Fingerprinting. Goodbye!

[creese]

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.

[creese]

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).'

[localzuk]

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

 

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.

 

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

 

Easier than printing hundreds of cards. Easier than having a person a till manually find and enter names.

 

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

 

Fraud should be taken to mean 'bullies taking dinner money from a child'.

 

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.

 

Seems like someone reads too many conspiracy theories.

 

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

 

Huh?

 

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

 

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.

 

Again with the conspiracy theories.

[Soulfish]

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?

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.

 

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.

[creese]

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.

[BTCC_Fan]

6. Takes money away from worthwhile spending on books etc. Yes.[/Quote]

 

When this happened in my school the number of students having school dinners and buying stuff from the canteen actually went up! Which may seem odd at first but when you think about its probably easier for the kids.

 

They don't have to worry about bring money each day, just load some on (or get parents to send money in) once every so often and then when they want to buy something just simply put their finger on the reader.

[synaesthesia]

Rubbish, all of it. The only personally really against it here is most likely a member of the forum from which he or she linked and signed up just to have a pop without anything to back up his or her claims.

 

No government will disallow the typical style of fingerprinting as we know MLS use - i.e. where the prints are stored only as a number and can't be remade into a fingerprint. It's very useful indeed and does speed up and make many processes far more efficient, removing human error from a lot of it. Which is always good.

[PiqueABoo]

I just don't know how to say this diplomatically so I'll just say what I think: There are some security idiocies on this thread: "it's stored as numbers", "as hashes", "it's encrypted" really doesn't make much difference to potential utility of the data or the long-standing case against collecting it[1].

 

[1] First made really well by the bloke who wrote the quote in my sig.

[sisco-kid]

Apologies for any typos In a hurry so a bit of a brain dump from memory

 

1st its not about the likelyhood of a school fingerprint system being stolen to create a massive fraud or some such....its about the possibility that biometric data can be compromised. Once its compromised there are no replacement fingerprints. Biometrics are 'of' the person not 'about' the person. a VERY big difference.

 

 

oh and yeah lets not forget... its about the fundamental human right to privacy.

 

Article 8(2) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states that:

 

There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as in accordance with the law ***and is necessary*** in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the ...

 

The N WORD = PRESSING SOCIAL NEED look up some EU case law and you will see teh ICO guidance is illegal as it contravenes the HRA. I alos offer as facial information can be determined from dermaglyphs it also exposes racial chartaeristics. fingerprints have also be related to soem chromosomal disorders. i would need to check my references.

 

Did you read the bioethics paper if not a link is below. its wortwhile but there is plenty others out there if you care to search and read and THINK

 

Oh try this for real science.... there is i plenty like it

 

Cappelli, R.; Lumini, A.; Maio, D.; Maltoni, D.;

Univ. di Bologna, Cesena

 

This paper appears in: Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on

Issue Date: Sept. 2007

Volume: 29 Issue:9

On page(s): 1489 - 1503

ISSN: 0162-8828

INSPEC Accession Number: 9620960

Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TPAMI.2007.1087

Date of Current Version: 13 August 2007

PubMed ID: 17627039

Sponsored by: IEEE Computer Society

 

 

Abstract

A minutiae-based template is a very compact representation of a fingerprint image, and for a long time, it has been assumed that it did not contain enough information to allow the reconstruction of the original fingerprint. This work proposes a novel approach to reconstruct fingerprint images from standard templates and investigates to what extent the reconstructed images are similar to the original ones (that is, those the templates were extracted from). The efficacy of the reconstruction technique has been assessed by estimating the success chances of a masquerade attack against nine different fingerprint recognition algorithms. The experimental results show that the ***reconstructed images are very realistic and that, although it is unlikely that they can fool a human expert, there is a high chance to deceive state-of-the-art commercial fingerprint recognition systems.***

 

So when someone says a print cannot be reconstituted what they mean is reconstituted perfectly. It can be reconstituted well enough... and if you know fingerprints you will know they do not need to be perfect to be matched they just need a few points of reference to match. see http://www.shirleymckie.com/facts.htm

 

Read this bioethics paper

 

http://www.bioethics.ie/uploads/docs/Final_Biometrics_Doc_HighRes.pdf

 

oh and the Irish ICO is very very clear, as was my legal advice from Bidmans.. chools should not have been doing this.... you guys call yourself geeks.. be one... read up...consider possibilities as well as probabilities...edcucate yourself on real science.

 

the science of persuasion is a good place to start... this was brought in to make Biometrics mundane everyday unimportant. The ICO do not take any expert advice as far as a freedom of information disclosure can make out so they were either inept or worse when they OK'd this originally. but then again they have form sorry for the pun.... checkout phorm and BT virgin etc etc

 

 

geeks.... you wish

Edited May 13, 2010 by sisco-kid

[EduTech]

thinking about it, i had my figerprint taken when i was at secondary school.. it was done in yr 7 for the Micro Librarian software so that i could sign in / out books!... i dont believe any policy was in place then and i dont think the school i was working at had a policy either for it.. :|

 

James.

[synaesthesia]

I think choice may well be the key. Rather than forcing something on people, give them a choice and work out a practicable alternative.

[PiqueABoo]

reconstruction of the original fingerprint.

 

Do we need that?

 

Assume I'm a minion from the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit of the Great and Tranformational Leader for the Glorious Progressive 21st Century Future and I have a spray paint can with a fingerprint on it that was used by some treacherous vermin to scribble a disloyal message on some back-alley wall. Surely all I have to do is feed that fingerprint into the same algortihms used by any of those systems, and check whether the "number" I get out matches any of the "numbers" in your database (you were all obliged to hand those over to the State BTW).

 

This is exagerrated ... although next to some real times/places not that much ... but it's to illustrate a fundamental principle that apparently hasn't been taught or at least sunk in for quite a while: It's all very well people now saying "oh no we won't do X, Y and Z" with this data, but the **only** way to ensure it it not seriously abused by some differently minded people in future is not to collect it in the first place.

 

Exhibit A is RIPA: We had people saying "yes it does permit that, but we're nice and won't do X, Y and Z .. it's just for terrorists and really scary people" and then we got some dipstick council using it to follow parents around re. their kids entitlement to a place at a school.

[imiddleton25]

Our library system uses fingerprint scanner but converts using an algorithm to key points of each print and cannont be reconstructed into anything usable. So I see no problem at all in this type of system

[Soulfish]

Our library system uses fingerprint scanner but converts using an algorithm to key points of each print and cannont be reconstructed into anything usable. So I see no problem at all in this type of system

 

All fingerprint systems "just" maps key points from the fingerprint. This doesn't mean that you can't map backwards, and as has been shown above has already been done. As has also been pointed out you can still take the data and the algorithm and use both to match an existing fingerprint to a person. There are huge privacy implications from storing any form of fingerprint data - processed or not.

 

It's no different in reality to "just" storing a password hash rather than the password in plain text. Just because it's hashed/encrypted doesn't mean it can't be broken.

[Trapper]

I remember as a kid the police came to my primary school and showed us their finger printing kit, and then took prints of my entire class group.

 

We never got them, I wonder if they were building up at database even back then in the very late 80s.

 

Not that it said much for the school, or the catchment area either!

[Trapper]

All fingerprint systems "just" maps key points from the fingerprint. This doesn't mean that you can't map backwards, and as has been shown above has already been done. As has also been pointed out you can still take the data and the algorithm and use both to match an existing fingerprint to a person. There are huge privacy implications from storing any form of fingerprint data - processed or not.

 

It's no different in reality to "just" storing a password hash rather than the password in plain text. Just because it's hashed/encrypted doesn't mean it can't be broken.

 

I've heard that a school in my area uses fingerprints as their cashless catering system

 

I did wonder about how they protected the data, and apparently the prints and the student details aren't "held" together, and if anyone got hold of the server/databases they would be unable to put the prints with a student. How this works, or even if it is safe I do not know

[Soulfish]

I've heard that a school in my area uses fingerprints as their cashless catering system

 

I did wonder about how they protected the data, and apparently the prints and the student details aren't "held" together, and if anyone got hold of the server/databases they would be unable to put the prints with a student. How this works, or even if it is safe I do not know

 

I'd call that a load of crap to be honest. At some point they have to match the print to the student, meaning that somewhere there is a link between the student and their print.

[localzuk]

I just don't know how to say this diplomatically so I'll just say what I think: There are some security idiocies on this thread: "it's stored as numbers", "as hashes", "it's encrypted" really doesn't make much difference to potential utility of the data or the long-standing case against collecting it[1].

 

[1] First made really well by the bloke who wrote the quote in my sig.

 

Sorry, but what's the potential utility of encrypted fingerprint data, which is only stored in a school for time the child is there? I'm not going to go giving out the keys to decrypt it, so how would it be any use to anyone, unless they have a court order? If they have one of them to go trawling for information, then the issue is with the court system not with the fingerprint storage...

[Martin]

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

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.

 

Funny, when i was at school (albeit forty-odd years ago) there were never any problems working out which kids had school dinners. The bottleneck was serving the actual food - how long does it take for a teacher to ask "Sonny, what is your name", "Jenkins Sir", "Thank you Jenkins - on your way!"?

 

Maybe one of the reasons was that every teacher knew pretty much every child in the school, and they didn't have to rely on bar codes and scanners and other technology to do their jobs.

 

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

Easier than printing hundreds of cards. Easier than having a person a till manually find and enter names.

 

Why have cards either? How about giving a child some respect and individual identity - not just treating them as a number?

 

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

Fraud should be taken to mean 'bullies taking dinner money from a child'.

 

But "bullying" is a bigger problem than stopping someone pinching Johnny's dinner money - he can still get jumped on and have his sweets pinched, or his nice new pencil set broken or whatever. Finger-print scanners won't stop bullying!

 

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.

Seems like someone reads too many conspiracy theories.

 

They have no choice but to do what they are told - the (state) machine says it, so you must do it. No room for negotiation, no room for discussion, no human interaction

 

Also see #7

 

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

Huh?

 

I am very surprised that you haven't sussed this one out - you are normally pretty sharp on these kinds of things? Certain companies are going to make a very lot of money out of this - and we are talking tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds. And once they get state approval (from ministers who may end up in non-exec positions in said companies), making this money is like, er, taking candy from a baby

 

Take a look at VeriCool - it seems very, er, cool - but nowhere on the website does it mention that it is a subsidiary of General Dynamics - a US company who may not have to abide by the same data protection laws as we have in the UK! Even if they do, a fair chunk of the money spent buying their products will end up on the lefthand side of the Atlantic.

 

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

 

Ah, we are back to #4 here with "parental reporting on what children eat in schools" - more micro-management and snooping on the intricacies of our private lives by the (thankfully) outgoing administration. And all at a huge cost - not just the basic system, but all the bits around it (including IT support etc.).

 

Out of interest, what system do you have installed and what are its costs (both capital and on-going)?

 

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.

Again with the conspiracy theories.

 

Some people must be walking around with their eyes shut (i suppose that it feels safer that way)?

 

For many years now we have been slowly conditioned to accept what we previously would have found totally unacceptable. Pubs are being "asked" to request ID from anyone who looks under 25 years old at the same time as (state) ID cards are being promoted as they easy way to prove your age. Our houses are being inspected by "the state" when we sell them to check how many CFLs we have fitted and how big our garden is. Our vehicle movements are being tracked continuously and the data held for years

 

Let us hope that the new ConLib agreement on Civil Liberties (see Now I'm happy..) will reverse some of these measures and at the same time simplify (and reduce the costs for) our lives!

 

mb

[Martin]

Rubbish, all of it. The only personally really against it here is most likely a member of the forum from which he or she linked and signed up just to have a pop without anything to back up his or her claims.

 

Nah, yer probably right - only a fruit-cake loop-biscuit would worry about fingerprint scanners in schools!

 

Invisible writing follows...

 

Pupils 'frogmarched by teachers to have fingerprints taken' so they could eat in canteen

Parents' outrage at 'Big Brother' school dinners fingerprinting

School dinner fingerprint system faces backlash

US SPOOKS STORING OUR PUPILS' PRINTS

School fingerprint system 'exposes pupils to hackers and criminals'

 

 

mb

[synaesthesia]

I think the trouble is people won't accept that some things will make like that little bit easier. It's less invasive than the planned and soon to be binned ID card system, less invasive than your own driving licence, less invasive than walking down the average high street, less invasive than driving - the list goes on and on. It's all my own opinion of course, and it's in my nature to be cynical about just about everything but this case sounds to me like a huge overreaction to nothing.

[broc]

We introduced a biometric (fingerprint) driven cashless catering system a couple of years ago, as previously mentioned it samples the fingerprint rather than storing a whole image. One major benefit for the children at my school was that it no longer stigmatised those entitled to free school meals, and as a consequence the take-up increased dramatically. Many parents & children were too proud to admit they were low-income and entitled to free school meals, the new system shields them from this now by automatically crediting the childs account. As a spin-off this benefits the school too, as the grants & funding take into account the number of students entitled to free school meals.

[localzuk]

Funny, when i was at school (albeit forty-odd years ago) there were never any problems working out which kids had school dinners. The bottleneck was serving the actual food - how long does it take for a teacher to ask "Sonny, what is your name", "Jenkins Sir", "Thank you Jenkins - on your way!"?

 

Maybe one of the reasons was that every teacher knew pretty much every child in the school, and they didn't have to rely on bar codes and scanners and other technology to do their jobs.

 

Yeah, when you have several hundred children who are on free school meals, and more which pay for their meals. How do you determine who is entitled to a meal? Our dinner staff are not up to the job of memorising the names of several hundred names... Things have changed in 40-odd-years, you have to accept that. Parents demand information from the school about what their kids have been spending their lunch money on...

 

Why have cards either? How about giving a child some respect and individual identity - not just treating them as a number?

 

Well, my guess would be due to the fact that schools have a huge amount of bureaucracy to deal with daily. Be it in libraries, canteens, or the school offices where kids are handing cheques and things in. ANY organisation would be looking at ways to become more efficient. The simple fact is, whether you think it is or not, we have always been 'numbers'. There's no efficient way to run a 20th (and now 21st) century country without reducing people to numbers.

 

But "bullying" is a bigger problem than stopping someone pinching Johnny's dinner money - he can still get jumped on and have his sweets pinched, or his nice new pencil set broken or whatever. Finger-print scanners won't stop bullying!

 

Ok, put it this way. When you park your car, do you leave your laptop in full view on the front seat? Do you leave your GPS stuck to the screen? No? Why not? I'm guessing it is because it provides a target for opportunistic criminals. Extend that same concept to bullies and lunch money. Remove the opportunity, and you reduce the crime.

 

They have no choice but to do what they are told - the (state) machine says it, so you must do it. No room for negotiation, no room for discussion, no human interaction

 

Having been dragged into the 'state' machine via an activist life back in uni, leading to lots of police contact and the like, I can safely say that it simply isn't true.

 

I am very surprised that you haven't sussed this one out - you are normally pretty sharp on these kinds of things? Certain companies are going to make a very lot of money out of this - and we are talking tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds. And once they get state approval (from ministers who may end up in non-exec positions in said companies), making this money is like, er, taking candy from a baby

 

In the scheme of things, the money involved in such systems is actually quite small. Also, the UK is a capitalist country, and as such encouraging business is one of the jobs of the government. If they do this via the public sector then that's fine with me. By getting companies making money, they pay more taxes, they hire more staff, they invest more in R&D. So, I don't see it as a huge issue.

 

Take a look at VeriCool - it seems very, er, cool - but nowhere on the website does it mention that it is a subsidiary of General Dynamics - a US company who may not have to abide by the same data protection laws as we have in the UK! Even if they do, a fair chunk of the money spent buying their products will end up on the lefthand side of the Atlantic.

 

Vericool is a UK company, therefore THEY have to follow UK DP laws, regardless of what company owns them. Also, money going out of the country isn't some sinister thing. We have UK company headquarters here, with subsidiaries all around the world who do the same thing. Irrelevant really.

 

Ah, we are back to #4 here with "parental reporting on what children eat in schools" - more micro-management and snooping on the intricacies of our private lives by the (thankfully) outgoing administration. And all at a huge cost - not just the basic system, but all the bits around it (including IT support etc.).

 

The reporting is for the parents, not for the government. We had parents asking what their child had been spending their dinner money on before the reporting stuff appeared. Since having a computerised cashless catering system installed, we have identified a few kids who try to use their lunch money to buy biscuits and the like during break instead of having a proper lunch. It has also allowed us to see a couple of children who simply weren't eating lunch due to various reasons.

 

Out of interest, what system do you have installed and what are its costs (both capital and on-going)?

 

A custom built system designed and written by myself.

 

Some people must be walking around with their eyes shut (i suppose that it feels safer that way)?

 

My eyes are open, I'm just not going to buy into scaremongering without proper evidence or overuse of slippery slope or straw-man arguments.

 

For many years now we have been slowly conditioned to accept what we previously would have found totally unacceptable. Pubs are being "asked" to request ID from anyone who looks under 25 years old at the same time as (state) ID cards are being promoted as they easy way to prove your age. Our houses are being inspected by "the state" when we sell them to check how many CFLs we have fitted and how big our garden is. Our vehicle movements are being tracked continuously and the data held for years

 

A 21st century society with 21st century crimes and problems obviously needs different rules and tools for policing than one set in the 70s. Sure, some of the laws enacted recently are ridiculous (rules restricting photography of police is a fine example, the digital Britain nonsense is another) but to constantly state that all this government tracking is bad is a little short sighted.

 

Let us hope that the new ConLib agreement on Civil Liberties (see Now I'm happy..) will reverse some of these measures and at the same time simplify (and reduce the costs for) our lives!

 

You really think the Conservatives will do anything but increase tracking? My guess is simply that they will reduce transparency...

[p858snake]

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?

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.

They would need to arrest the kid and have probably cause to take a fingerprint as per my understanding of UK law, and contact the legal guardians of the kid etc then deal with lawyers. Although I guess with those Anti-Terrorism laws..... they could do anything now....

 

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.

Fingerprints are stored as a series of points (eight is the current standard iirc), the location of these points is choosen by the end program and not the scanner (this is how different scanners can be used by different applications - they basically send a picture of the whole finger). So if you know what points the application uses and storage method for working out what pattern is at each point, you could easily reverse map the finger print.

 

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.

Yes, a good lawyer, but what about families that only have court/police appointed lawyers that don't give about their job, Or if police tried to hide the source as a confidential informant?

 

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.

 

Easier than printing hundreds of cards. Easier than having a person a till manually find and enter names.

 

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.

Depending on what type of cards you use, For example RFID would need minimal handing since it doesn't require that much handling (can be left in wallet/purse), Magnetic swipe cards (standard bank card type stuff) can normally last thousands of swipes before they start of have issues. Both of which can also handle going though the wash.

 

Printing cards of either format doesn't take overall that long, Ours were printed at the same time our school photos were taken, they popped out also the moment after we approved our photo.

 

As of your cost mention, Cards don't cost that much, Blank printed RFID cards cost $8 AUD (roughly 4 pounds) with magnetic swipe costing less than that.

 

Our library system uses fingerprint scanner but converts using an algorithm to key points of each print and cannont be reconstructed into anything usable. So I see no problem at all in this type of system

That would be near impossible, since the system needs to keep it in a "usable" format so when finger is scanned it can convert it and compare to the records which is based on a mathematical formula.

 

I did wonder about how they protected the data, and apparently the prints and the student details aren't "held" together, and if anyone got hold of the server/databases they would be unable to put the prints with a student. How this works, or even if it is safe I do not know

What they mean with that is probably the catering table in the db probably has a random number for the student which is also stored in another table in the db which then can easily be linked together with a join statement so that billing and such can be preformed.

[localzuk]

Depending on what type of cards you use, For example RFID would need minimal handing since it doesn't require that much handling (can be left in wallet/purse), Magnetic swipe cards (standard bank card type stuff) can normally last thousands of swipes before they start of have issues. Both of which can also handle going though the wash.

 

Printing cards of either format doesn't take overall that long, Ours were printed at the same time our school photos were taken, they popped out also the moment after we approved our photo.

 

As of your cost mention, Cards don't cost that much, Blank printed RFID cards cost $8 AUD (roughly 4 pounds) with magnetic swipe costing less than that.

 

The cards that we would use, as they'd also be able to integrate with our door control system cost around that, plus the cost of printing them. So you're talking a grand or more for a printer, then, say 50p per card in ink. We have 600 kids in school, so what you're saying is that spending £2700 on cards (plus losses, and considering the amount of keys the kids lose for lockers, I'd guess around a 5% loss rate), and then £675 a year on cards compared with no cost for the fingerprinting. Also, have you ever actually been around children and seen how generally destructive they are. The cards may well survive for normal people for a long time (my door entry card has lasted me 3 years so far), but when a child is bored in a lesson and decides to use it as a play toy, it really reduces the life of the card...