Facial recognition cameras installed in UK school canteens

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.

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...

Of the top of my head we had 15 or 20 minutes. Perfectly adequate time to eat the content of your brown bag.

And the remaining 3% watched Black Mirror.

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.

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?

Well technically a subset of schoolchildren can -- those aged 16.

I can say with complete certainty that this scheme was not presented to parents in the way it deserves to be.

> 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

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.

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).

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.

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).

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-t...

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.

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.

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."

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.

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?

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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.

I often wondered about things like this: how much does the installing, maintainting and controlling a payment process (including but not limited to technology) contribute to the overall cost of a service? And would making that service free reduce its cost so much that for instance a free lunch would actually cost less than a cheap lunch to the provider of that lunch?

We had to pay for school meals in the 70s and 80s. In fact my school had closer to 1500 pupils, and we managed to get served, pay, eat, and play football in our lunch hour. I wonder what new problems there are in 2021 that it takes "25 minutes" (according to the article) to serve all the kids.