Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children
- Reference: 1634559313
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/10/18/give_us_your_biometric_data/
- Source link:
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, [1]according to the Financial Times .
[2]
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.
[3]
[4]
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.
[5]
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 [6]announced its introduction of the technology in schools in June as the "next step in cashless catering."
American police won't touch it, so...
Even the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) [7]has banned commercial facial recognition software and launched a review last year after 25 officers were accused of using it unofficially to try to identify people.
A directive reportedly sent to the entire department by the head of the LAPD IT arm, plus deputy chief John McMahon, noted that police officers were only allowed to use the official LAPD ID system. That system is run by LA County and stores images taken by officers and added after arrests.
"This intuitive technology enables the PoS operators to quickly identify the pupil's cashless account whilst payments are instantly adjusted in the same way as all other identification methods in CRB Cunninghams' Fusion software," the company said.
According to Professor Fraser Sampson, the UK government's Surveillance Camera Commissioner, facial recognition technology may need to be regulated in much the same way as some ethically sensitive medical techniques to ensure there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect people's privacy and freedoms.
Sampson, who works with the Home Office overseeing tech-related surveillance in the UK, [8]told The Register last month that facial recognition was "a fast-evolving area and the evidence is elusive but it may be that the aspects currently left to self-determination present the greatest risk to communities or simply to give rise to the greatest concern among citizens."
[9]
Privacy campaigners voiced concerns that moving the technology into schools merely for payment was needlessly normalising facial recognition.
"No child should have to go through border style identity checks just to get a school meal," Silkie Carlo of the campaign group Big Brother Watch told The Reg .
"We are supposed to live in a democracy, not a security state. This is highly sensitive, personal data that children should be taught to protect, not to give away on a whim. This biometrics company has refused to disclose who else children's personal information could be shared with and there are some red flags here for us. "Facial recognition technology typically suffers from inaccuracy, particularly for females and people of colour, and we're extremely concerned about how this invasive and discriminatory system will impact children."
Jen Persson, director at defenddigitalme, a children's rights and privacy group, pointed out that Sweden had issued its [10]first fine under GDPR in the case of a school using facial recognition and the French data protection authority ordered high schools in Nice and Marseille to end their facial-recognition programs.
"We expect a similar response from the UK ICO and for all biometrics to be removed from UK schools. The law says if we can, we must, use less invasive approaches to protect children's fundamental rights and freedoms," she toild The Reg .
[11]Clearview CEO doubles down, claims biz has now scraped over ten billion social media selfies for surveillance
[12]IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'
[13]Amazon delivery staff 'denied bonus' pay by AI cameras misjudging their driving
[14]UK's Surveillance Commissioner warns of 'ethically fraught' facial recognition tech concerns
[15]Academics tell UK lords that folk aren't keen on predictive policing, facial recognition, heightened surveillance
Those concerned about the security of schools systems now storing children's biometric data will not be assured by the fact that educational establishments have become targets for cyber-attacks.
In March, the [16]Harris Federation , a not-for-profit charity responsible for running 50 primary and secondary academies in London and Essex, became the latest UK education body to fall victim to ransomware. The institution said it was "at least" the fourth multi-academy trust targeted just that month alone. Meanwhile, [17]South and City College Birmingham earlier this year told 13,000 students that all lectures would be delivered via the web because a ransomware attack had disabled its core IT systems.
North Ayrshire Council and the ICO were contacted for comment. ®
Updated on 18 October to add:
An ICO spokesperson said: "Organisations using facial recognition technology must comply with data protection law before, during and after its use. In addition, data protection law provides additional protections for children, and organisations need to carefully consider the necessity and proportionality of collecting biometric data before they do so. Organisations should consider using a different approach if the same goal can be achieved in a less intrusive manner.
"We are aware of the introduction and will be making enquiries with North Ayrshire Council."
"Anyone who feels that their personal data has been processed in a manner that is unlawful can raise a complaint directly with the ICO."
A spokesperson for North Ayrshire Council told us: "Our catering system contracts are coming to a natural end and we have the opportunity to install IT infrastructure which makes our service more efficient and enhances the pupil experience using innovative technology.
"Given the ongoing risks associated with COVID-19, the Council is keen to have contactless identification as this provides a safer environment for both pupils and staff. Facial recognition has been assessed as the optimal solution that will meet all our requirements.
"Additionally, the time taken to be served at till points is a common complaint and potentially one of the reasons why pupils opt to go out [of] school grounds for lunch. Contactless payment using facial recognition is very fast and efficient and gives time back to pupils to spend with friends or at lunchtime activities. "Facial recognition involves faceprint templates being taken, which are measurements of key points on the face, where consent has been received. In keeping with the ICO UK GDPR guidance, pupils in S4-S6 have been allowed to provide their own consent while pupils in S1 – S3 require parental consent. "We have received an excellent response from pupils, parents and carers, with over 97 per cent of responses being positive and providing consent. Pupils often forget their PINs and unfortunately some have also been the victim of PIN fraud, so they are supportive of the planned developments and appreciate the benefits to them."
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[1] https://www.ft.com/content/af08fe55-39f3-4894-9b2f-4115732395b9
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YW2aODsk@dwYkkfMm4Ud9gAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YW2aODsk@dwYkkfMm4Ud9gAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.crbcunninghams.co.uk/news/crb-cunninghams-launch-facial-recognition-to-uk-schools
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/19/lapd_facial_recogntion/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/uk_surveillance_commissioner_facial_recog_warning/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YW2aODsk@dwYkkfMm4Ud9gAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/09/in_brief_ai/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/01/ikea_spycam_scandal/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/27/in_brief_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/uk_surveillance_commissioner_facial_recog_warning/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/07/lords_committee_policing_tech/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/30/harris_federation_ransomware/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/17/south_city_birmingham_college_ransomware/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Really odd...
It seems that “common sense” is in very short supply these days, in many aspects of day to day life.
Re: Really odd...
The problem with common sense is that it is not, in fact, all that common. (not my original quote, don't know where I got it from - maybe the late Sir PTerry?)
Re: Really odd...
The problem clearly isn't the waiting time....
"claim the system will help reduce queues and is less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners"
I would expect a good fingerprint scanner to return a result in at least 5 seconds, and a contactless card will surely take less. So the claimed improvements will not / cannot improve the waiting time vs theoretical alternatives. So Covid is used as a fear trigger - literally OMG think of the children! Except... why is it that the these are the 'alternatives'?
Fingerprint scanning has the same privacy / biometric problems as face recognition so is equally as problematic. And cards are really no problem as a covid vector since everyone has their own cards, as long as they are contactless and no pin is required - but why would a pin be required? Would it really be a huge issue if a student ues another student's card?
It seems to me that it is an issue not of speed or covid but of excessive control.
At the very least, considering all the privacy implications, the data is (supposed to be) all stored locally, so for a student membership in the low 1000s the possibility of fasle matches are miniscule, and the data is hopefully cleared out after every school year. But even with these safeguards (theoretically) in place, it seems like overkill, and just another slide down the slippery slope.
Re: Really odd...
"Would it really be a huge issue if a student ues another student's card?"
The problem comes when kids start lending each others card around (whether voluntarily or otherwise...). The thumb machine helped reduce (but not eliminate) that where my kids went.
Re: Really odd...
The bigger thing is that I bet it doesn't work with masks - you know like the ones that we know reduce transmission.
I switched to a phone with facial recognition over a fingerprint scanner because I wear gloves alot of the time (wheelchair is much easier to push, and you get through gloves at a serious rate so I use cheap builder's gloves), so it was massively more convenient.
Then came covid and the associated mask wearing.
Good thing the pin still works.
I wonder what happened to the days when the lunch staff knew all the pupils?
Re: Really odd...
When I was at school, we had a facial recognition system already. It was so advanced that it could recognise the food and operate the till too. Also spend the rest of the school day doing other useful stuff (or gossiping)
This system just seems to be trying to replace the dinner ladies with machines. (yes, the ones I met were all ladies. I'm not sure that blokes would be as effective)
Re: Really odd...
Interesting factoid:
The average person can uniquely recognise and name approximately 150 people.
I found this to to be true from the time I spent a few months on a sports committee - and that was before I'd even heard of the idea.
Oh, and I don't think it ever took me as long as 5 seconds.
Re: Really odd...
> How this seems to be a modern issue.
This. At my high school the queue was to get in to the dining hall as year groups went in on a rota[1] and it only needed a couple of prefects to check off names from a printed list.
[1] Whichever year had sports that afternoon went in first. The other year groups then went in groups at 10 minute intervals - and prefects on the queue stopped kids going in too soon and allowed kids into the dining hall in batches so as not to overcrowd the serving area. In other words it was all about queue management and facial recognition wouldn't have made much if any difference. The only face recognition going on was recognition of known trouble makers by prefects!
Re: Really odd...
If tedium and complexity were not added to create "value", just what would tech douche bro wankers (and bureaucrats) do with their lives?
"less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners"
Is covidwashing a proper word, like greenwashing?
No reason. Just curious.
Re: "less likely to spread COVID-19 than card payments and fingerprint scanners"
Card payments don't spread anything. No PIN needed for a Dinner Card. Fingerprint scanners should be illegal, period.
On Site storage - really? FFS.
Yikes. So instead of 1 or more Vendor employed professional sysadmins, a central secured DC and the protection of enormous fines if kids PII is lost they are relying on 65 sites with variable IT security practices and zero cash to spend on it?
The heads have been hoodwinked. In this case on the schools premises seems like the least safe option.
I hope the relevant councils have Data Protection insurance!
Re: On Site storage - really? FFS.
Which covers providing plastic facial surgery for all the children affected, so they can "get a new ID" when their old ID is compromised.
Re: On Site storage - really? FFS.
Hoodwinked? Is that how you spell "brown envelope" or "kickback" or "quid pro quo" these days?
Re: On Site storage - really? FFS.
Yikes. So instead of 1 or more Vendor employed professional sysadmins, a central secured DC and the protection of enormous fines if kids PII is lost they are relying on 65 sites with variable IT security practices and zero cash to spend on it?
The heads have been hoodwinked. In this case on the schools premises seems like the least safe option."
You're assuming that the alternative is actually a professional sysadmin running a hardened server cluster in a secure DC and not just an open S3 bucket.
On the one hand, it's encouraging that per-school data is segregated and isolated rather than one mega server storing every child's data, which could then be siphoned in to an ML-training set and make a tempting target for black hats.
On the other hand, if it's under the counter in the cafeteria by the POS terminal then your risk of theft is much higher. But there's also a fair chance the thief is only going to try and flog it at the car boot or eBay and not realise what they have.
Part of Remote Biometrics.
Facial recognition maybe can be used to unlock your own phone, as an alternative, if you choose.
It's immoral for anything else.
Public surveillance by UK police, access to recreational facilities in the USA. Subway in Moscow.
Even if it worked well, but it doesn't.
The EU has voted to ban remote biometrics of the public (people elected democratically). It will take a while for the sovereign EU nations to enact their own laws. It will include using Facial Recognition on the public.
Fifty years ago schools admitted (or served) only pupils with dinner tickets. In sensible schools they used the same tickets for bought dinners or free ones. It didn't cause any delay.
No school should be using this tech. It's even been banned or suspended in some USA and Swedish schools.
Re: Part of Remote Biometrics.
Not only immoral, but unnecessary complexity and vulnerability as well.
Parents - just say no.
"In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils"
That's 40 a minute, 1.5s per pupil. Sure it's pipelined, and possibly superscalar, but this seems mad.
Yeah, because the combined brainpower of an entire nation of teachers hasn't worked out that they could simply stagger lunch 'hour' by a bit to create a 'lunch 2 hours', or at least extend the serving time to 55 minutes (+>100%) with a 1hr 30 window, with some years teaching over the first or final 30 minute period.
Sure, logistics of teacher availability (they need a break too) and in secondary schools they teach all years, so the classes still teaching whilst other years are eating, then the eating year needs to come back into class, but the teacher needs a break, that's a difficulty, I can't see how it isn't solvable.
"the combined brainpower of an entire nation of teachers"?
Trouble is, it isn't the teachers. They probably weren't even consulted.
Don't blame the teachers - It's the Local Education Authority making these decisions.
Re: "the combined brainpower of an entire nation of teachers"?
This. People always blame the teachers, as if the teachers are in charge of anything.
"they could simply stagger lunch 'hour' by a bit"
They used to. When I was at school (admittedly before the flood) we had three consecutive 30 minute sittings.
I can't see how it isn't solvable.
You could stagger the lunch by an entire lesson.
So odd numbered years get a 4/2 split and even years get a 3/3 split between morning and afternoon.
Then you would have to pay the outsourced/subcontracted dinner ladies (or whatever the PPP term is for them) for 2 hours.
I know right? Can't have that! Far better to spend several million to save a few thousand than actually spend the few thousand to save time.
Nutshell
So in a nutshell, if your face does not meet a certain criteria, you don't get to eat?
How is that legal?
Re: Nutshell
Remember these AI systems work fairly well for white people.
So in the main it'll be denying (or requiring multiple tries) mostly for BAME pupils.
Knowing the stubbornness of schools, they will probably put these pupils last or segregate them to ensure the processing of faces continues at speed.
In the real world, parents could stick £15 on a school meal card at the beginning of the week and the pupil can just tap to pay at the end (also the card won't work in the off-license down the road), in the 3s or so the cashier has to add up what you have, enter the figure, get the payment and move on to the next pupil. Covid doesn't last well on surfaces anyway, that's been proven, so all this 'biometrics because covid' is just a screen for future authoritarian rule.
Re: Nutshell
The problem with cards is that they'll get lost, likely multiple times a week if my teenagers are anything to go by! Carrying cash is a never going to be ideal so what are the other options...
I've covered IT for several schools that have used the Cunninghams fingerprint system and it's always seemed to work pretty well, as far as I can remember it didn't store the actual fingerprint, just encrypted info derived from it.
Re: Nutshell
>The problem with cards is that they'll get lost, likely multiple times a week if my teenagers are anything to go by!
My children's cards got them access to the building (e-register) as well as their use as payment cards. They did go through a period when cards got 'lost' - strangely not at school but somewhere between leaving school in the evening and leaving the house to go to school the next morning. The inconvenience of not having a card (and the paying of £5 cash to get a new one) seemed to be sufficient to encourage them to take better care...
Re: Nutshell
Remember these AI systems work fairly well for white people.
So in the main it'll be denying (or requiring multiple tries) mostly for BAME pupils.
I wonder how it handles identical twins.
In principle, if it mis-scans the face and charges Fred on George's account and George on Fred's, then that's no issue. But if it scans them both as Fred and blocks whoever has gone second (or runs down the cash in one account so it reports as empty even if the other account is full) then there will be issues.
I suppose the answer there is a single account per family to which multiple children can be assigned as users, so it doesn't matter if the system records Fred as George or George as Fred, so long as only two meals per day go out.
Even identical twins have different thumbprints...
Re: Nutshell
I imagine there is some manual system for the inevitable false negatives. They just have to do what they did before.
As with other facial recognition applications, false positives are possibly more of a problem. Particularly as twins or related children might often attend the same school.
Re: Nutshell
Twins probably not an issue, since the accounts will be from the same financial backing.
Re: Nutshell
So Billy gets two lunches and Bob gets nothing?
Moving to a world where technology does everything is devolution for humans - if we continue putting all our efforts into AI then in about 5,000 years the machines will be saying that the extinct humans failed to evolve ... "we dug one up and it didn't have a cell phone in the grave, no wonder they disappeared..."
Face on a plate
Much to his Mum and Dad's dismay,
Horace ate himself one day.
He didn't stop to say his grace,
He just sat down and ate his face.
...
https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/m/monty-python-horace.php
Simpler Solution - Free school meals for all?
As above, we are the 5th largest economy in the world and yet we can't give kids at a place they are mandated to be, free food and drink at lunchtime?
The mind boggles...clearly Calvanism never went away (suffering is good for the soul)
Re: Simpler Solution - Free school meals for all?
This. How is this so hard? Feed them all and be done with it. They are kids, not enemies of the state.
Informed consent?
>>>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.<<<
I'd like to see the parental permission slip used for this, did it mention a facial recog system or merely a new system? I'm quite certain it didn't offer any alternative other than not feeding the children.
Not much of a surprise
Our council in Scotland, will not let secondary school pupils buy school dinners without a Young Scot Card.
Now prior to joining secondary school my son was given a presentation about how great the Young Scot card is and all the great discounts you can get. They weren't told that the card number was a UCRN ( Unique Citizen Reference Number) funnily enough neither were the parents, the privacy/tracking aspect was not mentioned. My son & his felloww.pupils were all 11&12 years of age. This is under the age at which an individual is considered able and competent to consent to data collection under GDPR.
The Scot Gov have already had to climb down on a UCRN linking all Gov contact, Council contact, health records and so on. This system seems to be ID card & citizen tracking by the back door by focussing on kids and telling them about freebies. Funnily enough when questioned about this and whether or not they broke GDPR etc they no further questions cancelled his Young Scot Card.
Too many parents just go "OK" without question to these schemes, much like the general population with any privacy issues full stop.
Re: Not much of a surprise
Seems to be? Subtle, rhetorical, sarcastic understatement, right?
The only relevant question....
The only relevant question is how many seconds it would take to get their lunch without facial recognition.
Twins?
My class had three pairs of identical twins. How does facial recognition cope better with that than a contactless card?
Makes sense from a gov perspective
If you condition them to passive tracking from childhood, they will be easier to control for the rest of their lives.
Technology costs money and always causes problems from time to time.
It would be much easier and cost less if we just returned to the days when the schools just fed all the kids lunch.
If this proposal is a good scheme then do you think that they will use it in Westminster or Downing Street?
Re: Technology costs money and always causes problems from time to time.
Yes but then how would certain well connected people and their supporters continue to fleece the public funds and afford their offshore tax havens?
Come now! Be reasonable man!
Really odd...
How this seems to be a modern issue.
I went to a school of 1600 pupils and never had to queue for more than a few minutes... even then we just chatted to our mates.
Oh yeah,back then there was common sense ideas such as staggered breaks and enough staff to serve.