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Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

bbc.com

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Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#131

Post by mytailorisrich »

balfirevic wrote: post #126
mytailorisrich wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big issue these days. Parents should be able to consent on behalf of their children and retraction should come from parents as well. This used to be considered common sense but not anymore.

> This used to be considered common sense but not anymore. Good! Some progress at least.

Children cannot reasonably consent to most things concerning them.

Ignoring reality for the sake of ideology isn't progress.

By that logic, next a doctor will refuse to vaccinate an 8 year old because the child refused to give consent.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#132

Post by Caligatio »

whatshisface wrote: post #45
Caligatio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking purely on the technical side of this problem: if you had to design a system to take attendance without some sort of human in the loop (e.g. a teacher), what other workable solutions are there? ID scanned by itself? A student could scan multiple IDs for their friends. ID + PIN? Due to the bursty nature of entering classrooms, that would cause a jam up at the PIN reader. Short of an ID shackle (that's a joke),…

If I had to design a system to track students without teacher's involvement, my first step would be to find the stakeholders and remind them that they are asking for a system that is worse, more expensive, and more dystopian than the simple system they already have. It's kind of a false question - like asking, "suppose that a boot was going to stamp on the face of humanity forever, what kind of leather would you make…

I'm not a proponent of facial recognition at all and would not endorse it especially in this use case. But, if you believe the 17,000 hours/year number, that's ~$500,000/year (assuming $30/hour, random guess) in potential savings. Are you saying there can't possibly be system that could be designed to take attendance while not further infringing on a student's privacy that's cheaper than that?

What is probably happening is that this is some sneaky way of introducing facial recognition in schools and something benign like attendance was the excuse. That, however, is a separate conversation from my original post of how would you automate attendance without using facial recognition.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#133

Post by Gwypaas »

Iv wrote: post #73
Barrin92 wrote: post #11

Good. Not only does this ensure that the students enjoy privacy, monitoring children in school with surveillance systems could have come straight out of foucault's discipline and punish. Maybe we should think about how we make schools spaces of freedom for our children rather than turning them into the next panopticon.

School is the most authoritarian experience one typically experiences in a democracy. Here is a place where a strict hierarchy is enforced, through means of parental and peer pressure, anxiety over your future. Your schedule is planned by the minute, even peeing requires an authorization. Chatting is banned except on very limited time spans. The fact that we have kept a part of middle-age inside our modern societies…

What you're describing is the American school system. As a Swede who spent an exchange year in an affluent Dallas suburb the systems couldn't be more different.

Going from Swedish to American high school felt like stepping back to elementary school in regards to personal freedom and trust.

First to set the base, in general in Sweden you have all your classes with the same 25-30 instead of different groups every period. From 7th grade we had our own schedule complete with periods without lessons where we would just hang out, walk around or go to the library and jump on the computer. In high school this ramped up even more. Loitering as a concept doesn't exist in Sweden.

To accommodate this the design of schools are completely different. The endless hallways don't really exist, instead there are areas between the classrooms with sofas, tables and whatever to enable people to hangout or study together. My school even had a café open all day. Doing group projects is the epitome of this, we'd show up at the start of the class for attendance and then take off to the library or some other place.

Contrast this with America. Hall passes to go to the restroom, hall monitors. We even had CCTV surveillance in the entire school building. If you would show up late you could be sent to the cafeteria and forcibly miss the class and have to write some essay about how wrong you were. How can a person learn to take care of themselves in such an environment?

This isn't even talking about the pledge or national anthem over the PA system.

Sorry for the rant.

Back to the topic on hand, from what I've read on Swedish news about it everyone involved generally was positive. No more the annoying wait while taking attendance. For the parents it was no different, even before this system they still immediately got a text if the kid didn't show up for class.

The questions raised by the DPA are relevant and my guess is that this will continue to be explored but with more caution towards how the data is processed to comply with this ruling.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#135

Post by mikekchar »

tpxl wrote: post #63
mikekchar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked as a teacher before. I'm a bit confused as to the 17,000 hours time claimed to collect attendance information (and hence the justification that you need to automate it). Where is that number coming from? As part of my job, I had to be able to recognise and put a name to all of my students. This is legitimately difficult and I spent a lot of time doing it. However, it was not for doing attendance! If you a…

>They didn't want to record attendance, they wanted to know where the students were in every second of the day. They wanted to time home long they are in the toilet so that they can catch them smoking or dealing drugs. They wanted to see them leaving the school o that they can lie in wait and nab them as they cut class: students 2 and 5 are supposed to be in band class but they are headed in the opposite direction --…

I suspect this is why they are being fined, but the article is a little bit vague on this unfortunately.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#136

Post by threeseed »

concordDance wrote: post #134

I'm struggling to see any actual harm from this use of facial recognition if the video is deleted promptly after processing and conversion to an attendance list.

Sure. Because applications are never, ever hacked and we can always trust companies to look after our data.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#137

Post by balfirevic »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #131
balfirevic wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This used to be considered common sense but not anymore. Good! Some progress at least.

Children cannot reasonably consent to most things concerning them. Ignoring reality for the sake of ideology isn't progress. By that logic, next a doctor will refuse to vaccinate an 8 year old because the child refused to give consent.

No, you misunderstand what the logic here is. Parents should be able to consent to some things in the name of their children and absolutely should not be able to do it for other things (even those things their children would be able to consent to were they grown ups, so I don't mean illegal things).

Exactly what stuff the parents can consent to is the real question and should be argued properly and not treated as any kind of "common sense". Things that are necessary for the safety of the children - like vaccines - yes. Other things are on much more shaky grounds.

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#138

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #9
jdietrich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR doesn't specify what you can't do with personal data, it specifies what you can do. Personal data is private by default; you can only use my data if it is explicitly lawful for you to do so. If you're not absolutely sure that what you're doing is in line with the GDPR, you shouldn't do it. That's by design, not by accident. The GDPR's fundamental principles are set out in article 5. You should collect the le…

The issue with the GDPR as worded and this ruling is that they remove the possibility of informed individual decisions. In this case it seems that all involved were informed and OK with it but that did not matter. I would also think that knowing where pupils are at all times is quite a legitimate aim for a school.

>knowing where pupils are at all times is quite a legitimate aim for a school //

Does continual surveillance improve educational outcomes such as life-fulfillment and academic achievement?

Why is it a legitimate _aim_ for a school?

Re: Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine

#139

Post by mytailorisrich »

balfirevic wrote: post #137
mytailorisrich wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children cannot reasonably consent to most things concerning them. Ignoring reality for the sake of ideology isn't progress. By that logic, next a doctor will refuse to vaccinate an 8 year old because the child refused to give consent.

No, you misunderstand what the logic here is. Parents should be able to consent to some things in the name of their children and absolutely should not be able to do it for other things (even those things their children would be able to consent to were they grown ups, so I don't mean illegal things). Exactly what stuff the parents can consent to is the real question and should be argued properly and not treated as any…

I perfectly understand the logic. Data processing is ubiquitous these days and control and consent falls well within what parents are there for. That is common sense: parents are there to make decisions on behalf of their children on issues children cannot handle.
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