Nunnery Wood High School in Worcester is planning to use children's fingerprints for logging pupils in and out of school and for cashless catering systems.
The system is on trial at the moment with a view to it being fully implemented in 12 months but there are concerns from parents, one parent, Angie Wilkes, stated that:
“Biometric data, when included on UK passports, was hacked within two weeks by Lukas Grunwald, a consultant with a German security company, using a piece of software costing £105,”
You can understand her concerns, yet the school insisted that "the system is 100 per cent safe" - mmm... no system is 100% safe.
"Headteacher Alun Williams said the school had taken advice from government agency Becta, and had carried out rigorous research. " If the Head has done rigorous research he will know that the systems are not 100% safe.
As far as BECTA carrying out rigorous research on biometric systems in schools - they simply haven't. Their advice given July 2007 was given with no research into these systems whatsoever, I know that as a fact as the Freedom of Information Act was used to see what research they had done - zilch.
So for all you Head Teachers out there thinking that BECTA know about these systems, think again.
3 comments:
Although I agree that no system is 100% safe, it does make sense for schools to look to biometric scanners to increase security.
Just because we can track students in/out, doesn't mean we will prevent tragedies.
Interesting article
The word Biometrics is used today to refer a technology that is used for identification of individuals through their physiological or behavioural characteristic by using our body genealogy that makes us who we are for e.g. hand and finger geometry, fingerprint, and facial recognition to name a few.
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