It seems that across the world the UK is being held up as bad practice fingerprinting our children in schools.

This from James Heiser from http://www.thenewamerican.com/

"The decision to permit the mechanisms of the national security state to intrude into the most routine aspects of the lives of children as young as four is not only degrading and absurd — it is educating impressionable youths to take for granted that the State will track their every movement, action and thought for the rest of their lives.

 Such needlessly pervasive interference in the lives of children is so scandalous that even continental European bureaucrats understand that it is wicked."

School upsets parents by fingerprinting their kids

More than 700 students were fingerprinted last week by the Clinton County School District and some parents aren't happy. Parents learned about the fingerprinting only after it happened.

Unbelievable! Seems that the school authorities in the UK and USA are simply not grasping that before they go finger scanning, storing and recording our kids biometric data they must communicate with us on this or risk alienating the parent population . Some parents, in the UK, were so angered by this they went to the police.

Wanted - Smith and Browns Fingerprints

Just caught this on the Privacy International site - fingerprints of Smith and Brown "wanted".

It reads:

GUILTY of reckless endangerment of our personal security by storing our fingerprints on a central ID database and risking another catastrophic data breach.

GUILTY of willful intent to undermine our right to own and control our biometrics.

etc, etc...

The fingerprints of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's interior minister, who believes strongly in the collection of "citizens' unique physical characteristics as a means of preventing terrorism" has already been got. Look out Smith and Brown.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander surely...

Australian school stops fingerprinting students after allegations of intimidation

Having been away for a while seems that things have been a little busy.

In Australia it seems that some heavy handedness was used to fingerprint students for monitoring attendance levels at Ku-ring-gai High School .

A quote from one Year 12 student shows that the school maybe should be spending money on educating the children in their care as it is quite clear that this student really has not grasped how government institutions should operate, "Perhaps a lesson from this is that parents and students should involve themselves in the school community and in the decisions being made on their behalf." what?!- no, the school should be asking express permission from parents and debating whether or not this level of technology is needed and how better money can be spent.

But then when it is alleged that school staff intimidated and insulted students who were unwilling to take part in the trial, then truancy sounds like the least of the problems at Ku-ring-gai High School.

Good for student Brad Lorge who refused to be fingerprinted! "When I began to question, I was informed that I would be stupid to not comply and that there was no reason for me to not provide my fingerprint," he said. "It was intimidating. I was the only one out of the four who refused to provide my fingerprint."

..and this from an ex-student there.

Needless to say that the biometric fingerprinting system is currently on hold at the school.

Fingerprinting children for food reduces schools "annoyances"

On the fingerprinting of children for food in schools, doubts arise:

“The benefits certainly do not justify the privacy violations that we’re seeing,” said Alessandra Meetze, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But Beverly Blough, the director of food service in Wood County School District, West Virginia, cited that the pressures of No Child Left Behind was the reason why West Virginia schools used biometric systems -apparently it would...

“ ...reduce the annoyances that would take the principal and staff away from education and focusing on things that were relatively minor in a student’s day.”

A mother, Joy Robinson-Van Gilder, from Illinois who has been instrumental in bringing about a change in the the law in Illinois to limit/regulate how biometric technology is used with children, said:

“It just opens a huge database out there that’s just easy for identity theft, I think it’s against their civil rights, without a doubt, and it is an invasion of privacy.”

Iowa rejects the re-introduction of fingerprint scanners in schools

Des Moines Register, Iowa, USA, reports the bills that are up for debate, and therefore possible legislation, and those that are not to be debated and made into law.

"...state lawmakers pushed dozens of bills through committee, saving them from today's so-called "funnel" deadline. The week is a pivotal time for legislation. Bills that made the deadline will be debated. Those that failed the funnel are done."

Biometric fingerprint scanners in schools didn't make it through the 'funnel'.

LIKELY DEAD

FINGERPRINT SCANNERS: Some schools want to be able to use fingerprint scanners to speed children through lunch lines, the library checkout and bus boarding. State lawmakers outlawed the devices for school use in 2005 amid concerns about legal issues, privacy and information hacking. And this idea was stripped from Senate Study Bill 3010 this year.

American Civil Liberties Union voice concerns using childrens fingerprints for food purchase

Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Minnesota on the possible introduction of fingerprint scanners for lunch lines at Oltman Junior High in St. Paul Park and East Ridge High School.:

"This is a solution in search of a problem. It just baffles me. Of all the problems schools face, is this really an issue?"

Officials think it will speed up lunch lines, solve the problem of children forgetting their ID numbers and prevent identity theft (?!)

But the comments from the biometric vendor in this article are quite bizarre and would be funny if they weren't so seriously off the mark :

"There always seems to be this knee-jerk reaction that somehow, some way, a person is giving up their identity." - putting a child's biometric details on a relatively unsecure system, biometric details that have to be secure for the lifetime of the child, decades in fact, for insignificant tasks such as paying for food I would argue IS most definitely "giving up their identity" to significant risk.

When you bear in mind the obvious fact that computers are advancing at a great rate along with transferable softwear from biometric database to biometric database (and with that hackers abilities) that using childrens biometric for mundane administrative tasks is wholly inappropriate.

This biometric vendor goes on to say:

"It's absolutely the opposite. It actually protects a person's identity." - right...

Utah to fingerprint pupils for lunches?

In Utah, parents are to discuss this month whether the use of fingerprint technology, for lunch payments and monitoring childrens eating habits, in Draper public schools is appropriate.

Let's hope they make a sensible informed decision - listen to the schools reasoning but also take on board other expert opinion, such as Microsoft's Architect of Identity, Kim Cameron.

Arizona Senate bill bans biometrics in schools

Arizona, USA, have a bill SB1216 banning biometrics in schools, details below and here is the 'fact sheet' of the bill.

It heartening that people are taking on board the issues that arise with the, increasingly obvious, inappropriate use of biometric technology with children in schools.

When it was reported that Espiritu community schools in Phoenix, USA, fingerprinted children, without informing parents, in mid January 2008 it taken a little over a month for this bill to happen.

I hope this speedy action shames our Labour UK Members of Parliament to act as the elected people of Arizona have, i.e. working the people that elected them - although I'm not holding my breath.

Well done to mum, Shirley Wallace, Arizona State Sen. Karen Johnson and State Rep. Andy Biggs, the others that supported this bill and Fred Bellemy, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in Technology Law for their efforts to bring this bill about in such a short amount of time.

REFERENCE TITLE: schools; biometric information; prohibition

State of Arizona Senate, Forty-eighth Legislature, Second Regular Session 2008

SB 1216

Introduced by
Senators Johnson, Blendu: Gray C, Harper; Representative Pearce

AN ACT

amending Title 15, chapter 1, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding section 15-107; relating to school pupils.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
Section 1. Title 15, chapter 1, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 15-107, to read:

START_STATUTE 15-107. Biometric information; prohibition; definition

A. School districts and charter schools shall not collect biometric information from pupils.

B. For the purposes of this section, "biometric information" means any information that is collected through an identification process for individual persons based on unique behavioral or physiological characteristics, including fingerprints, hand geometry, voice recognition, facial recognition, iris scans or retinal scans. END_STATUTE

Oh the possibilities...

Dan Brawner seems to have his finger(print) on the pulse here -

LIVING IN IOWA: Forget your signature: soon the biometric thumbprint will be the new national ID

by Dan Brawner · February 06, 2008

I’m sure the Iowa Department of Education only wanted what’s best for us when they proposed the “thumbprint bill” that would have students use a biometric thumbprint scan in paying for school lunches and checking out library books. They assure us the thumbprints will not be stored or shared with government agencies or businesses. They argue convincingly that students will have to spend less time standing in lines and the new technology will keep them safer by tracking their whereabouts.

I can understand why a sophomore in his desperation to check out a copy of War And Peace does not have time to laboriously sign his name for the librarian. But after all, attendance in an institution of higher education does presuppose a certain degree of literacy. If they make it too easy to sign a document, you discover later you’ve sold Manhattan for a handful of beads.

If the thumbprint thing catches on in schools, pretty soon Mastercard will say, why carry around those silly plastic cards that could fall into the wrong hands when all you need to do at the checkout counter is plant your thumb on the scanner? Now you can buy stuff faster than ever!

Before long, the Department of Motor Vehicles will want to get into the act. Then doctors and hospitals will have patients zipping through check-in, dispensing with all that tiresome paperwork. All you will ever need is your thumb. You won’t even have to be conscious. Heck, you won’t even have to be there. Just your thumb. Parents could have detachable thumbs. “Hey, Dad, I’m driving into Chicago today. Can I borrow the thumb?” “Okay, son. Just have it back by midnight.”

Our entire identity will be defined by our thumbs. Our thumbs will represent our legal status, our financial stature, our health, our political leanings, our religious affiliations, our intrinsic worth as neighbors and citizens. Our very soul.

We will no longer be able take our thumbs for granted. We’ll have to take special care of them. If you get a scar on your thumb from peeling potatoes, it might alter your identity. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. We cannot allow you to pick up the boy you say is your son from baseball practice. According to your thumbprint, it says you are a 78-year-old Tibetan man who had his license revoked for running over a goat.”

With all our personal information stored with our thumbprint, identity theft can be surprisingly easy. Investigators found that thumbprints leave a mark on the scanner and can be made to reappear by merely breathing on the glass. We can no longer afford to expose our naked thumbs to strangers who might photograph them or lift our prints from doorknobs. We’ll have to wear special thumb lingerie to hide our most intimate secrets from prying eyes.

Sure, it will take some adjustment. But sailing through the checkout line at Wal-Mart will make it all worthwhile.

Biometrics in schools - "hard to sell to parents"

A slight thought process going on at the Broome-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services on biometrics, even if it is just about the fact that "it's hard to sell to parents".

Broome-Tioga BOCES serves 15 school districts in Broome and Tioga counties, which deals with nearly 40,000 students in grades k-12 and many others in adult programs.

Kathy Alley from Broome-Tioga say that she "envisions a school district where fingerprint scanners are in cafeterias, building entrances, classrooms and buses".

Why? Apparently she cites that "missing children" will be easier to track... (how many of the 40,000 children do the 15 school districts lose?) Where is the personal eye to eye contact in registration with teacher and pupil if children are simply logged in by fingerscan?

The reason it is hard to sell to parents is because we, as adults, can make informed decisions about biometric technology and when and where we use it. Infact recently, at Heathrow Airport, when biometric technology is imposed on adults, rountinely, there is an outcry.

Children in school are in a compliant situation - a soft market for biometric companies when authorities require more and more detailed information from schools about our children.

Schools having our children's biometric identifiers, as well, is a step too far.

In and out

As Iowa plan to allow biometrics back into schools after their House File 685, the child identification and protection act, was signed into law in May 2005, biometric scanners are being axed in schools in Phoenix, Arizona.

An ill informed Jeff Berger of the state Dept of Education, Iowa, states "This technology is really perfectly safe... information can't be reconverted back into an actual fingerprint", this statement is incorrect but this continual and convenient inaccuracy of truth is obviously backed up by the biometric sales industry:

"That's true", said Ali Pabrai, the chief executive officer of Ecfirst.com, a West Des Moines-based biometrics consulting company."

Their views are not shared by Fred Bellamy, a Phoenix Attorney who specializes in Technology Law or Microsoft's Identity Architect Kim Cameron - (I know who'd I'd rather believe).

Fred Bellamy went on to say that "fingerprinting children is an invasion of privacy. “Once the data are captured no matter what kind of promises the vendor may make there is a serious risk, and I think the parents have every reason to be concerned about how this data will ultimately be used.”

Espiritu Community Schools in Phoenix used biometrics technology to scan the fingerprints of students. School officials told us it was a way to keep track of school lunches so they can receive federal aid.

But this past week, in a letter sent to all parents, the district states it's stopping the use of this technology. The letter states they will “yield the use of the biometrics finger scan system”. They are replacing it with student ID cards.

"It's just like the cop shows ..." say kids - Utah, USA

Utah, USA, are using children's biometric fingerprint data for food ...“It's a minor intrusion for better parental supervision of your children’s eating habits,” said systems administrator Eric Browning.

Juan Diego Catholic High School is the first school in Utah state to have finger scanning systems, which monitor and track students' lunch accounts. (But from the school's website on Menu A they are eating: 'Taco Bar, Subs, Chicken Enchilladas' & on Menu B 'Pizza, Subs' ....!)

But a little more credit to them, than British schools, in the fact they do let parents know on their website that they have a biometric food system.

This by Gizmodo: "Here is the thing though—the parents probably have the same horrible eating habits, so it would be hard to dole out the discipline without looking like a hypocrite. Besides, if the school is so concerned about the kids' nutritional welfare, why do they continue to serve them crap food?"

Why, really? Because it's cheap...

See this for more.

Arizona to propose leglislation for schools fingerprinting children

After Espiritu community schools in Phoenix, USA, fingerprinted children without even notifying parents to allegedly shorten lunch queues parents were rightly outraged.

Parent Shirley Wallace was outraged when she found out what happened to her kids at school. "Since when does anyone have the right to fingerprint our children, especially without parents' permission?"

Fred Bellamy is a Phoenix attorney who specializes in Technology Law. He says fingerprinting children without parental consent is sending the wrong message.

"Once the data are captured," Bellamy says, "No matter what kind of promises the vendor may make, there is a serious risk. And I think the parents have every reason to be concerned about how this data will ultimately be used."

The schools, yet again, quote the old 'it's not a fingerprint but a string of numbers...' blerb.

Fingerprints can be reconstructed from number strings, see here, however as state fingerprint databases are increasingly algorithmic it does matter or not if a fingerprint is stored as the numbers stored operate in the same way a fingerprint does. It is a biometric marker of the child using the scanner.

As a consequence "Arizona State Sen. Karen Johnson and State Rep. Andy Biggs plan to propose legislation this session. The bill would require schools to get parent’s' permission before fingerprinting any child."

Good for them.

UK world famous for sneakily fingerprinting chlidren in schools

It's nice to know that here in the UK we are world famous for something - schools fingerprinting children without parents knowledge.

The US and now Australia are hot on our heels though, but with only 2 companies here in the UK in 2005, to over 20 companies now selling biometric systems to schools (bought by our taxes) for food, books, registration, access, cash registers, vending machines - that's some growth in the market.

This is not about the security of pupils dinner money and stolen library books. It is simply about hard cash and profit for the biometric market by fingerprinting children in school as young as 4 without parents even being aware. Adults in the UK do not use biometric systems on the scale that it is used in schools.

The Dubai XPress has this article.

"The so-called "child-tracking" scheme has been lamented by parents who argue that school authorities should take prior permission and an "acceptance note" to fingerprint their child because the data collected from children under the age of 12 without parental consent contravenes the Data Protection Act 1998.

The Labour Government, who wants to go ahead with a national ID plan also faces a backlash from nearly 85 members of parliament who differ on this monitoring practice. Though the government rests its case on defending the method with the sole purpose of social security and thwarting child abuse, civil liberties groups call it an act of violation of privacy."

Canadian students object to biometic access - for gym access

The University of Northern British Columbia has installed biometric scanners "controlling access to the sports centre" [why?] 300 students have signed an online petition opposing it.

"Graduate student Gabrielle Wint-Rose wasn't sure why her gym needs such personal data, and said the invasiveness of the system should have been considered and students consulted before installing the system.

"It was a really shocking experience. It really wakes you up. You realize you walk into this facility and the only way to access is through finger scanning and all of sudden you're in this moment where you have no choice. What do you do?" said Wint-Rose on Wednesday.

Lindsay Stinson told CBC News she was upset she had to register her fingerprint and give personal information before she could work out at her university's new gym."

Proportionality in this must be considered. Who would want to monitor or possibly profile students exercise information? Does the university own the gym or do they lease it out to a private company? Where does the students data go?

Want to exercise = give personal biometric data? (would suggest boycotting gym and jogging instead, cheaper and non intrusive)

Students in Canada have (absolutely) more awareness than UK primary school pupils, 4 years old, that are now using fingerprint biometric systems here, and in the USA, without parental consent/knowledge.

With the Canadian students being older and having awareness of their personal data, they consequently raise valid privacy issues:

"Wint-Rose said she is concerned about what happens to the biometric information and who controls it.

"The northern sports centre has my information. I have no way of getting that back. I don't know how it's being collected, where it's being stored, who has access to this information," said Wint-Rose."

The following is a published paper by the Candian Information and Privacy Commissioner in March 2007:

Biometric Encryption: A Positive-Sum Technology that Achieves Strong Authentication, Security AND Privacy

by
Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario &
Alex Stoianov, Ph.D. Biometrics Scientist

Biometrics enable Australian schools to monitor students "more closely"

In Australia, New South Wales, the children's biometric market is taking off. The all in one scheme monitors eating habits, movements around school and children's reading habits.

Rooty Hill High School has ordered 14 scanners, which are expected to be used to scan students as they enter the canteen, library and some classrooms.

The school's principal Christine Cawsey said it would allow the school to monitor the students more closely. [why?]

But president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties Cameron Murphy said the scanning system was "intrusive" and suggested those using the system were branding students as lawbreakers.

"It's a clear breach of their privacy and it's treating school kids like they're criminals," Mr Murphy told The Daily Telegraph last night. "It's absolutely absurd.

"If the fingerprinting doesn't work, what's next? Putting ankle bracelets on students?"

Academy Attendance manufactures the electronic attendance systems, which are expected to be rolled out to at least half a dozen other schools next year.

The Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations said they were not consulted about the new technology.

"This is a step too far ... we would have liked to have expressed an opinion to ensure that all the checks and balances were there," federation president Di Giblin said.

Illinios schools legally need parental consent

No mention of parental consent in this article at Glenwood Middle School, Chatham, however the law in Illinois, as of August 2007, requires it.

"Scanners tested" at US high school

At Hagerty High School in Oviedo it's an "opt out" system as the Orlando Sentinal reports.

"...students will be required to take part unless their parents object.

Officials attempted to start the finger-scanning program at Hagerty earlier this month, but Superintendent Bill Vogel stopped it abruptly after several parents complained that they knew nothing about it and hadn't been given a chance to say no.

Some parents said their children had been threatened with punishment for refusing to have their fingers scanned initially to make a master image they would be scanned against every day. About a dozen parents already have refused to allow their children take part."

Bullying tactics have been used here in the UK as well.

Australia start 'fingerprinting' students

As controversial biometric systems are being used in the UK and fingerprint scanners being put on hold in Orlando, scrapped in Massachusetts, Australia decides to implement fingerprint readers in their schools for registration, movement around school, canteen and library - all in one go.

However the Biometrics Institute in Australia have a voluntary Privacy Code, approved by the Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis, which applies to organisations that have agreed to be covered by the Code. The code came into effect September 2006. I wonder if schools and the vendors of such systems designed to be used in schools have signed up for the voluntary Privacy Code.

The Education Department has given Sydney Schools the all-clear to fingerprint their students.

The controversial move is voluntary, but only three parents have declined to allow their children to take part in a trial of the system at Rooty Hill High in Sydney's west.

School principal Christine Cawsey has told the Nine Network the system will be used to track children when they arrive at school, and as they visit the canteen, library and selected classrooms.

“When they put their finger on the scanner, they will get a good morning greeting on the screen [arwh] and then they go to class.”