Today's story focuses on a rural Essex high school that ended up in breach of UK GDPR laws.
It may come as a surprise to those who used to take lunch money to school, but kids these days can do a biometric face scan to pay for their meals. But as scandals with companies like Clearview AI have shown, collecting biometric data can easily become a privacy nightmare. That's why the UK's GDPR stipulates that the use of facial recognition technology must be opt-in by default. And in this high school, parents could only opt out of using the technology for their children.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the use of biometric scans in schools has been debated for years. In 2019, the Denver, Colorado public school system explored the option of using facial recognition technology to reduce school shootings. However, this possibility was controversial because the safety measure may not even be effective and would sacrifice students' privacy.
This debate also took place in New York state, where lawmakers ultimately decided that the risks of this technology outweighed the benefits, and so the technology is now banned in schools in New York state.
So for British students, bringing cash to school to pay for lunch might not be such a bad idea.