UK School Introduces Facial Recognition 214
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.'"
Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea, (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how it copes with twins? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or just someone holding up someone else's photo?
Bloody idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
CCTV in schools (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Why do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Bloody idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What problem, exactly, is solved by this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Bloody idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Why do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I work in the education system, and the Headteacher here is fantastic.
So, what you are REALLY saying is... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:You guys are missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
>It is ONE school.
It's the FIRST school.
Re:Wearing a berka sounds like a good idea, (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
That is the real question. So how long before the UK is a Totalitarian State?
What do you mean, "before"?