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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Facial recognition to track church attendance
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
Premier are reporting that some churches are starting to use facial recognition technology to track church attendances.
How messed up is this? ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
We seem to have replaced quote:
"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
with quote:
"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, that your attendance was recorded by our surveillance equipment and stored in our database."
Though I do love the absurdity of the Mal Fletcher's epithet: a social futurist. ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
Do any shipmates think this is in any way justifiable?
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
No - sounds like Big Brother to me. The next thing will be biometric offering envelopes to track giving.
I didn't know this was happening. But, as a joke, I said to our URC Synod Moderator at a meeting just last Saturday that they missed a trick by not having facial recognition technology installed a the College entrance, to check the attendance of his Ministers!
[ 19. June 2015, 08:21: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Church is a voluntary association, not a fucking employment contract.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
We seem to have replaced quote:
"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Maybe someone somewhere finally realised that method of recognising Christians wasn't working too well.
What on earth does anyone want this kind of data for? Having said that there may come a day when our fundamental counter-parts in the Mid-East would be keen to view it
The idea of cameras in Church also got me thinking of how far we've moved on from the time when the village Squire would sit in his special pew whereby he could view the hat-stand, thus deducing who was or wasn't in attendance.
If a tenant wasn't in attendance on a Sunday without good reason, then chances were an eviction order would be delivered to them on the Monday.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Church is a voluntary association, not a fucking employment contract.
Yes, I would think this breaches UK data protection law.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zappa:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Church is a voluntary association, not a fucking employment contract.
You reckon?
OK then, it's a call, not a pressgang.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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*Leon*
Shipmate
# 3377
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Posted
Unless face recognition technology has got a lot better since I last checked, this won't work nearly as well as its proponents might claim.
Over-hyping the capabilities of face recognition is a very common phenomenon. It works OK-ish if you know who you're supposed to be looking at, they're standing still in a predictable pose against a white background and you've got a good reference image. (i.e. in a booth for auto-checking passports or similar situations). Spotting faces in crowds is much harder but if you can say with a straight face that you've solved it then lots of governments will tend to shower you with money without really checking if the tech stands a chance of doing anything useful. Things also get harder if you've got a large group of people who you might be looking for.
As an aside, I'm very confused by why a church would particularly need to track attendance by individual members, which seems to be the application.
Posts: 831 | From: london | Registered: Oct 2002
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frin
Drinking coffee for Jesus
# 9
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Church is a voluntary association, not a fucking employment contract.
Yes, I would think this breaches UK data protection law.
It would if you did it without telling people you were doing it, but it would be okay to track attendance by individuals if you had declared that you do it (after all, you can keep a register at anything).
Tracking attendance is rare in UK churches, as far as I can see, but if we did, we would realise far sooner when someone just vanishes from church life. And, anecdotally, I know lots of people who stopped going to church because of a personal crisis and the church didn't notice or act on that vanishing act, which is a pastoral misstep. In most of these anecdotes, the person didn't return to that local church as they felt unrecognized and unloved.
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"Even the crocodile looks after her young" - Lamentations 4, remembering Erin.
Posts: 4496 | From: a library | Registered: Apr 2001
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by frin:
Tracking attendance is rare in UK churches, as far as I can see, but if we did, we would realise far sooner when someone just vanishes from church life.
Nonconformist used to have "Communion cards" to monitor attendance: little numbered tear-off slips which they put into the offering at Communion once a month. My church had them back in the 70s. These are the things: you can see the tear-off bits round the edge (which will need to have the member's number written in).
Before that tokens were used: there is a display of them in the library of Westminster College, Cambridge. Here are some nice Scottish ones.
The deacons or elders would note the numbers and chase up absentees. If anyone was absent for (say) 6 months without good cause, they lost their right to vote at congregational meetings.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
There are differences there in intent, scope and medium.
Someone on our church's pastoral team keeps an informal register of attendance, mostly just for recording purposes, also to have an objective idea of numbers. However, it is private and not on an easily circulated medium.
That is not the same as trying to keep track of everyone who enters the building. Nor is it the same as trying to keep track of attendance of members for church discipline purposes (i.e. access to communion). And a big difference here is the storage of data on a medium which could probably be hacked, and the data disseminated, quite easily.
The more sophisticated the technology used, the faster privacy issues get really complex.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Never mind the rest of it; how is this cost-justified?
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
The idea of cameras in Church also got me thinking of how far we've moved on from the time when the village Squire would sit in his special pew whereby he could view the hat-stand, thus deducing who was or wasn't in attendance.
If a tenant wasn't in attendance on a Sunday without good reason, then chances were an eviction order would be delivered to them on the Monday.
er, define "how far we've come" and who you mean by "we."
There's a village up the road from me where not only is it in the tenancy agreements that all houses must have their curtains open by 0930 except in cases of illness or death, but I have *seen* the squire knocking on peoples' doors because there aren't enough people in church on a Sunday in the last 2 years.
Then he sits in the front box pew with his wife, leaving only to read the lessons. Every week.
Welcome to Oxfordshire, where the local time is 1926, please adjust your watches and expectations accordingly.*
*I mean, I secretly quite like it, but then I'm not a tenant so I take it on my own terms...
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
The only justification that even begins to approach coming remotely close to the merest edges of decency that I could think of for such a system would be to facilitate pastoral care co-ordination in a church that is sufficiently large for people to get lost in the crowd.
However, I'd still argue that rather than using technology cannily to facilitate the work of the church, it's more likely to indicate a failure of the church in encouraging attendees to actually be church.
So a hearty No vote from this pew. Of course, if they want to issue me with a really cool Celtic cross, free of charge, that happens to have an RFID chip in it, well ... they can still FRO ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
Posts: 1399 | From: just north of That London | Registered: Dec 2009
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
I've been told (but can't confirm) that a large Anglican church not so far from here in a swish-ish suburb uses swipe cards for attendees to clock-in, the data being used (among other things?) for awarding places at the associated CofE primary school.
[ 19. June 2015, 17:54: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
I've been told (but can't confirm) that a large Anglican church not so far from here in a swish-ish suburb uses swipe cards for attendees to clock-in, the data being used (among other things?) for awarding places at the associated CofE primary school.
I can't say why but that strikes me as deeply disturbing.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
What strikes me are the boundless opportunities there would be for gaming that particular system, if it exists.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
It clearly cries out to be used in the plot of a murder mystery. "But here is Prof. Moriarity at St. Sulpice's, taking communion at the altar rail!"
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
It already is the plot of quite a few real-life justice stories of my acquaintance.
As I've related before here, I've seen some people convicted largely on the basis of their mobile phone being located more or less within the vicinity of the crime; and others put in prison because their mobile phone was off at the time of the crime.
But I was meaning that the card system would be easy to game, more so than the face recognition one.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by frin:
It would if you did it without telling people you were doing it, but it would be okay to track attendance by individuals if you had declared that you do it (after all, you can keep a register at anything).
Ah, but according to this relevant, just-published article about Facebook not deploying photo-regonition technology in Europe, quote:
In the UK, the Data Protection Act stipulates that we have to be informed when we are under camera surveillance and by whom. We also have the right to request any recorded images we feature in.
So I suggest all the local atheists pop along to their nearest megachurch one Sunday and then promptly request access to their mugshot.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
My eyes are the only facial recognition technology I need to track attendance.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Your car can't get clamped in France. Because when that started, activists just superglued any and every car clamp they saw.
I shouldn't like that, it looks like quenching a smoking reed. But I do.
Track my arse.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zappa:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Church is a voluntary association, not a fucking employment contract.
You reckon?
For most of us, in terms of attending a particular building, yes.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
Aren't there now regulations in Britain against employees photographing children who in their care? (After all-- horrors-- someone might get off on them.) How do these churches get around that one?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
If you're in the choir, you get to stand up at the front every service, where everyone can see you - so everyone knows if you bunk off one week anyway. Whenever I try it, I get 'Where were YOU last week?' So no need for facial recognition software for us!
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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