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Exactly the finger markers are converted into a number, when someone presents their finger for id this process happens again and it is compared to the checksum previously calculated.
You may be able to lift a fingerprint from a crime scene and convert it to the number and compare that against a schools product but only if you had all the details of that process from the software house which is unlikely, and every product probably uses a different method to calculate anyway.
Ben
I suppose this could cause some problems in art classes.
"Sorry, we can't do finger painting any more as we haven't had parental permission!"
They would need a physical print anyway. Any good lawyer would run it out of court if it came from an 'unofficial' data holding company.
TBH I really cant see how it wouldnt be useful to the police in situations. No matter how its stored it can still be read and compared. If they store it as say a hash of certain points then its not like it cant identify the user otherwise its pretty pointless. The usefulness will directly be linked to the probability of someone having the same hash as another person, if thats one in a million its very very useful. The police could easily just feed the algorithm that makes the hash a ton of prints and see if they match any or even come close. There is always a margin for error in most systems too.
Because the police can get the relevant paperwork to see any data you have fingerprints are included no matter what tbh if there is a use. They could have easily sorted this by reassuring those parents by removing the police forces right to school pupils fingerprint data in law.
BTW those saying you need to contact the software company I would doubt it tbh (and they would have the right anyway) as most readers are really just scanners that feed the image to the software. Rejigging this would be easy to feed it jpgs etc.
If the police have a real suspect why bother waiting for the software to find that one child and give them a set of numbers, decode it, compare it, all hopefully not in school holidays....... Much quicker is grab him/her, march them to the nearest scanner and compare the prints to those found.
Edit: the police, like everyone, have procedures. Any deviation from these takes time and resources. Stick with what they have.
Try this link bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2009/12/want-your-children-to-have-chool-dinners-surrender-their-fingerprints.
Fingerprints can be reconstructed from templates.. fact
Fingerprints and other dermaglyphs hold data that correlates with many things from your gestation. we have not yet as a society began to look at this
this practice is recognised as unethical by Bioethics professionals.. not just long time IT geeks like me
Biometrics are too important to us as a country...to have them potentially compromised by a low level data loss is insane.
We should teach our children the value of biometrics not to give them away to anyone who asks... remember people used to throw away there utility bills - with all sorts of useful information for id fraud-in the rubbish...would you teach that to children today?
Lets treat our children with respect and realise the potential value of such an important data
BTW the US have my fingerprints and the UK my iris I am not anti biometrics.
[QUOTE=sisco-kid;509130]Try this link bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2009/12/want-your-children-to-have-chool-dinners-surrender-their-fingerprints.
QUOTE]
Doesn't work, even if you add an 'S' to chool.
Have you got any evidence to support your 'facts'? The only evidence I've seen of being able to reconstruct from a template taken of a fingerprint involved teams of phds, a lot of money and a lot of time. As it stands, why would anyone do that for a child's fingerprint?Quote:
Originally Posted by sisco-kid
Why do you say 'potentially compromised'? Why assume that simply because it is a school that the data ends up facing compromise? Schools do have secure systems sometimes...
The article you mention is full of fear-mongering but light on facts, and in places is actually plain wrong.
Lines such as 'How would you feel if the government suddenly passed a law that every adult had to be fingerprinted at their local police station?' ignore the fact that schools most often allow families to opt out of the system.
'And apparently often without their parents' consent' seems to imply that the person doesn't understand data protection and collection laws in the UK - parents agree for personal information to be collected and stored when they fill in data checking sheets etc....
'My student friend told me that a member of his family working in security systems believes that with a few hundred pounds of ‘hacking’ equipment, it would be possible to sit in a car outside the school gates and collect all that data. ' Codswallop. I'd love for someone to come and sit outside my school and attempt that. And if they do get access to my biometric database, how do they intend to decrypt the data stored in it?
'What's more, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money must be being wasted on installing fingerprint/iris readers in schools.' How is using this data to reduce queuing, to reduce the need for cards etc..., to allow easy identification of pupils for parental reporting purposes etc... a waste of money?
[QUOTE=creese;509142]You have to add html to the end. I've linked it in my comment above.Quote:
Originally Posted by sisco-kid
El Reg curently have an article on this (i.e. new government plans to require parental permission).
I am against compulsory fingerprinting (both for children and adults) and one of the comments neatly sums it up for me...
mbQuote:
Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward, Posted Thursday 13th May 2010 14:01 GMT
Comment from the site. '
When my son was 5 (2 years ago) his school wanted to fingerprint him and all pupils "for use with the new library". We were not allowed to refuse, despite this being illegal and immoral. We immediately removed him from the school and my wife has been home educating him ever since as we feel we can no longer trust a school system or govt who would take our children's fingerprints without our consent.'
Right! Who is going to forcably take a 2 year old fingerprint. Some of them bite. What would happen if they refuse, would they be expelled? I seriously doubt it.
A far more sensible comment
'
No, no, this is hysteria again.
Your student friend's family member may or may not be right that someone could theoretically break in to the school's computer systems, but what *exactly* do you propose that they would gain by so doing? Are you seriously proposing that someone will steal biometric data (and let's not forget that the operator of the "hacking equipment" needs to be at least marginally competent) and use it to fake peoples' fingerprints or irises? That's the kind of thing that the intelligence agencies might get up to, but it's a bit beyond your average criminal don't you think?
Additionally, the biometric data may not be in a form that would be useful for that kind of thing anyway. It's likely been condensed down into a set of feature points, and so it would only be useful in constructing a fake fingerprint that could fool the school library computer. Hardly a worthwhile criminal activity (unless, perhaps, you have books that are several hundred years overdue :-D)
Furthermore, it's mischievous of you to say that schools are accumulating this data. They aren't. They're enrolling students in a biometric authentication system; they probably don't even know themselves how to get the biometric data back out of it, if indeed that's even possible (I can certainly think of ways of preventing it *completely* - for instance by storing a one way hash of the set of identified feature points, rather than storing any actual biometric data).'
Yes, it does. Otherwise, you end up with people who've lost/damaged their cards etc... Commenter obviously doesn't work anywhere near a school canteen.Quote:
1. Speeds up queues. No more than sensibly implementing any non biometric register system.
Easier than printing hundreds of cards. Easier than having a person a till manually find and enter names.Quote:
2. It's easier. Easier than NOT fingerprinting kids? No I don't think so.
Fraud should be taken to mean 'bullies taking dinner money from a child'.Quote:
3. Protects against fraud. Yeah little Johnny is really going to pay for his lunchtime doughnut with a stolen credit card isn't he?
Seems like someone reads too many conspiracy theories.Quote:
4. Trains children to be malleable in the hands of authority as required for the coming police state and in particular to surrender their ID on request to anyone for any reason. BINGO.
Huh?Quote:
5. Enriches the people working towards the goals outlined in reason #4. Yes.
No, not at all. Do you think the money taken in from a school canteen goes just towards books etc...? No, it goes towards tills, maintenance, and the like. Add in parental reporting on what children eat in schools and how else do you propose doing it? Cards? They cost MORE than fingerprinting.Quote:
6. Takes money away from worthwhile spending on books etc. Yes.
Again with the conspiracy theories.Quote:
7. Trains parents and teachers alike that it is acceptable for children (and immigrants) to be digitally cataloged, with a view to manufacturing their consent to, and implied agreement with, ID cards and the necessary infrastructure for verifying said cards as a prerequisites to activities that will include, but are not limited to; buying, selling, traveling, working and accessing public services.
A child today, but tomorrow who's to say they won't have access to lots of lovely classified material with a fingerprint being one of the factors of authentication that's used? In that sort of case being able to reconstruct a fingerprint from previously held data could be very valuable.Quote:
Originally Posted by localzuk
From speaking to the data protection officer at our council the recommendation is that you have to have hard copy signed permission slips from both the parent and child to be able to take a childs fingerprint. If either the parent of child refuses permission then you can't take a fingerprint. If the slip isn't returned then you can't take a fingerprint. The permission has to be explicit from both parties. It was also recommended that to be supersafe that permission be sought each and every year the child was at the school.
Personally I'm against the use of any form of biometric being used as identification/verification within this sort of environment. At the end of the day a biometric isn't something that you can (easily!) change. If you're giving it up there should be a very good reason for giving it up, and being able to purchase lunch a little quicker/easier isn't one of them.
Can those against come up with any plausable uses for someone elses fingerprint or iris scan.
Nothing taken from the plot of James Bond will be counted.