Monday, January 14, 2008

Suffolk schools fingerprinting for food

Stowmarket High school has started using children's fingerprints for meals, not mentioned on their website, along with Kirkley High, again not mentioned on their website either.

This from the Stowmarket Headteacher Keith Penn: “I have no concerns about any infringement of civil liberties in this instance and am not concerned about this issue." - what at all?

He should be concerned as Action on Rights for Children, Liberty, Privacy International, NO2ID, parent run site Leave Them Kids Alone and a host international experts have concerns - and in the USA Electronic Frontiers Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union have concerns as well.

Well he is only a headteacher and obviously has no experience of children's rights (although maybe he should have, being in charge of a fair few hundred of them).

Maybe these heads of schools should do some research into this issue of using children's biometric data for routine activities that, supposedly helps the schools administrative function.

See Mark Crossley's blog, editor of the Suffolk Free Press on this.

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