A High School In China Is Using Facial-Recognition Technology That Scans The Room Every 30 Seconds To Analyze Student Behavior

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Think of all the shit you got away with in grade school. You just sprouted your first pit hair, your hormones were raging, and being rebellious was essentially currency in the classroom. The note passing, the immature gestures to the stuffy teacher when her back was turned, the occasional classroom nap, the list goes on. All the adolescent debauchery made for the most enduring of memories.

Welp, a Chinese school is implementing the technology to end those good times and we must stop it before it reaches the states. According to Business Insider, a Chinese high school is using facial-recognition technology to monitor and analyze students’ behavior.

The technology scans classrooms at Hangzhou No. 11 High School every 30 seconds and records students’ facial expressions, categorizing them into happy, angry, fearful, confused, or upset. The system also records student actions such as writing, reading, raising a hand, and sleeping at a desk.

The technology also captures students’ attendance and students’ faces are used to buy lunch or check something out of the library.

China is on the forefront of facial-recognition technology and they are committing to it to shameless degree. Business Insider reports that there are 170 million surveillance cameras in China and by 2020, China hopes to have 570 million, or one for every two citizens. The country is a building a national database that recognizes any citizen within three seconds in an effort to improve policing. The technology has been used for trivial crimes like jaywalking to more advanced police work like finding fugitives.

China is officially living in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

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Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.