial recognition: ” It is standardizing biometric identity checks for something mundane. it is not necessary to resort to [technologie] airports for children to receive their meals Says Silky Carlow, a member of the British NGO Big Brother Watch.

For Pippa King, who runs the biometrics blog At School, the European Union handles children’s privacy better than the UK. It is true that member countries have a strict opinion on this technology, as they have even thought of banning it in public places. It is a fact, facial recognition is scary, especially because inaccuracies in their algorithms have already been identified, leading to false results. In addition, New York City did not hesitate to limit its use to the fight against racism, just like IBM, which simply decided not to work on this technology.

Approaches differ greatly depending on the country. If in Europe, a legal framework is being defined to be able to control its use by the police, Moscow has democratized facial recognition as a means of payment for the subway, allowing freedom of movement. To protect is the worst fear for unions.

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