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.

Stop Fingerprinting children in schools? at Prime Minister's Questions but no Prime Ministers Answers, unsurprisingly...

Prime Minister's Questions - Wednesday 6th Feb 2007

The 100% complete dodging round the issue of fingerprint systems in school by the PM yesterday is self explanitory below.

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): This week’s bugging controversy should not come as a surprise to the Prime Minister. After all, it is this Government who have turned the British public into the most spied upon on the planet: 1,000 surveillance requests every day; 1 million innocent people on the Government’s DNA database; and 5,000 schools now fingerprinting our children at school. Is that what the Prime Minister meant when he spoke so stirringly a few months ago about the great British tradition of liberty?

The Prime Minister: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman and the Liberal authorities support CCTV. I take it that they support the intercept action that is taken when it is necessary for national security. I take it that he accepts that only 1,500 intercepts have been commissioned by Ministers as a result of urgent security needs. Does he accept these things or not?

Mr. Clegg: The Prime Minister seems to see no limits. He is creating a surveillance state. Why has he consistently refused requests for more power to be given to the Information Commissioner? Why does he not do what is already done in Scotland and remove the DNA of innocent people from the database? Why will he not act immediately to stop the scandalous fingerprinting of our children at school?

The Prime Minister: People in this country are reassured by the presence of CCTV; I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not proposing to remove it. That is one very important part of the investigatory and surveillance powers that we give the police to carry out their work. I would hope that the right hon. Gentleman would look at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and see the protections that have been put in place where there is surveillance and where there are intercepts. They include authorisation by a senior officer, the right to appeal to an independent tribunal, and a commissioner for surveillance who looks at matters and reports annually. We are taking the steps to protect the liberties of the citizens; I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will support that.

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.

Personal

With the appalling data losses that are now happening in our UK Government with the Inland Revenue and Customs, Child Benefits and now the UK Army , to mention a few - we parents need to make ourselves aware of data attached to our children, that may go astray.

So I'm going to make a subject access request to the head teacher at my children's school so I can see what data is logged against my children on their, each, unique National Pupil Database number - perhaps (and hopefully not probably - but not holding breath) information that may get into other peoples hands...

"Generation ID: lessons in kiddyprinting"

Redpepper have this excellent article on "kiddyprinting" in schools.

"The innocuous term ‘kiddyprinting’ refers to the controversial practice of routinely fingerprinting schoolchildren. Many parents are unaware of it because they have not been asked for their explicit consent, or in many cases even notified that it is taking place."

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.

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.

"Thumbs down" - another parent's blog

Another parent has set a blog up called "Thumbs down"

"At the end of 2007 I received a letter from my daughter’s school informing me that the school library was to be run on a biometric system.

I was appalled. This blog charts my attempt to have them reverse the policy.

I hope it is short."

So do I. My children's school seem now to be using a barcode system now instead of the biometric scanner they purchased in 2005 for library use, so good luck!

School trips...?

Apparently "Fingerprinting helps pupils to be healthy eaters" states the "This is Cheshire" website. The school is so chuffed with the technology that they are "now looking at ways of using the fingertip system for other purposes for example school trips."

Education helps children to be healthy eaters. Taking fizzy drinks and chips off the menu helps children to be healthy eaters. These systems can cost up to £20,000+. Could this amount of money be used in school to improve education of healthy eating habits?

There is no mention of fingerprint, biometric, scanner or even cashless on Sandbach school's website. Taking childrens biometric data from them, I would have thought, warrents a mention at least.

But the idea of incorporating fingerprint scanners into a school trip(!) seems to be a biometric overkill of technology for technologies sake.

Given the appalling track record government establishments have on data protection, just salient data should be held by schools - not children's biometric data, which is non essential for a child's education.

Biometric industry see BECTA's guidance as a "green light"

Apparently industry welcomes "the findings of BECTA’s new report entitled Guidance on Biometrics in Schools , which highlighted the positive role biometric technology can play in reducing bullying, theft, truancy and costs in schools."

Really? Reducing bullying, theft and costs? There is no evidence to support this in the public domain.

One biometric vendor states “BECTA’s report effectively provides the green light to continue the roll out of Biometric solutions in schools. The report makes a clear statement that fingerprints cannot be recreated from the string of numbers stored in the database..."

So whilst parents, human rights groups and concerned Members of Parliament are not happy about the BECTA guidance the industry have taken it as a "green light". The parent consultation touched on in the document is simply NOT happening and the notion that BECTA, the DCSF (DfES) and Labour Education Dept hold on to that fingerprints cannot be reconstructed is simply incorrect.

What are we actually paying these people for?

A simple Google of "reconstructing fingerprints" bring up papers that have been written on this or blogs (moi, listed no.3!) that can point civil servants and politicians in the general direction on this subject. It's not rocket science.

It is apparent that there is a concerning lack of research in BECTA's "guidance" which appears to have unsubstantiated claims and inaccurate statements in. Is it right for this to be the basis of an industry that is able to legally take biometric data from children as young a 4 without consulting parents?

The people that this report should have advantaged - our children in schools.

The people this reports advantages - biometric companies supplying to schools.

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."