Give Us Your Biometric Data To Get Your Lunch In 5 Seconds, UK Schools Tell Children (theregister.com) 121
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In North Ayrshire Council, a Scottish authority encompassing the Isle of Arran, nine schools are set to begin processing meal payments for school lunches using facial scanning technology. The authority and the company implementing the technology, CRB Cunninghams, claim the system will help reduce queues and is less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners, according to the Financial Times. Speaking to the publication, David Swanston, the MD of supplier CRB Cunninghams, said the cameras verify the child's identity against "encrypted faceprint templates," and will be held on servers on-site at the 65 schools that have so far signed up. He added: "In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. So we need fast throughput at the point of sale." He told the paper that with the system, the average transaction time was cut to five seconds per pupil. The system has already been piloted in 2020 at Kingsmeadow Community School in Gateshead, England. North Ayrshire council said 97 per cent of parents had given their consent for the new system, although some said they were unsure whether their children had been given enough information to make their decision. Seemingly unaware of the controversy surrounding facial recognition, education solutions provider CRB Cunninghams announced its introduction of the technology in schools in June as the "next step in cashless catering."
Indoctrination (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Indoctrination (Score:5, Insightful)
Really this is on the parents allowing it to happen. As well as all of us adults. It's on us, but it will happen and the children won't have the past experience to know there were different times.
Re:Indoctrination (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep...what one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces.
That's why it is a good idea to questions and push back on letting younger kids think that constant surveillance is normal and that "you have nothing to hide if you're not guilty" type thinking.
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Re:Indoctrination (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but it's to prevent COVID-19. By... let me check my notes: by being "less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners".
You know, because it's perfectly logical to prevent the spread of an airborne disease by focusing on fomites. Next up: curing cholera by encouraging condom usage.
Seriously, how is it late 2021 and people still don't realize that COVID-19 overwhelmingly spreads direct person-to-person through the air, and not through surfaces? Want to spend money on something to reduce the spread of COVID-19? ***Buy HEPA filters***. Not face scanners.
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Not only that, but these young children are in the safest category of potential covid victims.
They are less apt to catch it AND even if they do, it isn't likely to cause serious illness or death.
Re:Indoctrination (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'm gonna get downmodded for this but here goes:
This was, from the beginning, a very obvious danger in the way people interacted. Since everybody agreed there were only two factions, anti-vaxxers and government shills, so whenever you met someone who had a slightly differing opinion, they got isntantly categorized as the stupid, easily manipulated diametral extreme to your opinion.
Proper dialogue has been rendered unacceptable and undesirable... and now you have people pushing stupid ideas under the guise of wanting to help... either through being un- or misinformed or actual malice.
And it's going to be VERY difficult to speak up against it without being labelled an anti-vaxxer and dismissed immediately.
Congratulations, everyone. We thought Bill Gates and his secret cohort of billionaires would fuck the planet but we did it ourselves. Good job us.
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Wait. You're saying billionaires had NOTHING to do with the coronavirus "pandemic"? It immaculately spread via non-lab bats in Wuhan and then the fear and propaganda just magically wound itself across the world without any help from the entrenched media?
Um. OK.
Did you happen to see Bill Gates maniacally drooling about the number of prospective test-subjects back in March 2019 or so?
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This is not accurate. Children are the key drivers of infection in much of the developed world right now, with some truly staggering incidence rates, bringing it then home and infecting their families with very high secondary attack rates. A myth started early on that children rarely get infected, but it was mostly due to a lack of testing combined with the fact that children are more likely to be asymptomatic.
Apart from the "infecting their caregivers" aspect, while children are much less likely than olde
Re:Indoctrination (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still seeing numbers saying that while children infection rates are going up, relative to older children (teens, etc) and adults they are still very low.
And again, infection of a child with no serious illness is not a big deal. That's the important number with children, and natural infection and survival is showing better and better immunity numbers as case studies build.
And as far as bringing it home to other family members, hell....this is what happened with colds, flu, etc....before covid.
If their adult parents aren't vaccinated, well, that's on them.
That's kinda trying to change the dialog and the argument isn't it?
Or are you saying that the flu is more deadly now than it was before covid?
We didn't worry about the flu shit before covid, why should we start running around frightened about it now?
And hell, numbers for 2020 showed some of the lowest flu numbers in recent history.
So far...the numbers are showing that we don't have to be nearly as concerned about children and covid and the older parts of the population.
They don't get infected as often (generally).
They don't get seriously(generally).
They aren't at risk for "long" covid (generally).
So, we don't have to be running around shouting the world is falling apart with young children and covid.
The larger risk for kids is parents not taking care of themselves so that they don't die and leave orphans.
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This is simply false [twimg.com] (UK figures).
Most people care about half a percent of children who catch a disease ending up hospitalized struggling to breathe. You're free to be an exception.
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Did they remember to tell you none of the COVID vaccines were ever tested to block transmission. Only reduce likelihood of going to the hospital. Herd-immunity is going to be a hard sell when the medicine won't provide it even at 100% vaccination rate. Maybe that's why they're trying for the boosters. If we get to 130% of people vaccinated maybe we've got a chance!!! Makes about as much sense as vaccinating those who already have natural immunity.
Re: Indoctrination (Score:2)
On a side note, I have a 15 y.o. who lost all sense of smell and most sense of taste. Since last December. Just the suggestion that people will want to let go of all counter measures and live normally, getting there by letting Covid19 burn through the unvaccinated brought up lots of tears: "that's just mean, lots
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While being even better at spreading it to others once they've got it, precisely because it bothers them so little.
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That's when finger prints come with the highest fidelity, as with age potential skin deformation makes it harder to read finger prints even though the finger print itself doesn't change.
I remember the first year I was in Germany (1990) the Kindergarten took us (a group of about 20 children) on a trip to the town hall, where we helped to fill in fun sheets by answering questions about ourselves, and were allowed to play with fun finger colours putting our finger mar
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While I don't like or agree with this method, as someone who has supervised multiple lunch periods a day for well over a decade, I strongly suspect you are completely wrong. I seriously doubt the educators are running this facial recognition software because they are willing participants in a global scheme to have a secret world government have all the data on you (which they likely already have anyways), or whatever it was you were insinuating.
What is far more likely is exactly what was cited in the articl
Re:Indoctrination (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could go the simple, effective route and just not charge the students for lunch. That's what many of the school districts in West Virginia have done -- all children get breakfast and lunch.
This of the cost savings in not having to buy, deploy, and administer the facial recognition system and supporting account management processes and equipment.
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Free lunches will just exacerbate that.
I don't have any mod points right now, but I'd mod you up for:
(1) Using the word "exacerbate" correctly in a sentence, and
(2) spelling it correctly!
My back teeth are worn down from grinding after seeing people use the word "exasperate" when they mean "exacerbate" or spelling it wrong when they do try to use it. Thank you!
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They aren't charging kids, its the parent responsibility. If they can't afford school lunch for their kids, or make them lunch, then something else there has to be addressed. In my area of NY, there are no free lunches. Because school taxes are already too high, and keep going up each year ($6,000/yr for me with zero kids). Free lunches will just exacerbate that. Until school boards stop giving themselves raises and cut all the free stuff sports teams get each year, I won't support shelling out even more money because parents themselves can't pay for their lunch or make lunch. Minimum wage or a little bit more makes living impossible? No. The increased taxes for owning a home makes it impossible. If you're single, you get more benefits then marriage. Same with parenthood, single parents get lots of subsidies and free healthcare, but the second you're married, you get cut off because you make 'just enough' not to need it
School lunches could be paid any number of ways. Local taxes are not the only way. In fact, over half of our students in my district already qualify for federal free/reduced lunch. I read recently where the Senate is considering giving the Pentagon $10b more than it requested. I feel like we could feed a lot of students with $10b.
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I should have added this to my previous comment, but I didn't think of it until after clicking submit. Providing free meals to children, while I believe should be the standard, would unlikely to be cheaper than this hardware/software deployment. Our school charges roughly $2 per student for lunch and I want to say $1.35 for breakfast. I'm not sure what our federal compensation for free/reduced lunch is, but let's just say, for argument's sake (and for ease of discussion), it's the same. Assuming 500 of our
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While I confess to not knowing how much this facial recognition program costs, I suspect it is not $180,000 a year in a school of roughly 1000 students.
Well, considering that you'd need a contractor to sell the school on the gear, and then provide recurring support for that gear, and then do all the data entry, and then do the maintenance on the gear, which is going to be in a school so you know it won't last a year before it needs to get replaced, then add in the difficulty involved in distributing lunch and keeping paper records when the machine invariably breaks...I could absolutely see this costing approximately $179,999.
Between taxes going up $180/yea
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Well, considering that you'd need a contractor to sell the school on the gear, and then provide recurring support for that gear, and then do all the data entry, and then do the maintenance on the gear, which is going to be in a school so you know it won't last a year before it needs to get replaced, then add in the difficulty involved in distributing lunch and keeping paper records when the machine invariably breaks...I could absolutely see this costing approximately $179,999.
Between taxes going up $180/year and absolving the issue entirely so every kid gets lunch every time, or taxes going up $180/year and there still being a group of kids who don't get school lunch AND trusting that the contractor isn't going to charge the same $179,999 next year when there's no hardware to purchase...I think that the simpler solution that doesn't involve biometric data is probably worth exploring.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I do not know how funding works in the UK, but in my state in the United States, I can assure you no school with only 1000 students would be looking to spend $180,000/yr just to get through a lunch line faster. As such, there's little chance this would cost anywhere close to $180,000.
Most software licensed to schools is done (as I assume is done elsewhere) on a per user basis. If it is $10 per user, you're talking $10,000 a year. Include first time setup costs (let's guestimate $4
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We have free lunches here. They still do accounting of what kids get the lunches. Why? So when mommy calls and says little Johnny didn't get lunch they have a record that says 'yes he did'.
Re:Indoctrination (Score:4, Interesting)
"just not charge the students for lunch"
Some schools in TN did that a while back. Enough kids were on free or subsidized lunch that they decided the administrative costs to validate how much to charge was more than just giving EVERY child free lunch if they wanted it. It also let kids eat whose parents wound't/couldn't do the paperwork that allowed them to get a free/cheaper lunch.
Compared to the other costs of education, it was an easy decision and is believed to have also help raise test scores since many kids do not sit in class hungry all day.
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Or you could go the simple, effective route and just not charge the students for lunch. That's what many of the school districts in West Virginia have done -- all children get breakfast and lunch.
This of the cost savings in not having to buy, deploy, and administer the facial recognition system and supporting account management processes and equipment.
The problem is, the conservatives in the UK don't like that solution... However know that if they went the other way and stopped it completely they'd be kicked out faster than Boris backflipping on the latest crisis. So the solution is to spend far more than it would just to feed the damn kids, trying to make a solution that is Conservative approved.
For more information please see the British documentary, Yes Minister.
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Maybe not consciously willing participants but certainly willfully ignorant ones! (Ignorant not meaning "stupid" but that they wish to "ignore" the consequences.)
Not necessarily "a secret world government" but rather companies who wish to collect that information so they can monetize it. Like all those various compani
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Maybe not consciously willing participants but certainly willfully ignorant ones! (Ignorant not meaning "stupid" but that they wish to "ignore" the consequences.)
Or simply ones who are more concerned that a child is fed than almost anything else. It's not an uncommon mindset among educators.
Not necessarily "a secret world government" but rather companies who wish to collect that information so they can monetize it. Like all those various companies that have your private phone number and address just a google search away from your students finding it.
I again wish to point out I don't know the laws in other countries, but in America, the selling or distribution of this information to 3rd parties would almost assuredly be illegal, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). If the facial recognition company is collecting a student's data in order to monetize it by selling it to third parties, they would (most l
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You can disagree with the methods (as I do) for legitimate reasons, but to automatically jump to "indoctrination" for no better reason than because you've been indoctrinated to have such a knee-jerk reaction reflects a suspicious of all mentality... And so I believe it to be true here, where I think educators just want to make sure children have enough time and food to eat. And I don't think there's legitimate reason to believe anything more nefarious than that.
Perhaps there is nothing nefarious here. But it's still a form of secondary indoctrination - the school kids are getting the message that involuntary collection of their biometric data by 'authorities' is normal and good. The 'secondary' part comes into it because the people implementing the system apparently also believe that this biometric data collection is at least OK and benign, if not an outright good - I'm pretty sure there's at least a little indoctrination at work there. After all, indoctrination c
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Way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I was in elementary school, we never had any problem getting through the lunch line while paying cash or a lunch ticket with the accounting done on paper.
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I believe the issue is with the 25 minute restraint though, which is artificially imposed. Why do children need to be rushed through the cafeteria as if it was a factory?
Fair point. I'll use my school (since it is obviously what I'm familiar with) as an example.
We're a smaller school district in terms of student population, but we have a fairly large district, in terms of area. We run buses for our students, but given our size (in both ways), we run an elementary set of routes and a secondary set of routes. Our elementary school starts roughly around 7:30 and ends around 2:30, while secondary school starts around 8:00 and ends around 3:00. After school athletic practices r
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This is to get kids used to thinking this is "normal" and "acceptable".
Today's reminder that it's ok to be white.
Taking cue from Apple/Google (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll make your life "easy" by using your biometric data to help you unlock your device. We'd NEVER misuse that data. Nosiree.
Re:Taking cue from Apple/Google (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair I can't see any evidence that Apple or Google have misused biometric data. In fact I can't see any evidence that they even gathered it from fingerprint sensors.
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Well, to be fair...I've never given them my biometric info on their devices.
Passwords only still work just fine for me and my devices, no need to give any company a scan of my face or fingers.
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To be fair I can't see any evidence that Apple or Google have misused biometric data
As if they would advertise it on a billboard.
Some Project Veritas reporter will get someone to spill the beans at Apple or Google and you still won't see any evidence, because you've already made up your mind that it is "misleading".
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Is the vector there? My understanding is that the fingerprint sensor does not supply an image of your fingerprint, only a hash that is supposedly non-reversible. That hash is stored in a secure processor separate from the main CPU and is not accessible from software.
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As long as you trust them, you can take their word on that. And as a consumer, that's great. But it's not 100% verifiable either.
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I'm sure if it was possible then some company would be offering fingerprint extraction along side all the other data they can get off an iPhone.
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If it's Apple's backdoor, it could involve an encrypted communication with the secure enclave that we don't have the keys for. Not saying it's real, just that it still involves a level of trust to assume it doesn't.
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I'm convinced this is why app-based TOTP is not offered by a lot of online stores that use SMS 2FA.
What's really sad about it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm even convinced they didn't even think that this is problematic but that it's just a neat way to get things organized more easily. I will even grant them that they have no "evil" intentions with the data gathered that way.
What concerns me mostly about it is exactly that: That these people who make those decisions don't even understand why this is a security and privacy landmine waiting to go off.
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Just wait until they try it on twins. The first one gets their lunch and the second one gets an "already served" error.
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It is actually possible to tell twins apart on a genetic level, granted, this usually depends on them developing differently, which is much harder in young children, since they likely didn't have enough of a different life to actually make an impact.
But yes, that argument is quite good. My guess is that the workaround would be that "the twin" just gets to have two meals.
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1. Twins don't have the same fingerprints
2. This has to have already been worked out. Identical twins are about 1 in 250, so most schools likely have at least one or more to deal with. Also, nothing says kids can't get 2 meals and twins have the same parents so having them on the same account isn't an issue either.
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That these people who make those decisions don't even understand why this is a security and privacy landmine waiting to go off.
They don't mind as long as their check clears first.
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What concerns me mostly about it is exactly that: That these people who make those decisions don't even understand why this is a security and privacy landmine waiting to go off.
Who makes up the embodiment of the educational system? Why, the very enlightened product of the very same educational system who are so very progressive and liberal and leftist.
It's not lunch ladies and cooks making these decisions. It's administrators, often with a PHD attached to their name. They ought to know better, but the road to hell is paved in good intentions, and noone is more convinced of their own righteousness than they are.
They will feel perfectly justified in having kids remove their face cov
Another good reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another good reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Another good reason (Score:2)
We live on a planet that lireally grows food.
Re: Another good reason (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't grow enough food on its own. It hasn't (in western countries) for almost 2000 years - the population is far too large for that.
It also doesn't harvest that food, and process (slaughter, clean, mill, mix, bake, etc. ) it into a form that is ready to eat.
Those activities require labor. Labor is compensated for by money.
There really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Re: Another good reason (Score:1)
It grows enough. Roughly half the plants you see every day in oarks, woods, balconies and gardens are edible. Most people just don't know that.
What it doesn't grow is enough fir everyone's greed.
Yes, there is such a thing as a free lunch. In essence dir anyone, but even the more so when you're a school kid and your patents pay taxes.
But that's not the point. The point is that by far the most times someone points out to you that "there isn't such a thing as a free lunch", they're not actually suggesting you
We've been generating enough calories (Score:2)
Furthermore the societal costs of letting a portion of the country go hungry, especially children and their developing minds, are far greater. It's cheaper to drop food than bombs when you can't externalize your costs.
So why don't we do it? Because that constant fear of dying of exposure or hunger keeps us al
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Because we should be getting our kids to accept that the boot will be stomping on their face forever.
Childhood should be without worries about the basics; food to eat, a roof over their heads, no worries other than 'have i done my schoolwork right' .
I could go off on a rant about UBI, but i'm not going to.
What is also concerning is that 'lunch hour' is now 'lunch 25 minutes'...
klik
Why not? (Score:2)
But ignoring that, hungry children develop less, both physically and mentally, and we pay for that when they're less capable adults in the form of lost productivity and crime.
Americans like hierarchies. We like to know there's somebody below us on the totem pole. But that's not a rational thing, and
School != Real Life (Score:2)
Because when they get out into the "real world" where there are no hierarchies, all food will be free.
No, but they will have a job that lets them earn money to pay for it. The rules are different at school and there are some very good reasons for that.
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School lunches used to be free. They used to be decent too.
Problem is that every time the Tories get in they slash the school budgets. There's always some excuse, austerity or whatever. Now schools have just pennies to provide lunch for all eligible students, and eligibility is based in parent's income.
It seems designed to enforce class hierarchies, which is basically Tory policy.
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The British electorate keeps making catastrophically bad decisions. The Tories just roll with it, Labour not so much.
Still, the new "make brexit work" slogan seems like acceptance. They get to test the theory that you can't polish a turd.
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What is a school lunch? Don't your parents prepare it for you in the morning? You want a sense of inferiority then get a tray and line up in front of an unsympathetic woman shovelling slop into your bowl. Nothing says hierarchy like treating kids the same way you do prisoners.
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Prisoners get hot meals. Something you don't even want for children.
Re:Another good reason (Score:4, Insightful)
When did kids stop carrying their lunches to school from home?
That's what we always did when I was a kid.
Hell as a grade schooler, one of the most exciting things about buying new school supplies each year was deciding on which lunchbox I'd want for that new year!!
Oh you sweet summer child (Score:2)
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I doubt this is more than a small minority.
Hell, very few people fit into this category in the public schools I went to as a kid either.
Sure I imagine the ghetto schools have this problem, but that's not the majority of school districts around the US.
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When did kids stop carrying their lunches to school from home? That's what we always did when I was a kid.
When you were a kid, most likely you had a stay-at-home mom. Today, more than half of households are dual income. [magnifymoney.com]
When mommy and daddy are putting in 60+ hour work weeks, it's easier to send little Bobby Tables to school with lunch money.
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I did till I was in like 5th grade.
And even then, Mom fixed my lunch for me daily.
Perhaps one good thing to come out of this pandemic, will be that it will result in more stay at home moms...
This has a VERY positive outcome, especially in the early formative years for kids.
It seems to be a trend we're seeing a bit....sure, people won't be able to "keep up with the Jones'" anymore without dual incomes, but it may help the kids to be raised bet
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Parents.
Simpler solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Why go to all that trouble, when bog standard contactless payments would do the EXACT same thing without violating anyone's privacy. Worried about kids losing them, just make it up into a #YourSocialIssueStrong wrist bangle and everyone is set.
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NFC tags are insanely cheap. I can go order a handful of programmable ones on eBay (embedded in stickers!) for about 50 cents a piece. Imagine how cheap standard read-only RFID is by comparison. The problem is that there are only a handful of companies packaging these into solutions for things like this and the prices are many times over the actual cost.
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How does biometrics mentioned in the OP solve it? Kids not paying (or being able to pay) is a completely unrelated problem that requires a conversation on socioeconomic issues, and has nothing to do with payment methods and biometrics. In my district, kids are issued photo IDs as a way to ensure everyone on the campus is supposed to be there. At the same time, lunch accounts are managed electronically at the district level (we're not talking about national payment processors like Visa and Mastercard here
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You can't forget to bring your face to school.
Re: Simpler solution (Score:2)
Give me your lunch money -> give me your NFC fob -> give me your face.
Bullies have a long way to evolve.
Chinese model by mistake and stealth? (Score:3)
Is this the world we're looking at, in the West? - slowly moving toward the kind of dystopian society that China has?
The population there seems, on the surface, to be so much more compliant with a near complete lack of privacy - although, yeah, the "sticks" used to beat you for failure to comply, are probably the reason for compliance - and the fact that the society has been that way for ... heck, a long time.
I can see Western society being highly disruptive when faced with the level of surveillance that China has, but if that frog gets boiled real slow - and if things like this seemingly well intentioned development happen more and more often - will we even notice it happening?
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I can see Western society being highly disruptive when faced with the level of surveillance that China has, but if that frog gets boiled real slow - and if things like this seemingly well intentioned development happen more and more often - will we even notice it happening?
All you need to know is the people that wave the US flag and the Gadsden flag are domestic terrorists, Antifa doesn't exist and are also WW2 heros, and all our problems are rooted in systemic racism. Everything else is fine.
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Oh, got confused for a bit there, I don't live in that part of the world.
In my part of the world, all I need to know is that we are still in the 1950's, having just won WWII, with some help from US flag wavers.
We going through tough times, but the sunlit uplands await, we've sent "johnny foreigner" packing and the sudden lack of people to do the jobs we won't do, will be resolved in due course. Everything is fine!
My advice to the UK: (Score:2)
Wear a mask.
Problem solved.
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Well. Better than in us. (Score:2, Insightful)
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I refused to say the pledge because of god in elementary school.
They hassled me about it but I got my way.
In retrospect this may have been what made my third grade teacher hate me. He was clearly unsuited to the job though, he was only at my school for two years. Just long enough to make me hate education.
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My state stopped the pledge due to a lawsuit over that added god line so then it was just sporting events. I am glad the fools added god in the 50s (like that made any difference between communist pledges) because I always opposed it. Coerced pledges from children are almost as meaningless as parroted prayers: Pavlovian!
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thats debateable (Score:2)
In the UK, leftist subversion has reached the point where children are allowed to be systematically abused and raped en masse, because to do otherwise would be seen as a racist bigoted xenophobic attack.
I don't for one moment agree with the flag salute and will not salute and will not swear fealty to the current regime on demand. But to say "better than", well that is just subjective now, isn't it.
Airborne virus (Score:2)
Justify with "speed the queue" all you want, but I don't quite buy this:
...facial scanning technology... is less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners...
Covid is fundamentally an airborne virus. Technology that requires lowering masks seems unlikely to lower spread.
Even though I surface transmission has not proven to be a significant Covid-risk, I have gotten quite adept at scanning, tapping and inserting my credit card without touching the reader itself. All it takes is turning the reader around so it faces the customer.
It won't work (Score:2)
I can't even get my photo app on my phone to categorize pictures of my kid without it deciding I have a dozen children. And that's using state of the art neural networks from one of the big tech companies. Not some tiny school-focused vendor. Kids' faces changes too much over time. Not only that, schools are highly localized, so there are not only siblings but a lot of closely related people going to the same place. Similar faces are going to be a problem too.
Cashless catering (Score:1)
Here's a picture of one such meal (Score:2)
Who wouldn't give up his biometrics for this?
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1/20... [dailymail.co.uk]
Re: Here's a picture of one such meal (Score:2)
What school is feeding children bull testicles? Bastards.
not fixing the right problem (Score:3)
"In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. So we need fast throughput at the point of sale."
That there, the 25 minutes, that right there, that is the problem. Extend the school day enough to have lunch time be of a civilized length, and suddenly all of this brouhaha goes away. We have similar issues in our childrens' schools and it just baffles me why the root problem is not addressed.
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Indeed. Especially given that oh, there's a pandemic going on (corpse out front shouldda told ya), my kids' school has staggered lunchtimes across the grades to keep the number of students in the cafeteria at any one time down.
I'm not sure whether this biometric approach is significantly faster than just assigning each kid a 4-digit PIN and having them enter it.
Re: (Score:2)
Because authoritarians only have a hammer, and everything including kids, looks like a nail.
This is the start... (Score:3)
...of the slippery slope
Re-issuance (Score:2)
Completely understandable (Score:1)
Kids give it for free in Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, why not to feed them? Or is this just another case of government is bad, private sector is good?
Re: Completely understandable (Score:2)
In those apps, you also consent to give away your facial image. Do people not read app fine print but do read school fine print? Maybe that is the issue.
Comment (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No worries. The software will detect the pimples and automatically issue meals consisting only of broccoli, which will make the pimples go away. We're great at engineering self-correcting problems!
All kids will be scanned even if opting out (Score:2)
So if a kid/family opts-out (or does not opt-in) how does the system not scan the kid? How does the system know it is "ok" to scan the person at the lunch checkout before they are scanned? This is the biggest problem with facial scanning! Even if you opt-out, you will still be scanned to see if you match their database!
If this were in the USA and in a public school, then all of that data would be subject to FOIA request and not be limited to lunch scanning.