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
