UK Schools Introduce Facial Recognition To Speed Up Lunch Payments

UK schools has embraced a shift in biometric technology as it introduces the use of facial recognition technology to help minimize touch during the pandemic but is mainly meant to speed up transaction times.

The Financial Times reports that nine schools in the UK's North Ayrshire will start taking payments for canteen (aka cafeteria) lunches by scanning students' faces.

The system installer CRB Cunningham and the schools argued claimed that the system would help address privacy and security concerns. The installer noted that its hardware wasn't using live facial recognition (actively scanning crowds), and was checking against encrypted faceprint templates.

There were also concerns about fraud using conventional PINs — facial recognition is theoretically safer. North Ayrshire's council added that 97 percent of children or parents had offered consent.

Big Brother Watch and England's Biometrics Commissioner both maintained that facial recognition was arbitrary. There was a concern that school rollouts might normalize face scanning and numb students to privacy concerns. If you grow up with this technology, you might not object when it crops up at airports or music festivals.