Face recognition in schools normalizes surveillance — and threatens kids’ privacy
How much risk are children at?
So what are the privacy issues for children?
Your face print is your data, so for any facial recognition system, it’s important to understand how the image databases are collated and stored. Although I may grudgingly agree to the use of facial recognition technology to enter a concert venue, I wouldn’t be thrilled if my face print was retained for “other commercial purposes of the company” (a phrase that appears quite commonly in the fine print of ticket sales regarding the use of personal data).
If facial recognition technology is used in school settings, we’ll need clear information as to if and how students’ images will be used beyond the purpose of the lunch queue. For example, are they going to be shared with any third parties, and for what purpose? Issues could arise, say, if face prints are linked to other data on the child, like their lunch preferences. Third parties could theoretically use this data for marketing purposes.
We would also need information as to how the images would be protected. If the students’ face prints aren’t properly secured, or the system isn’t robust enough to fend off hackers, this creates cyber-security risks. It may be possible for hackers to link children’s face prints to other data about them, and track them.
The heightened privacy risk surrounding the use of facial recognition technologies in schools also relates to informed consent. Although UKdata protection lawspecifies that children aged 13 and over can consent to the processing of their personal data, this doesn’t mean they fully understand the implications. For example,one surveyfound children between ages eight and 15 had difficulty understanding the terms and conditions of Instagram.
Children, parents, and guardians should be provided with nothing less than full information, couched in language children can easily understand. Any data subject, including a child, has the right to know exactly how their personal data will be processed, shared, and stored, and can specify the conditions under which their consent will apply. Anything less than prudence and transparency will risk jeopardizing children’s privacy.
Normalizing the surveillance of children?
These are just some of the questions the use of facial recognition technologies in schools raises. Facial recognition technology also carries other risks, such as errors, which could, for example, lead to students being charged incorrectly. And as with any AI system, we should be concerned about whether the algorithms and data sets arefree from bias, and have clean, complete and representative training data.
Importantly, employing facial recognition technologies in schools also goes some way to normalizing the surveillance of children. It’s possible the knowledge they are being tracked in this way could impact some children’s wellbeing.
It’s not surprising that the UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, hasstepped into investigate the use of facial recognition technologies in school lunch queues. And in light of the inquiry, it’s pleasing to see North Ayrshire Council haspaused rolling outthe practice.
But as we move further into the digital age, it’s possible the use of facial recognition technologies among schoolchildren will resume, and even be taken up more widely. If this is to happen, the use of facial recognition must yield substantially more benefits than risks, taking into account the special circumstances of using the technology on children.
Article byPin Lean Lau, Lecturer in Bio-Law, Brunel Law School | Centre for Artificial Intelligence: Social & Digital Innovations,Brunel University London
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists.An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
