Nine UK Schools Start Scanning Children’s Faces to Take Their Lunch Money
upstart writes:
Nine UK schools start scanning children's faces to take their lunch money:
Several schools in Scotland are set to start using facial recognition software to allow pupils to pay for their lunches.
The system, installed in nine sites in North Ayrshire, scans the faces of pupils at the tills in order to save time during the busy lunch hour.
It checks them off against a register of faces stored on the school's servers and replaces software that used fingerprint scanners.
The company that installed the systems claim they are more Covid-secure and help speed up the queue, with each transaction now taking just five seconds, The Financial Times reported.
David Swanston, the managing director of CRB Cunninghams, the company that installed the systems, told the FT: 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.'
But privacy campaigners claim it further normalises the technology which is often used without the consent of those being tracked.
[...] North Ayreshire council claims the majority of parents have given consent for the system because they recognise that it makes the process easier.
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