There are nine schools in the UK that have begun utilising facial recognition technology to verify that students have paid for school lunches. North Ayrshire schools in Scotland say the technology is faster and cleaner than processing payments with cards or fingerprint scanners, but privacy opponents say the move normalises biometric surveillance.
One of the school’s flyers, sent home to parents, says that students can use Facial Recognition to order their lunch faster while also removing any personal touch from the point of sale. Biometric data is encrypted and erased after a child leaves school, according to a FAQ page. Parents must give their consent for their children to use the technology, and they can also authenticate payments using a PIN.
Face recognition lowered payment time per kid to five seconds on average, revealed David Swanston, managing director at CRB Cunninghams, the company in charge of the technology’s installation. Swanston added the tests began in 2020, and 65 more schools have signed up to use it.
In North Ayrshire, according to the Financial Times, 97% of children and parents agreed to enrol their children in school. The majority of parents thought their children understood what they were signing up for, but a minority believed their children were following peer pressure.
The use of facial recognition technologies, in various forms, is becoming more widespread around the world. For many years, schools in the United States have utilised such technologies as a safety precaution.
The Moscow metro recently began accepting face recognition payments, prompting concerns from campaigners that the system may be used to track and identify protestors. As a result of concerns about racial and gender bias in facial recognition technology, several US states and towns have outlawed its use. A ban on the technology is being sought by lawmakers and advocacy groups across the European Union, who argue that the risks of implementing it exceed the advantages.
Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch UK told the Financial Times that the Ayrshire school programme was pointless and should not be implemented. Carlo described it as “normalising” biometric identity checks for something banal. It’s not necessary to use airport-style equipment to feed your kids lunch.
