fingerprint registration (or similar)

[dirtydog]

anyone using fingerprint scanners for registration? If so any views on them??? We are using ePortal at the mo for registering classes.

 

Thanks

 

(PS not sure if this is in the right place)

[SpuffMonkey]

We're due to bring this in shortly (next couple of months) - will keep you informed if you want.

[ricki]

Hi

 

We use it for the library.

 

Richard

[mjs_mjs]

we have it for the canteen, i dont agree with it, violation of a humans rights, unless they can opt out and u tell them. if you fail to tell them then you, in my opinoun shouldn't be in a school. there not all too reliable.

 

while i was a student my 6th form had them, i of course put my foot down and refused to have my prints taken. done nothing wrong, but whats wrong with my name??? surely thats good enough for registration??? if thats the case then there's no need for finger prints and you need to run it thought your data protection policy.

[sahmeepee]

We try to use them in the library, but they need to be spoon-fed the first letter or two of the kid's name before they can find it in the list of approx 2000 people.

 

I had an amusing demo of a DRS system at BETT a couple of years back where the guy could NOT get the damn thing to recognise my fingerprint. He was even getting me to put my finger on it upside down!! Absolute bobbins!

 

The benefits for registration as I see it are:

• difficult to forge a fingerprint
  

The drawbacks are:

• cost of readers
  
• slower than ordinary register (someone still needs to check that the person has been recognised correctly so your form tutor saves no time)
  
• time taken to do initial captures
  
• breakable
  
• additional complexity (installation & support)
  
• hysterical parental reaction (no2id brigade etc.)
  

[Fatmas]

We are going to be using it for cashless catering but it should be noted that at no point is the child's finger print saved. The system measures unique points on the print to create a unique string for each child. Because of the way this is calculated, it cannot be reversed to find out a fingerprint. So the system only actually saves a string of numbers, not an image of the fingerprint itself. That put a lot of parents concerns at rest when the system was proposed. (So i've been told anyway!)

[localzuk]

We are going to be using it for cashless catering but it should be noted that at no point is the child's finger print saved. The system measures unique points on the print to create a unique string for each child. Because of the way this is calculated, it cannot be reversed to find out a fingerprint. So the system only actually saves a string of numbers, not an image of the fingerprint itself. That put a lot of parents concerns at rest when the system was proposed. (So i've been told anyway!)

 

Indeed, I have yet to find a system which *does* store an image of the print...

[Ric_]

It's also worth having a scan of the thread at http://www.edugeek.net/forums/security/41454-card-system-fingerprint.html

 

The 'snot-factor' is often overlooked IME.

[Fatmas]

I must admit I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of the fingerprint system. I'm not the network manager here and have only been told the general overview of what's going to happen (It is happening in the next few months mind). But I think the staff have been very careful of the "human rights" factor in terms of what information is stored. Everybody seems to be on board with it too.

[localzuk]

It's also worth having a scan of the thread at http://www.edugeek.net/forums/security/41454-card-system-fingerprint.html

 

The 'snot-factor' is often overlooked IME.

 

The 'snot factor' is easy to deal with - keep a thing of baby wipes by the readers...

[plexer]

we have it for the canteen, i dont agree with it, violation of a humans rights, unless they can opt out and u tell them. if you fail to tell them then you, in my opinoun shouldn't be in a school. there not all too reliable.

 

while i was a student my 6th form had them, i of course put my foot down and refused to have my prints taken. done nothing wrong, but whats wrong with my name??? surely thats good enough for registration??? if thats the case then there's no need for finger prints and you need to run it thought your data protection policy.

 

It's not like the fingerprint itself is being stored so that the police have a handy database available should they wish to obtain access to it.

 

Name is not good enough when you could be dealing with someone who won't know the names of several hundred children.

 

Keys, fobs and cards can all be lost fingers are harder to lose for most kids.

 

Ben

[laserblazer]

We used it with Microlibrarian but it couldn't handle little fingers (Y5) very well and the Librarian was getting through shedloads of wetwipes.

[protonrules]

Vericool registration is the one we use, it's not really worth it for the money.

 

it keeps breaking all the time aswell

[sahmeepee]

While I can see that the civil liberties argument is a bit weak, I also think that "it doesn't store the fingerprint; it stores a code based on the fingerprint" is a fairly dubious get-out.

 

Either it stores enough information to check if a pupil's fingerprint matches that code (so the system will work - arguably not the case for Eclipse/Microlibrarian) or it doesn't store enough information to identify the individual (so the system is not an infringement of civil liberties but not any practical use either). You can't have it both ways!

 

All the biometric systems I've come across have been good at telling you if a person is who they say they are, i.e. "does this fingerprint belong to Mr G Smith?", and pretty poor at finding out who a person is from their biometric data, i.e. "who does this fingerprint belong to?". If you think about it it's much easier to get an acceptable success rate in the first case assuming your list of people is even vaguely big.

 

And in the words of Duncan Bannatyne, "it's for that reason: I'm out!"

[Theblacksheep]

The system measures unique points on the print to create a unique string for each child. Because of the way this is calculated, it cannot be reversed to find out a fingerprint. So the system only actually saves a string of numbers, not an image of the fingerprint itself. That put a lot of parents concerns at rest when the system was proposed. (So i've been told anyway!)

 

Using language like 'just a string of numbers' is a nice attempt at trying to seperate the fact they are taking biometric data.

 

If they are using the typical method of 'refernce points' this cannot be hashed as the point pf reference systems are unreliable and two scans from the same person can create two quite different results. The best they've got is storing references seperate from biometric reference point data... it should be noted exact matches are not needed to trigger a positive result.

 

A study a few years back, cant rememeber which uni tested against the ISO/IEC 19794-2 minutiae standard and found a 90% sucess rate for reconstructing basic fingerprints from the database templates with no other information to link them.

 

Without waffling too much more: biometric fingerprint data can be identified.

 

A NI number or credit card number is 'just a string of numbers' too

[CAM]

The Police are not going to come in and start demanding fingerprints of your students. They have means to get their own fingerprints if they suspect someone of a crime, if they find fingerprints on something and suspect it is an individual in your school then they'll take the prints themselves to compare and not raid your school's canteen/library/SIMS office. Besides, their fingerprints are all over their iPod's and mobile phones anyway.

 

Our canteen uses fingerprint recognition and the kids find it to be a neat little novelty. A bit of hassle registering the prints though with small Year 7 hands not reading properly. When it comes to registration though, is it really worth it? You have to consider the extra cost and making the students come up orderly one-by-one to sign-in for what benefit? If a teacher can't tell if a student is who they really are then they can use Lesson Monitor's photo option to bring up their picture. And as you move down the register, the photo changes to the next student. The benefit of fignerprint recognition in schools is to encourage incresed use with the novelty of the system and help cut down on lost cards or money. Registration uses neither of these benefits.

[sahmeepee]

The benefit of fignerprint recognition in schools is to encourage incresed use with the novelty of the system and help cut down on lost cards or money.

It also has the benefit of decreasing the transaction time at the till for busy kitchens (vs. cash that is).

Registration uses neither of these benefits.

None of the three benefits in fact.. It's one of those "costs a lot of money so it must be doing us good" homeopathy type things!

[diagram]

but it should be noted that at no point is the child's finger print saved. The system measures unique points on the print to create a unique string for each child. Because of the way this is calculated, it cannot be reversed to find out a fingerprint. So the system only actually saves a string of numbers, not an image of the fingerprint itself.

 

Errrr.... In other words, just like the police system. How else would the cops match fingerprints? To be sure, the police keep an image of the fingerprint but that's only used for checking by humans after their system has sorted through their database and pulled out the most likely matches.

 

Even though the PNC and your dinner card system store the information in an incompatible manner (and even that is debatable) the police could take a fingerprint they have taken from a crime scene (somehow connected to your pupils), wrap it onto a synthetic finger, put in *your* fingerprint reader, and watch it spit out the name of suspect#1.

[spacevortex]

we have it for the canteen, i dont agree with it, violation of a humans rights, unless they can opt out and u tell them. if you fail to tell them then you, in my opinoun shouldn't be in a school. there not all too reliable.

 

while i was a student my 6th form had them, i of course put my foot down and refused to have my prints taken. done nothing wrong, but whats wrong with my name??? surely thats good enough for registration??? if thats the case then there's no need for finger prints and you need to run it thought your data protection policy.

 

 

 

When you were in 6th form your parents would of received a letter telling them about how the finger prints are stored.

Its not the same system as a national finger print database.

 

it works on a principal of numbers assigned to a picture (the finger print is a picture like your school photo)

 

over looked another members post.. sorry.....

Edited September 24, 2009 by spacevortex
over looked another members post.. sorry.....

[localzuk]

Ok, so those who say they're against it due to some made up idea that it infringes rights, what if the school uses facial recognition instead? This is storing biometric information again, and could be used in the same way as a photo of a person could...

 

The entire idea that fingerprinting is a infringement of rights is bizarre. What are the actual fears?

[SpuffMonkey]

We try to use them in the library, but they need to be spoon-fed the first letter or two of the kid's name before they can find it in the list of approx 2000 people.

 

I had an amusing demo of a DRS system at BETT a couple of years back where the guy could NOT get the damn thing to recognise my fingerprint. He was even getting me to put my finger on it upside down!! Absolute bobbins!

 

The benefits for registration as I see it are:

• difficult to forge a fingerprint
  

The drawbacks are:

• cost of readers
  
• slower than ordinary register (someone still needs to check that the person has been recognised correctly so your form tutor saves no time)
  
• time taken to do initial captures
  
• breakable
  
• additional complexity (installation & support)
  
• hysterical parental reaction (no2id brigade etc.)
  

 

I'm with on the downsides - I tried quite hard to change their minds - we have ePortal registration as it is - if a teacher can't take a register on that - I don't see how having a fingerprint reader is going to improve - as you've introduced another couple of failure points in every classroom (the reader itself, the software and whether it scans the finger correctly) - just seems like a lot of expense & hassle for very few tangible benefits.

[localzuk]

Just a comment on the hysterical parent brigade - we've had our first angry letter the other day claiming things about infringing human rights and civil liberties, but they fail to provide any explanation as to how this data is any different to the hundreds of other pieces of data being held by the school, LEA, DCSF, and government as a whole...

 

There is, it seems, no way of appeasing these fears - as those with them consistently fail to provide any evidence as to why it is bad.

[mjs_mjs]

When you were in 6th form your parents would of received a letter telling them about how the finger prints are stored.

Its not the same system as a national finger print database.

 

it works on a principal of numbers assigned to a picture (the finger print is a picture like your school photo)

 

over looked another members post.. sorry.....

 

my parents did not recieve a letter - nor did i.

 

i know it isn't the same database and i also asked the question of how the print was processed to which no one could give me a definitive answer. why should i let my prints be used in a system where the techs and admin havent the foggiest???

 

some sytems actually save an image of your print - this one did. so i opted out - as is my right. i also didn't have a school photo. again i opted out.

 

i also asked for all letters concerning me to be sent to me and not my parents and for them to correct my name from matt to matthew on all formal documentation, nither oh which they did (in breach of the DPA).

[mjs_mjs]

Just a comment on the hysterical parent brigade - we've had our first angry letter the other day claiming things about infringing human rights and civil liberties, but they fail to provide any explanation as to how this data is any different to the hundreds of other pieces of data being held by the school, LEA, DCSF, and government as a whole...

 

There is, it seems, no way of appeasing these fears - as those with them consistently fail to provide any evidence as to why it is bad.

 

the DPA says that you may only collect infomation that you need... so you need to justify having a print... why would you need my print when you have my name???

[Soulfish]

I'm personally against storing any form of biometric data, including (but not limited to) fingerprints. One major problem I have with biometric data being used for identification/authentication is the very fact that once you give it to an organisation you have no way of changing it should the data be leaked etc.

 

If you're using a password/pin code should there be a breach it is possible to change the password/pin. However with biometrics this is simply not possible - you can't change someones fingerprint. As biometrics become more wide spread I can already see a market springing up to convert reference point data to an acceptable gummy finger alternative to "fake" a biometric. Even without the reference data it is very easy to acquire a biometric like a fingerprint should someone want access to a system that your biometric grants you access to.

 

It is my belief that biometrics are over used and their full consequences haven't been fully considered by most organisations. There are very few instances that I believe a biometric should be used as a form of authentication/identification.