Sci-Fi to RL: School face scanners

[cdave]

Ideas seen first in science fiction, sneaking into the real world. Number one (in a series of one probably).

Face scanners to spot truanting kids. 2009.

Seen in Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. 2008.

{edit: If these systems work by measuring pupillary distance, could you fool them by going cross eyed?}

Comments

[tregenza.livejournal.com]

Lets work this out.

Apparently the school has 1107 pupils

So that is 1107 * 1.5 seconds worth of scanning or 27.675 minutes. But this doesn't allow for any time between each pupils or for kids moving, wearing a hat or anything else buggering up the scan. So I reckon it takes about hour to do all 1107 pupils. Even assuming two or more scanners, five minutes before school starts there is going to be a huge queue.

Looking at the company's website they have a video of it in operation. They claim 900 people in 19 minutes but do seem to be using 2 - 4 scanners.

Bizarrely the technology uses ID cards. The victim holds up the ID card in front of one sensor and stares into another.

I wonder what the failure rate is?

How many people it falsely identifies and how many people it rejects incorrectly?

[cdave]

I think the point of this system, is that you can't just borrow your mates card to sign him in.

At my school there were typically about 30 kids per tutor group, with 15 mins for morning registration.

That seems to make about 37 teachers that can be replaced by about 6 machines. Since teachers are also fooled by you going cross eyed, and don't do anything in that time apart from role call. </sarcasm>