North Ayrshire schools rapped for facial recognition meal payments

The use of facial recognition to take payments for school lunches by nine schools in Ayrshire, Scotland, attacted controversy as intrusive and disproportionate.

CBD Cunninghams, the company that developed the system, claimed it speeded up queues and protected students better against COVID-19 than the card payments and fingerprint scanners the schools used previously.

Privacy advocates responded by saying the new system was not needed, operated without explicit consent, and amounted to the de facto normalisation of facial recognition.

The North Ayshire Council (NAC) programme was suspended after the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) responded to the controversy by encouraging schools to take a 'less intrusive' approach where possible. 

The ICO later informed (pdf) NAC that it 'is likely to have infringed data protection law'.

Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️

• Information Commissioner's Office (2021). North Ayrshire Council’s use of Facial Recognition Technology in its schools (pdf)

News, commentary, analysis 🗞️

• https://www.ft.com/content/af08fe55-39f3-4894-9b2f-4115732395b9

• https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/17/scotland-facial-recognition-software-being-used-in-north-ayrshire-schools-15437868/

• https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/18/22732330/uk-schools-facial-recognition-lunch-payments-north-ayrshire

• https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/10/18/schools-in-scotland-start-using-facial-recognition-on-children-paying-for-lunch

• https://news.sky.com/story/facial-recognition-used-to-take-payments-from-school-children-12437234

• https://www.irvinetimes.com/news/19654518.north-ayrshire-facial-recognition-schools-pay-lunch/

• https://www.politico.eu/article/facial-recognition-cameras-in-uk-schools-raises-concerns-about-divergence-from-eu-rules/

• https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/oct/18/privacy-fears-as-schools-use-facial-recognition-to-speed-up-lunch-queue-ayrshire-technology-payments-uk

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59037346

• https://www.biometricupdate.com/202302/scottish-schools-canteen-facial-recognition-likely-infringed-gdpr-ico