Think of the children.

There was a story on BBC Breakfast this morning, which doesn't appear to have made it onto the BBC website about a school that replaced all of the children's faces in their website's photos with smiley faces in an apparent attempt to protect them from paedophiles. Without spending too much time on the fact that the overall effect is deeply creepy, with blank, lobotomised expressions looking out at the camera from above school uniforms, it's a still pretty ludicrous move by the school.

The photos are useless with all the faces covered - why have photos including children's faces at all if you're going to have to cover them. There was a suggestion on the BBC this morning that the covering up was a reaction by the school to the realisation that they did not have the parent's permission to put up the photos, and so were covering themselves while they checked.

Either way, I'm not going to write anything really interesting about it, but it reminded me of two excellent posts from immedia reaction that cover similar issues: closer to home and the issue of identity.

Also, why is one of the faces sad? Again, creepy as hell.

UPDATE: immedia reaction posts a far better analysis than I was willing to attempt.