The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a formal reprimand to Chelmer Valley High School for failing to complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before introducing facial recognition technology to facilitate cashless canteen payments.
Lynne Currie, ICO Head of Privacy Innovation, said: "Handling people's information correctly in a school canteen environment is as important as the handling of the food itself. We expect all organisations to carry out the necessary assessments when deploying a new technology to mitigate any data protection risks and ensure their compliance with data protection laws."
In a statement responding to the ICO announcement, Mark Johnson, Advocacy Manager at Big Brother Watch, said: "The faceprints taken by these systems contain highly sensitive biometric data. No child should have to go through these kind of border-style identity checks just to get a school meal.
"It is encouraging that the ICO have intervened on this occasion. Children should be taught how to look after their personal data, not treated like walking bar-codes by their own schools and encouraged to give away their biometric data on a whim."
Additional commentary and legal analysis from Mischon de Reya.
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