9 ms·

Facial recognition cameras installed in UK school canteens

44 points by lloyd678 5y ago

franga2000 5y ago
I wonder how many children could've gotten free lunches for the cost of implementing this system. I wouldn't be surprised if you could feed the whole school for a few months and also roll out an RFID system for that same price.
imgabe 5y ago
> In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. Have they tried giving kids a humane amount of time to eat lunch?
- DrBazza 5y ago
  Unless lunch hours are different in Scottish schools, they're talking about the 25 minutes the canteen staff are serving the kids. There's another 35 minutes to eat the food.
- alibarber 5y ago
  In my secondary school of around ~1000 people they solved this by simply assigning a rotating time in the lunch break at which year groups could get the food (i.e a 10 min slot at 12:45 one day, 1300 the next, etc - you could sit and eat as long as you liked). I'm surprised this is not a solved problem...
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    It is a solved problem. The entire world has solved this problem. This is not a reason, this is a pretext.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Of the top of my head we had 15 or 20 minutes. Perfectly adequate time to eat the content of your brown bag.
chmod775 5y ago
So instead of fixing the problem that pupils have to pay at all, they come up with this nonsense?
- volta83 5y ago
  What nonsense? Before, children only had to pay for food. If they don't or can't pay, we starve them, that'll teach them. But now, they also have to pay for this system, and its potential life long consequences. Like, suppose we offer it to the cheapest contractor, which delivers a crappy insecure system. So somebody "hacks" it and leaks videos of children eating (just because it uploaded all footage to facebook and shared it does not meant we wanted anyone to watch it!). This allows insurance companies to analyze the data and either charge premiums or just deny health insurance to these children as they become adults because "You had too much sugar as a kid Tommy, here, look, this is footage of you eating 30 years ago!". So you see, this system is genius and the possibilities are endless. Why can't you get it? --- In case it isn't clear, this is sarcasm, and I hope that whoever decided that filming children during lunch using facial recognition, and everyone who approved it, to be able to charge children for food, get fired and shamed for life.
  - desas 5y ago
    The school is in the UK, and Scotland at that - barely anyone has health insurance. The system uses face recognition for interactions at the till, when paying for food, the likelihood of it filming usable footage of the dining hall that will be kept until leaked is pretty low. A more likely threat model is that rather than video analysis, the system records Tommy bought five doughnuts each day and that database get leaked/sold.
  - dekken_ 5y ago
    if accountability were a thing, this wouldn't have gotten passed the first meeting
  - petre 5y ago
    Aren't they minors? Can you run facial recognition on minor without their parents' consent? It should be illegal. Somehow the whole thing reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/Sv5iEK-IEzw https://youtu.be/Sv5iEK-IEzw Kids dressed as stormtroopers eating at the canteen with their helmets on.
chuckee 5y ago
> North Ayrshire Council said 97 per cent of children or their parents had consented to the new system So the opinion of the North Ayrshire Council is that children can consent?
- pintxo 5y ago
  The more interesting problem, how do they handle the 3% who did not consent? - Do they eat in a different hall? - Do they have to wear Harry Potter like cloaking devices? - Or more like Ku Klux Klan hoodies?
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    This is an interesting question. Perhaps I’m a cynic but I’m going to guess option D: allow them to use another payment method but otherwise ignore the lack of consent entirely.
- bidirectional 5y ago
  Well technically a subset of schoolchildren can -- those aged 16.
- amelius 5y ago
  And the remaining 3% watched Black Mirror.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I'd bet money that the parents consented to some boilerplate that the new system is technically covered under or that one day in school they handed out permission forms for the "new school lunch program" and told kids either they could sign it and return it now or that they could bring it home for their parents. Obtaining "consent" in less than honest ways like this is SOP for schools.
- Aromasin 5y ago
  I can say with complete certainty that this scheme was not presented to parents in the way it deserves to be.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
You gotta find material for the next season of Black Mirror somehow.
danw1979 5y ago
Would it not be more straightforward to have a simpler menu and a set price per student for school meals ? Or maybe, you know, have those school meals funded by the taxpayer ? My 11 year old is free to choose from all sorts of junk (from the outsourced catering) that I’d rather he didn’t eat. This is just one more unnecessary layer of complexity.
_Understated_ 5y ago
Wait a minute... I live in North Ayrshire. I wasn't asked. This sounds like a pile of shite to me!
- SuchAnonMuchWow 5y ago
  From the article: "North Ayrshire Council said 97 per cent of children or their parents had consented to the new system" With a wording like that and a percentage that high, I imagine it went down more or less like that: an adult explain to the kids in 5min what this does and how it will be better for everyone. Then ask kids to raise their hands if they are against it. And voila: 97% of the kids agree.
pintxo 5y ago
Do they use it to record the kids reaction to the food they serve to quickly and automatically rate their output quality and subsequently serve better food the next day? If not, what is the problem with this branch of reality?
- corobo 5y ago
  > what is the problem with this branch of reality? We put all of our points into the commercialism tree rather than focusing on enjoying existence
- rapnie 5y ago
  That would not be very profitable for the entrepreneur that leases the canteen. No, cheaper ingredients at the same price point, and more sponsored candy bars. You can only go down once they get used to new quality level, hence the AI to measure. Want one too? It has broad application, of course.
cblconfederate 5y ago
You know , people complain about the online world being infested with spies, but soon the real world will be worse.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  That's where the online world got their inspiration from. The whole point of membership cards is to track what, when and where you're buying things. Credit card processors also seem to sell that kind of data. This stuff was around even before internet tracking became popular. Now we are moving to using cash less and less too.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  And acceptance taught right in the schools. Grow up with cameras staring at you and you will grow to willingly accept them. Get em hooked while they're young. "I grew up with cameras pointing at me my whole life and nothing bad ever happened to me! I don't understand what all the fuss is about."
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Nobody's yet dumb enough to say it out loud but there were definitively people in the approval chain for this system who saw that as a nice side benefit. School administration is a line of work that tends to attract authoritarians.
stefan_ 5y ago
What happened to good old fucking smart cards?
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  When my daughter was at school several years ago, they rolled-out biometric fingerprint scanning for school meal payment. I steadfastly refused to let her be enrolled as I didn't feel that a child could give informed consent on their unique biometrics being stored and shared. She ended up having to use a NFC smart card instead, and wasn't the only pupil to do so (although it was in single-digits in a 1,000 pupil strong school).
- Aromasin 5y ago
  This is the most baffling part for me too. Why can't they simply use a pre-paid card that they can scan to pay for their lunch. It's a simply problem with an even simpler solution. This reeks of a scummy consulting firm overselling the school.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Because cards doesn't spy on people? England is a China level surveillance state, the spying is a feature and not a problem. https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-top-10-most-surveilled-cities-in-the-world https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-t...
- fredley 5y ago
  Someone at the facial recognition company persuaded someone at the school that it would help cut bullying as smart cards can be stolen, faces cannot (so easily).
- desas 5y ago
  The people who opt out get a smart card. The pitch will be something like smart cards can be lost or stolen, faces can't.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beardyw 5y ago
You will probably find they are getting it for free to act as a reference site. Ha, just realised - there's no such thing as a free lunch.
rubylark 5y ago
How well does facial recognition work on children, anyway? Kids can grow a lot over the course of a year, and can look wildly different. Do they need to periodically refresh it with new photos more than once a year?

44 points by lloyd678 5y ago

franga2000 5y ago

I wonder how many children could've gotten free lunches for the cost of implementing this system. I wouldn't be surprised if you could feed the whole school for a few months and also roll out an RFID system for that same price.

imgabe 5y ago

> In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. Have they tried giving kids a humane amount of time to eat lunch?

DrBazza 5y ago
Unless lunch hours are different in Scottish schools, they're talking about the 25 minutes the canteen staff are serving the kids. There's another 35 minutes to eat the food.
alibarber 5y ago
In my secondary school of around ~1000 people they solved this by simply assigning a rotating time in the lunch break at which year groups could get the food (i.e a 10 min slot at 12:45 one day, 1300 the next, etc - you could sit and eat as long as you liked). I'm surprised this is not a solved problem...
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  It is a solved problem. The entire world has solved this problem. This is not a reason, this is a pretext.
tomjen3 5y ago
Of the top of my head we had 15 or 20 minutes. Perfectly adequate time to eat the content of your brown bag.

chmod775 5y ago

So instead of fixing the problem that pupils have to pay at all, they come up with this nonsense?

volta83 5y ago
What nonsense? Before, children only had to pay for food. If they don't or can't pay, we starve them, that'll teach them. But now, they also have to pay for this system, and its potential life long consequences. Like, suppose we offer it to the cheapest contractor, which delivers a crappy insecure system. So somebody "hacks" it and leaks videos of children eating (just because it uploaded all footage to facebook and shared it does not meant we wanted anyone to watch it!). This allows insurance companies to analyze the data and either charge premiums or just deny health insurance to these children as they become adults because "You had too much sugar as a kid Tommy, here, look, this is footage of you eating 30 years ago!". So you see, this system is genius and the possibilities are endless. Why can't you get it? --- In case it isn't clear, this is sarcasm, and I hope that whoever decided that filming children during lunch using facial recognition, and everyone who approved it, to be able to charge children for food, get fired and shamed for life.
- desas 5y ago
  The school is in the UK, and Scotland at that - barely anyone has health insurance. The system uses face recognition for interactions at the till, when paying for food, the likelihood of it filming usable footage of the dining hall that will be kept until leaked is pretty low. A more likely threat model is that rather than video analysis, the system records Tommy bought five doughnuts each day and that database get leaked/sold.
- dekken_ 5y ago
  if accountability were a thing, this wouldn't have gotten passed the first meeting
- petre 5y ago
  Aren't they minors? Can you run facial recognition on minor without their parents' consent? It should be illegal. Somehow the whole thing reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/Sv5iEK-IEzw https://youtu.be/Sv5iEK-IEzw Kids dressed as stormtroopers eating at the canteen with their helmets on.

chuckee 5y ago

> North Ayrshire Council said 97 per cent of children or their parents had consented to the new system So the opinion of the North Ayrshire Council is that children can consent?

pintxo 5y ago
The more interesting problem, how do they handle the 3% who did not consent? - Do they eat in a different hall? - Do they have to wear Harry Potter like cloaking devices? - Or more like Ku Klux Klan hoodies?
- elliekelly 5y ago
  This is an interesting question. Perhaps I’m a cynic but I’m going to guess option D: allow them to use another payment method but otherwise ignore the lack of consent entirely.
bidirectional 5y ago
Well technically a subset of schoolchildren can -- those aged 16.
amelius 5y ago
And the remaining 3% watched Black Mirror.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
I'd bet money that the parents consented to some boilerplate that the new system is technically covered under or that one day in school they handed out permission forms for the "new school lunch program" and told kids either they could sign it and return it now or that they could bring it home for their parents. Obtaining "consent" in less than honest ways like this is SOP for schools.
Aromasin 5y ago
I can say with complete certainty that this scheme was not presented to parents in the way it deserves to be.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

You gotta find material for the next season of Black Mirror somehow.

danw1979 5y ago

Would it not be more straightforward to have a simpler menu and a set price per student for school meals ? Or maybe, you know, have those school meals funded by the taxpayer ? My 11 year old is free to choose from all sorts of junk (from the outsourced catering) that I’d rather he didn’t eat. This is just one more unnecessary layer of complexity.

_Understated_ 5y ago

Wait a minute... I live in North Ayrshire. I wasn't asked. This sounds like a pile of shite to me!

SuchAnonMuchWow 5y ago
From the article: "North Ayrshire Council said 97 per cent of children or their parents had consented to the new system" With a wording like that and a percentage that high, I imagine it went down more or less like that: an adult explain to the kids in 5min what this does and how it will be better for everyone. Then ask kids to raise their hands if they are against it. And voila: 97% of the kids agree.

pintxo 5y ago

Do they use it to record the kids reaction to the food they serve to quickly and automatically rate their output quality and subsequently serve better food the next day? If not, what is the problem with this branch of reality?

corobo 5y ago
> what is the problem with this branch of reality? We put all of our points into the commercialism tree rather than focusing on enjoying existence
rapnie 5y ago
That would not be very profitable for the entrepreneur that leases the canteen. No, cheaper ingredients at the same price point, and more sponsored candy bars. You can only go down once they get used to new quality level, hence the AI to measure. Want one too? It has broad application, of course.

cblconfederate 5y ago

You know , people complain about the online world being infested with spies, but soon the real world will be worse.

Aerroon 5y ago
That's where the online world got their inspiration from. The whole point of membership cards is to track what, when and where you're buying things. Credit card processors also seem to sell that kind of data. This stuff was around even before internet tracking became popular. Now we are moving to using cash less and less too.
MisterTea 5y ago
And acceptance taught right in the schools. Grow up with cameras staring at you and you will grow to willingly accept them. Get em hooked while they're young. "I grew up with cameras pointing at me my whole life and nothing bad ever happened to me! I don't understand what all the fuss is about."
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Nobody's yet dumb enough to say it out loud but there were definitively people in the approval chain for this system who saw that as a nice side benefit. School administration is a line of work that tends to attract authoritarians.

stefan_ 5y ago

What happened to good old fucking smart cards?

mattowen_uk 5y ago
When my daughter was at school several years ago, they rolled-out biometric fingerprint scanning for school meal payment. I steadfastly refused to let her be enrolled as I didn't feel that a child could give informed consent on their unique biometrics being stored and shared. She ended up having to use a NFC smart card instead, and wasn't the only pupil to do so (although it was in single-digits in a 1,000 pupil strong school).
Aromasin 5y ago
This is the most baffling part for me too. Why can't they simply use a pre-paid card that they can scan to pay for their lunch. It's a simply problem with an even simpler solution. This reeks of a scummy consulting firm overselling the school.
Jensson 5y ago
Because cards doesn't spy on people? England is a China level surveillance state, the spying is a feature and not a problem. https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-top-10-most-surveilled-cities-in-the-world https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-08-14/the-t...
fredley 5y ago
Someone at the facial recognition company persuaded someone at the school that it would help cut bullying as smart cards can be stolen, faces cannot (so easily).
desas 5y ago
The people who opt out get a smart card. The pitch will be something like smart cards can be lost or stolen, faces can't.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

beardyw 5y ago

You will probably find they are getting it for free to act as a reference site. Ha, just realised - there's no such thing as a free lunch.

rubylark 5y ago

How well does facial recognition work on children, anyway? Kids can grow a lot over the course of a year, and can look wildly different. Do they need to periodically refresh it with new photos more than once a year?