LTKA - Campaigning against the fingerprinting of UK schoolchildren.

LeaveThemKidsAlone.com ©
LTKA © against schools fingerprinting our children

search this site (Updated Weekly)

Read what the BBC
said about this issue

Please tell a friend

Home
ltka home page frequently asked questions U.S. kiddyprinting: ban the scan the berlin wall foundation site map
U.S.A.
U.S. kiddyprinting: ban the scan U.S. latest U.S. schools & districts that use or ban biometrics U.S. legal issues U.S. privacy organisations U.S. school biometric vendors
Latest
latest kiddyprinting news latest press reports UK government latest U.S. latest international latest data protection latest information for journalists
Facts
kiddyprinting: the whole truth risks vs benefits of kiddyprinting kiddyprinting: supporters vs opponents vital questions to ask your school 10 things you should know leading experts' warnings is kiddyprinting legal? * * guidance for schools * * biometrics in schools: executive summary biometric manufacturers listed
Schools
UK schools using biometrics schools abandoning biometrics schools rejecting biometrics * * guidance for schools * * what manufacturers tell schools how schools decide on kiddyprinting what schools tell parents how schools 'handle' parents vital information for teachers vital information for school governors vital information for school bursars
Video
video 1: think your kids are safe at school? video 2: you think biometrics are secure? podcast
Blogs
kiddyprinting: all blogs blogs: best quotes 1st recommended blog 2nd recommended blog 3rd recommended blog 4th recommended blog 5th recommended blog
Forums
kiddyprinting: all forums 1st recommended forum 2nd recommended forum 3rd recommended forum 4th recommended forum 5th recommended forum
Press
kiddyprinting: all news reports latest news 'must see' articles backgound stories full news coverage (date order) related articles other important news information for journalists
Legal
kiddyprinting: legal issues * * guidance for schools * * the legal conundrum U.S. legal issues
Parliament
debates in parliament parliamentary motions on biometrics mps' views on kiddyprinting changing DfES 'spin' * * guidance for schools * * is kiddyprinting legal?
Nothing To Fear?
nothing to hide, plenty to fear recent attacks on uk civil liberties current U.S. privacy issues how to fingerprint everyone & get away with it the five zones of surveillance a warning from history the berlin wall foundation
Overview
civil liberties and the database state TheBigOptOut.org the children's index spy blog
ID Cards
id cards latest youth against id RenewForFreedom.org id interrogation centres defy id
Contact Us
contact us feedback fun stuff

>> Vital questions you need to ask your children's school about fingerprinting <<

"People have to be stark, raving mad to use conventional biometrics to improve the efficiency of a children's lunch line."
Kim Cameron, architect of identity and access in Microsoft's connected systems division (more from Kim Cameron)

"If you have children, make sure their schools have nothing to do with this odious system." John Naughton The Observer

>> Download leaflets on fingerprinting that you can hand out to other parents <<
NEW! >> Step by step: how to stop your child being fingerprinted << NEW!

WARNING: Some computer security experts feel that in the future it will be possible for
data stored on school fingerprinting systems to be used to steal your child's identity

11-10-07 Daily Mail: Read 'Children's fingerprints - The sinister truth' in full-screen mode (press 'back' on your browser to return to ltka)

Thousands of UK schools are fingerprinting children as young as five as part of library, catering and/or registration systems.

This is strongly encouraged, and heavily subsidised, by central Government.

Parents are not asked for their consent, nor informed of the risks.

More than 2 million children have already been fingerprinted. Another 4 million could be at risk.

There are now over 20 manufacturers selling school biometric systems. One manufacturer alone has equipped in excess of 3,500 schools with fingerprint readers.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families do not give schools enough advice about keeping the data secure.

The 'harmless' number or algorithm stored by these systems is in fact a fingerprint template, the unchanging lifelong key to a child's identity.

Fingerprint templates are not defined as sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Act, and hence receive less stringent protection.

The biometric data stored in schools could be used for identity theft when banks and passport agencies adopt biometrics in a few years' time.

The encryption used to secure the systems is good for 10 years at most. The biometric data needs to be kept safe for a child's entire lifetime. (State-of-the-art security is soon obsolete.)

Your child could be falsely accused of a crime by an over-zealous head teacher.

Q: Why is the Government pushing so hard to get fingerprinting in as many schools as possible, as quickly as possible?
A: Because if even if the current ID card scheme fails this time around (don't count on it, though) they can be pretty sure that in 30 years' time there will be little or no resistance from a generation that has been 'groomed' from the age of five to accept fingerprinting by the State. It's all part of the Government's authoritarian agenda to create a 'Database State'.

24 November 2007 Children aged 6 must give fingerprints for passports Daily Mail

Govt admits using biometrics in schools to soften up kids Bloomberg, 10-08-07
"While people are still nervous about fingerprints and still have a concern that fingerprints are associated with criminality, we're gradually moving away from that. It's amazing how many schools are starting to use fingerprints just as a simple mechanism for checking kids in and out.'' James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, August 2007
"It has been suggested that fingerprinting in schools is part of a concerted attempt to 'soften up' the younger generation for increased state privacy intrusion, including initiatives such as ID cards and DNA testing.'' The Information Commissioner's Office, July 2007

Kiddyprinting and reading skills

2001: England comes third in a major international league table for education, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. School libraries start fingerprinting children, "to encourage reading".

2006: England slumps to 19th position after five years of kiddyprinting 2 million children in more than 5000 schools. Only Morocco and Romania saw their results fall more sharply.

Researchers gathered data from 40 countries, testing the reading skills of 4,000 children aged between 9 and 11 in each country.

"I like taking books out - but I'm not even that bothered about reading." Nottingham pupil Cheyanne Haye, 13, commenting on a biometric school library system, 11 May 2007

See also: School books being dumbed down for exams, say authors The Guardian, December 1, 2007

After Discgate, where the name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and bank details of 25 million people went missing, anyone who repeats the tired old phrase "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" really needs their head examined.

You can change your bank account number and password when the Government loses it (and we would strongly advise that you do so asap).

But fingerprints and fingerprint templates are for life. They can never be altered. One slipup and your identity is permanently compromised.

So can we really trust the Government when they say our kids' biometric data is safe? Perhaps now we should pay extra attention to leading experts like Microsoft's Identity Architect, Kim Cameron: "It is absolutely premature to begin using 'conventional biometrics' in schools."

Here's one we made earlier, contradicting vendors' claims that a fingerprint cannot be reconstructed from a template...


1. Original fingerprint scan	2. Stored fingerprint template	3. Print reconstructed from template
Images produced by US researchers in April 2007 (Further details available on request). Although some kiddyprinting systems work at a lower resolution than this, at least one of the UK's leading school biometric systems stores a fresh fingerprint template each time it is used. Hence it would be possible to recreate a scan as detailed as (1) above from the data stored after a child had used it about half a dozen times. Read what Microsoft's Kim Cameron writes about 'reversing' templates.

"It is about time we had a debate about whether we want to turn from a nation of citizens into one of suspects." Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty
School Biometrics: The Legal Conundrum by Patricia Deubel, PhD The Journal, 10 April 2007	Fingerprinting is being introduced in thousands of UK schools as part of subsidised library, catering and/or registration packages they have purchased, strongly encouraged by central government. This is always done without explicit parental consent, even in many cases, without parental knowledge. The systems are presented to parents as harmless, but many world-renowned security experts warn that there are critical irrevocable dangers of identity theft, and no benefits to pupils. As for claims that "systems are harmless because they only store a number", these are total nonsense. More than a million children as young as five - impressionable, trusting and naive - had their fingerprints taken. Leave Them Kids Alone! "The system doesn't store a fingerprint" - myth debunked	Fingerprint foreboding by James Carroll The Boston Globe, 09 April 2007

"If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime. Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the matching algorithm for the rest of their lives." Brian Drury, IT security consultant

"How dare you assume or try to record an identifying mark of my child without any thought of asking my permission? Lack of consent isn't implied consent. I do not give consent. Period." Mary Heim, US parent given one day to opt out of school fingerprinting. (22-03-2007)

Who would you trust? Your school, quoting in good faith from a seller's glossy brochure, or a dozen of the world's leading security experts?
Think your kids are safe at school? Watch this (video 1) You think biometrics are secure? Think again... (video 2)

UK: Peers slam school fingerprinting.
Peers have criticised the "intrusive" and increasingly common practice of schools taking children's fingerprints without seeking parental consent.
Lib Dem, Tory and crossbench peers criticised the practice as intrusive, alarming and "completely astonishing".
19-03-07 BBC News - read more

EU: Ireland pounces on school fingerprinters.
The Irish Information Commissioner's Office has come down on the notion of school fingerprinting and taken early action to prevent the technology being deployed arbitrarily. "There are several long established and successful alternative methods."
23-03-07 The Register - read more

US: Scan Plan Scrapped. NEW!
In response to mounting evidence, ardent parental protest and buckets full of uncertainty, a school scrapped plans for biometric fingerprint scanning in lunch lines. "Ban the Scan" has finally materialized as school policy.
19-04-07 Gazette - read more

UK: School fingerprinters may be breaking the law.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families said in a statement to the BBC Radio 4 Programme You and Yours that schools who refused school dinners to kids who won't scan their fingerprints might be in breach of the law.
04-10-07 The Register - read more

"We are a testing ground for this new technology. It's like an ID card for kids..." Jim Kelly, Palm Beach County schools' police chief, speaking to the Sun-Sentinel, 07 July 2004

"The world has no answer to terrorism without using these things and I would see us as getting [pupils] ready for the world in which they will have to live." Chris Bridge, headmaster, Huntington Secondary, York, 08 January 2007

L T K A	The widespread use of biometrics in schools - benefits vs risks read the full details here
L T K A	BENEFITS	RISKS
MY CHILD	nothing whatsoever proved independently despite manufacturers' ambitious claims - based on little more than anecdotes (children have been eating healthily and reading for centuries, without the need for fingerprinting)	permanent irreversible identity theft - critical who may access the biometric templates? sharing of sensitive personal information child doesn't learn value of own biometric identity, and when to protect it
OUR SCHOOL	may cut down on admin time may help school to meet LEA targets system subsidised (and heavily encouraged) by government	parental resistance if system is imposed health & safety issues if registration fails legal action from parents if data is stolen cost of removing data when children leave a future government may outlaw practice
THE MANUFACTURER	thousands of potential customers multi-million pound profits total lack of regulation	none - school is ultimately responsible
THE GOVERNMENT	habituation may help to lessen resistance of future generations to biometric ID cards and cradle-to-grave state surveillance biometric templates stored on these systems likely to be compatible with other government systems	serious backlash if parents feel their kids are being manipulated for political ends - must be rolled out with minimum publicity biometric ID cards could be set back a generation if millions of biometric templates are stolen from insecure school systems

"I have not been able to find a single piece of published research which suggests that the use of biometrics in schools promotes healthy eating or improves reading skills amongst children. I am concerned that these reasons are being given as a justification for fingerprinting children. There is absolutely no evidence for such claims." Dr Sandra Leaton Gray, Director of Studies, Sociology of Education, Homerton College, Cambridge, 20 Feb 2007

"I like taking books out - but I'm not even that bothered about reading." Nottingham pupil Cheyanne Haye, 13, commenting on a biometric school library system, 11 May 2007

Read 'Biometrics in Schools' in full-screen mode (press 'back' on your browser to return to ltka)

"Frankly, using fingerprints without parental consent is at the least insensitive, and at worst, quite possibly illegal - think of this - How would the school staff feel if the parents were to have the teacher's fingerprints and home addresses without permission?" Jon Crowcroft, Marconi Professor of Communications Systems, University of Cambridge, 04 Jul 2006

"As well as burglary, you still owe £2.50 for that Noddy book you borrowed twenty five years ago." cartoon © Colin Shelbourn 2006	"System doesn't store a fingerprint" The 'honest' truth, but not the whole truth? Biometrics: myths debunked. Schools that introduce fingerprinting usually try to reassure parents by repeating a series of misleading claims given to them by manufacturers, who have more than five years' experience in 'handling' parents. The facts are as follows... 28-03-07 LTKA exclusive- read more		UK: Guantanamo firm enters British schools. A military company connected to the US interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay camp is behind a finger-printing system in UK schools. 21-07-06 Times Ed. Supplement
	UK: Is this the real reason why schools are so keen to fingerprint kids? Millions of children aged 11 and over are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a secret database, also used to store the fingerprints of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers. 04-03-07 The Times - read more	UK: Please urge your MP to sign EDM 686 (against school fingerprinting). "That this House is alarmed at the growing practice of schools collecting and storing the biometric details of children as young as three; notes that up to 3,500 schools use biometric software to record the data of approximately three quarters of a million children." (Contact your MP here) 19-01-07 UK Parliament - read more
	UK: Dudley Council's disgraceful "Tips For Fingerprinting Children" 14-09-06 read more This appalling page was online from November 2001 until September 14th 2006 when all trace of it suddenly disappeared, less than 12 hours after we featured it. Now it's back, thanks to the official Internet Archive.

"As far as we were concerned, it wasn't necessary for us to seek parental consent in this." Stephen Bowden, headmaster, Porth County Comprehensive, 11 September 2006

"Are we sending our kids to school or to prison? We wouldn't accept fingerprinting for adults without informed consent so it is utterly outrageous that children as young as three are being targeted." Phil Booth, No2ID, 03 July 2006

Read the Data Protection Commissioner's guidance to schools in full-screen mode (press 'back' to return to ltka)

"We were all so shocked when America started fingerprinting foreigners, yet all along we were fingerprinting kids." Gus Hosein, Privacy International, 12 January 2007

UK: A Bradford school's outrageous response to parents' legitimate worries. Every child in the school is fingerprinted the day after they receive a letter from a parent, who is a computer expert, expressing serious concerns. Parents vow to fight on.
28-03-07 Parent's blog - read more

	This diagram clearly shows how school library fingerprint scanners, used on children from the age of three, work in exactly the same way as those used by the police to track and identify criminals.
In the US an adult can buy a gun and live ammunition without being fingerprinted. In the UK five-year-old children are fingerprinted in the school library just so they can take out a book of nursery rhymes. Even China has scrapped school fingerprinting. So why haven't we?? All UK opposition parties have condemned this disgraceful infringement of the civil liberties of our most vulnerable.

UK: Security experts condemn school fingerprinting as risky and unnecessary.
There is a critical risk of identity theft, claim a number of leading independent industry insiders.
01-04-07 LTKA exclusive - read more

UK: School fingerprinting combats terrorism, claims head teacher.
"The world has no answer to terrorism without using these things and I would see us as getting [pupils] ready for the world in which they will have to live." Chris Bridge, headmaster, Huntington Secondary, York
08-01-07 York Press - read more

"At best, the technology is overkill and a waste of taxpayer money. At worst, it sets a dark precedent, conditioning students at a young age to embrace the idea of Big Brother-style biometric tracking. If ever there was a generation that would not oppose a government system for universal ID, it's this one." Chris Hoofnagle, associate director, Electronic Privacy Information Center, 09 September 2003

Read ltka's mission statement in full-screen mode (press 'back' on your browser to return to ltka)

UK: Row after kids fingerprinted.
A row has blown up after it was revealed children as young as six have had their fingerprints taken - to borrow books from their school libraries. The move has sparked outrage among parents. One parent, whose daughter had her prints taken when she was just six-years-old, said: "I'm just not happy at all. These are children, not terrorists or criminals."
15-03-07 Sheffield Today - read more

UK: Fingerprinting In Schools: Probe Call.
At least 17 county schools are fingerprinting children as young as four-years-old. An urgent investigation has now been launched by Gloucestershire County Council. It is believed some of the schools have been operating the system for up to three years without the education authority's knowledge.
29-03-07 The Citizen - read more

UK: A police fingerprint officer's view on fingerprinting children.
"If you have not been asked explicitly for your signed consent to allow your child's prints to be taken, kick up a huge stink immediately. Even arrested persons are asked to sign consent to their prints being taken."
18-03-07 Pippa King - read more

UK: Blair wants to monitor all children for signs of criminality.
Tony Blair faced charges of taking a further step towards turning Britain into a "surveillance state" as he set out plans to monitor all children for signs of criminality, to allow police to collect more DNA samples and to expand the use of CCTV cameras.
30-03-07 Sanders Research - read more

Stolen laptop contains details of 11000 children 27-03-2007

Big Brother
in schools?
- Futurelab

"We do agree with everything Leave Them Kids Alone is saying about consulting with parents." Andy O'Brien, managing director of Micro Librarian Systems, (seller of Junior Librarian & Eclipse), 12 March 2007

"No-one should ever install biometrics in a school without consulting with parents." Alasdair Darroch, managing director of Softlink Europe, (seller of Alice & Alice Junior), 14 Mar 2007

"Education, Education, Education" Tony Blair (1996) "Consent, Consent, Consent" Concerned parents (2007)

We are campaigning for the widespread use of biometrics in UK schools to be debated in Parliament, strictly regulated &
closely monitored, & statutory requirements for explicit informed parental consent where children's biometrics are taken.