Fingerprinting. Goodbye!

[Mr.Ben]

I've just read the Conserable Coalition Manifesto and noticed this:

 

Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

 

C'mon then, who's been doing it (and how much are mls going to lose out!)

 

Good idea in my opionion. No parent in there right mind would allow it!

[creese]

I've just read the Conserable Coalition Manifesto and noticed this:

 

Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

 

C'mon then, who's been doing it (and how much are mls going to lose out!)

 

Good idea in my opionion. No parent in there right mind would allow it!

 

Don't know about MIS, what about CSI?

[sidewinder]

Actually, I suspect a large percentage of parents would allow it, for catering system use anyway, better than their child continually losing their card.

[localzuk]

I've just read the Conserable Coalition Manifesto and noticed this:

 

Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

 

C'mon then, who's been doing it (and how much are mls going to lose out!)

 

Good idea in my opionion. No parent in there right mind would allow it!

 

A huge number of schools have fingerprinted children without explicit permission. The Information Commissioners Office advice, IIRC, is that it is covered under existing permissions and rules governing data collection and data protection within schools.

 

We fingerprinted pretty much all the kids here a while back, when we introduced our new cashless catering system. We didn't do it without notice though - we advertised it in our school newsletter twice and sent a letter home to parents also. Only 3 families opted to not have their children scanned, and these pupils all have physical tokens instead which are scanned.

 

My guess would be that school admissions forms, and data checking forms will simply gain a new 'We operate a cashless catering system/registration system which uses fingerprints, if you would not like your child to be scanned please tick here' entry or similar.

[plexer]

Good idea in my opionion. No parent in there right mind would allow it!

 

Why?

 

Ben

[creese]

We have a small number of schools using the system for catering. There was a story in the local rag, which soon blew over.

[CESIL]

I really don't see what the objection to this is...it's not as if we pass the fingerprint info to the police!

 

If parents have so little trust in schools then why do they leave their kids in our care!

[FN-GM]

it's not as if we pass the fingerprint info to the police!

 

And that would bad becuase...

[Theblacksheep]

Who says the school is responsible for the data? Some companies keep the data... so its not just about school trust.

 

I dont see why this is done in the first place, its not as if schools have not been able to give out book or meals before.

 

Still, no bio-ID cards now means no need to prepare the children for a bio-ID society.

[localzuk]

And that would bad becuase...

 

I was wondering that myself. Surely if the police were interested in the fingerprint of a child, they have an easier way of getting it? ie. arresting the kid and taking it that way?

[localzuk]

Who says the school is responsible for the data? Some companies keep the data... so its not just about school trust.

 

I dont see why this is done in the first place, its not as if schools have not been able to give out book or meals before.

 

How do you keep track of what the child has been eating without individual identification at the till? We introduced it due to new requirements (or so I was told) for parents to be able to see what food the school has been feeding their child. The options we had were spending thousands on prox cards, or some other form of physical token (which kids can lose) or spending a tenth of that for fingerprint equipment and software.

[creese]

I was wondering that myself. Surely if the police were interested in the fingerprint of a child, they have an easier way of getting it? ie. arresting the kid and taking it that way?

 

Certainly a lot quicker.

[soveryapt]

I really don't see what the objection to this is...it's not as if we pass the fingerprint info to the police!

 

If parents have so little trust in schools then why do they leave their kids in our care!

 

Indeed! To me it makes perfect sense. No cash to worry about or cards to lose so bullying would be harder in the "give us your lunch money" sense as hopefully the staff would notice if someone was being forced into getting food etc.

 

There is the whole issue of getting permission (or rather giving the choice to opt out of it) which is the same with most school activities (photos / video / internet access / etc) so yes, if they don't trust the school ..

 

The police are only allowed to use records they have obtained legitimately so if they need to check the finger prints of children in a school to rule people out (or catch a culprit) then they would have to send in a forensics team anyway to obtain them, which would be yet another permission slip for the parents).

[Rydra]

Adding another nail to this coffin, the last time I saw these systems, the fingerprints are stored electronically (and often, hopefully encrypted), and I would suspect these are not admissable as ID, as they are, compared to an ink imprint of a persons hand, fakeable.

 

It's not like a high resolution photograph of your finger, and the way they store the data is not necessarily the same as what the police would use to store their fingerprints.

[creese]

Adding another nail to this coffin, the last time I saw these systems, the fingerprints are stored electronically (and often, hopefully encrypted), and I would suspect these are not admissable as ID, as they are, compared to an ink imprint of a persons hand, fakeable.

 

It's not like a high resolution photograph of your finger, and the way they store the data is not necessarily the same as what the police would use to store their fingerprints.

 

The little I understand is that it is not a full fingerprint stored but a number of reference points, which would be useless to the police.

[plexer]

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

[docboggle]

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!"

[creese]

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.

[ZeroHour]

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.

[creese]

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.

[sisco-kid]

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.

[creese]

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.

[localzuk]

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.

 

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?

 

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?

[localzuk]

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.

 

You have to add html to the end. I've linked it in my comment above.

[Martin]

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...

 

Why finger print kids? Let's look at the arguments shall we:

 

1. Speeds up queues. No more than sensibly implementing any non biometric register system.

 

2. It's easier. Easier than NOT fingerprinting kids? No I don't think so.

 

3. Protects against fraud. Yeah little Johnny is really going to pay for his lunchtime doughnut with a stolen credit card isn't he?

 

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.

 

5. Enriches the people working towards the goals outlined in reason #4. Yes.

 

6. Takes money away from worthwhile spending on books etc. Yes.

 

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.

 

mb