fingerprinting children in the U.S. LeaveThemKidsAlone.com ©
LTKA © against schools fingerprinting our children
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>> Vital questions you need to ask your children's school about fingerprinting <<
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."  Josh Billings
"And the public gets what the public wants."  The Jam
 
WARNING: Some computer security experts feel that in the future it will be possible for
the information stored on school biometric systems to be used to steal your child's identity
 
 
  
 
B E T R A Y E D ! ! !
After five years' silence on schools that fingerprint our children without our knowledge or consent the government is still refusing point blank to legislate. Instead the BBC reports that they have now proposed weak "guidelines". But these won't be on the official DfES website, nor any other government run website. They won't be sent to schools. Parents, teachers, and even governors won't be consulted. Worse still, schools will remain free to ignore the guidance altogether. This is an absolute disgrace and a calculated, cynical betrayal of children as young as three by those whose sworn duty it is to protect them. Read more contradictory DfES spin here.  
 
 "I am not aware of the practice, but obviously people have accepted it... Security in libraries is a big issue for younger and older people." Jack Straw MP, House of Commons, 25th Jan 2007  
 
 "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)  
 
Think your kids are safe at school? Watch this video.
 
* Vital questions you need to ask your child's school *
 
 "We do agree with everything Leave Them Kids Alone is saying about consulting with parents." Andy O'Brien, managing director of MLS (Junior Librarian / Eclipse)  
 
 "No-one should ever install biometrics in a school without consulting with parents." Alasdair Darroch, M.D. of Softlink Europe (seller of Alice & Alice Junior)  
 
School fingerprinting - a police fingerprint officer's view
 
"The system doesn't store a fingerprint" myth debunked
 
 
>> Dudley Council's disgraceful Tips For Fingerprinting Children <<
 
 Fingerprinting is being introduced in thousands of UK primary schools as part of a subsidised library package that they have purchased, encouraged by central government. This is always done without explicit parental consent, and even in some cases, without parental knowledge. Some parents only find out AFTERWARDS when they ask their children ""what did you do at school today?" Children affected range in age from 5 to 11; impressionable, trusting and naive. Leave Them Kids Alone!  
 
Please urge your MP to sign EDM 686 against school fingerprinting
(You can contact your MP here) 78 MPs from all parties have signed so far. We need 100.
 
 "How dare you assume or try to record an identifying mark of my child without any thought of asking my permission? I do not give consent. Period." Mary Heim, US parent given one day to opt out of school fingerprinting.  
 fingerprinting children
"As well as burglary, you still owe £2.50 for that Noddy book you borrowed twenty five years ago."
cartoon © Colin Shelbourn 2006
"Is this for real??" Isla Geddes, via email   Read what the BBC said
...and The Guardian, The Times, The Observer, Daily Telegraph, T.E.S., etc
 
We're just a group of ordinary parents aiming to stop schools from fingerprinting our children without asking. So far, more than 3500 schools & nurseries (manufacturer's official figure, given to the Daily Mirror) have already fingerprinted and photographed at least 700,000 children, ranging in age from 3 to 11, with more than 20 new schools added weekly.

> I DIDN'T KNOW MY CHILD WAS FINGERPRINTED AT SCHOOL! <

 
fingerprint scanner 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?? New Labour is the ONLY party that supports this disgraceful infringement of the civil liberties of our most vulnerable.

"Getting kids hooked into treating biometrics capture as a standard thing sends a chill down my spine, and smacks of a long-term attempt to bring it in for everybody." Richard Leyton
  
 "We enjoy working with our new thumb print scanner on the PC. We are going to Toynbee after the summer holidays, but we are glad because they have the thumb print machine there too. Other year groups use it as well as us and we are getting used to it now." Chloe (pupil, Fryern Junior School, Eastleigh, Hampshire)
  

School fingerprinting is initially presented to parents as being totally harmless. Yet all across the country its introduction appears to follow a set pattern. Many parents are not even notified in advance; the lucky few are merely told "we have decided" to fingerprint your children.

Where parents object, the most that is ever on offer is an opt-out consent slip, but out of thousands of schools, we have only come across a single case in the UK where explicit informed opt-in parental consent has been sought. This only happened after a sustained year-long campaign by the PTA.

With five years' experience and millions of pounds at stake, schools 'benefit' from manufacturers' well-rehearsed strategies for 'handling' concerned parents. But now, parents and politicians who share our fears have begun to fight back, and in some cases have managed to force schools to delay or abandon biometrics altogether.

This is not just about protecting your own child from being forced to submit to fingerprinting. It is about ensuring that they do not grow up in a tightly controlled world where they are forced to surrender their biometrics at every turn. By getting them used to fingerprinting on a daily basis, in a familiar setting, this is the most likely outcome.

 
* PLEASE HELP US * If you're opposed to schools that fingerprint children without asking, and you think you might qualify for legal aid, please click here to send us an email in complete confidence. You could help us to stop this. (We promise to respect your anonymity.)

Supporters of school fingerprinting claim the data stored on the system cannot be used to reconstruct a fingerprint. This obscure phrasing is common among biometric vendors, intended to make people feel its more private and/or safer, but it is misleading. What is in fact stored is a unique number or fingerprint template which is derived from the print. It's rather like the difference between a drawing and a photograph.

Such templates can be easily reused by the government, and there is an official interchange standard (M1) to help ensure systems can share data and inter-operate. Cross system exchange tests are currently being done at NIST, to ensure one company's templates work well in other peoples matching.

The police, security services and even the FBI use templates, not fingerprints, when they scan their databases to look for print matches. That's just how the system works. Simple as that.

"If what it's storing isn't the direct equivalent of the fingerprint, then their system simply wouldn't work.", Phil Booth, NO2ID

 
Exclusive! Biometric manufacturers' advice to head teachers revealed
 
19 March 2007 How schools implement and justify biometrics
 
>> Some of the schools that have scrapped biometrics <<
 
Feb 26 2007 Alarm at 83 schools fingerprinting pupils - in Suffolk alone!
 
 

10-10-2006 Back by popular demand: Dudley Council's Tips For Fingerprinting Children

This disgraceful page was online at http://www.edu.dudley.gov.uk/ict/software/library/fingerprinting.htm from November 2001 until September 14th 2006 when all trace of it suddenly disappeared, less than 12 hours after this website brought it to public attention. Now it's back, thanks to the official Internet Archive. One Dudley Councillor and two local newspapers are investigating what happened... The reply from the director of education is conspicuous by its absence!

29-09-2006 HEAD REGRETS FINGERPRINTING WITHOUT CONSENT The Westmorland Gazette

The Head Teacher of a Primary School in Kendal, Cumbria, admitted that "in hindsight" the school should have asked permission before taking [finger] prints, but said that it had not occurred to him to do so.

An Early Day Motion on the fingerprinting and iris scanning of children in schools was laid in the House of Commons on 19/1/07. Backed by Action on Rights for Children (ARCH), LeaveThemKidsAlone.com, NO2ID, Open Rights Group(ORG) and cross-party representatives, this EDM is intended to show Parliament just how broad concern actually is on this issue - in preparation for further action.

Please write to your MP as soon as possible, using http://www.writetothem.com and ask him or her to sign EDM 686: BIOMETRIC DATA COLLECTION IN SCHOOLS  
 
 (You might also like to sign the petition set up by David Flint-Johnson, a parent in Basingstoke who just found out his daughter's school has been fingerprinting for two years!!)

30-01-2007 Schools advised to seek consent before fingerprinting The Guardian

December 2006 Should we allow Big Brother in schools? Vision (from Futurelab)

08-01-2007 Schools fingerprinting 5 year olds York Press (150+ readers' comments)

24-01-2007 Big Brother storms the playground The First Post

"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, head , Huntington Secondary, York

"There was a time when fingerprinting meant you'd been taken to the police station. Now, the police station has come to the pupils every time they have their lunch [or use the library]. These schemes are effectively grooming children to live in a future Big Brother society" Ian, a student from London

"[Britain] becomes, if you're not very careful, very close to a police state in which they pick you up and then they say later on we'll find evidence against you." The Archbishop of York, February 5th 2007

21-11-2006 Fingerprinting pupils? Hands Off! - A school governor writes. Guardian

15-06-2006 School's U-turn on biometric library system London SE1

22-11-2006 Now we want your prints. (We've got your kids.) Where will it end? BBC

08-12-2006 Children's attitudes to fingerprinting in schools blogspot.com

22-11-2006 Child database 'will ruin family privacy' Daily Telegraph

"I am astonished to learn that fingerprinting of children is done at schools and for such a relatively minor matter of borrowing books from the school library. A major concern must be who would have access to this data and what happens to it after children leave the school. It is particularly wrong that this is being done without parents' consent" The Rt Hon David Davis MP, Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, 27th July 2006

"The potential for misuse of this data is of great concern to me... Efforts to ascertain the extent of fingerprinting in schools have thus far been rebuffed." Sarah Teather MP, LibDem Shadow Education Secretary, 4th August 2006

"There really are some civil liberty issues... [Schools] should not be doing this. They should find another method of identification for borrowing library books." Nick Gibb MP, Conservative Shadow Minister For Schools, 13th October 2006 (interviewed on Teachers' TV)

12-10-2006 GERMAN RESEARCHERS RECONSTRUCT COMPLETE FINGERPRINTS

07-09-2006 PARENTS CAN'T PREVENT SCHOOLS FINGERPRINTING THEIR KIDS

02-11-2006 UK Watchdog Sounds Alarm On 'Surveillance Society' Information Week

23-10-2006 If Your Fingerprints Aren't Down You're Not Coming In Infowars

05-11-2006 This won't hurt, it's for your own good?? MetaFilter

"I was very concerned to read of the issues you raise about the introduction of the Junior Librarian Scheme at St Matthew's school and share your worries about the introduction of the scheme without informed parental consent being requested beforehand." David Howarth, MP for Cambridge (where LTKA was founded in June 2006)

"The mark of a civilised society is how they treat their most vulnerable" Alan Johnson MP, Labour Education Secretary, 9th October 2006, interviewed on BBC Breakfast Time (New Labour is now the ONLY UK political party supporting school fingerprinting)

04-08-2006 I JUST FOUND OUT MY CHILD WAS FINGERPRINTED 3 YEARS AGO!!!

28-09-2006 NURSERY FINGERPRINTS KIDS AGED JUST 3!!! The Daily Telegraph

21-09-2006 PARENTS' SHOCK AT FINGERPRINTING The Herts Advertiser

29-09-2006 FINGERPRINTS 'JUST BIT OF FUN' SAYS SCHOOL HEAD TEACHER

07-07-2006 SUSPENDED FROM SCHOOL UNLESS WE FINGERPRINT YOU!!

01-09-2006 Cambridge Uni security experts worried about even more
                  storage of our kids' details on large, shared databases.

"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

"Are we sending our kids to school or to prison? ... It's utterly outrageous that children as young as three are being targeted." Phil Booth, No2ID

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

15-03-2006 BIOMETRICS UNRELIABLE, SAYS EU PRIVACY HEAD C-Net News

08-09-2006 OUTRAGED PARENTS BLAST LATEST FINGERPRINT POLICY Register

02-08-2006 PRIMARY SCHOOL FINGERPRINT FIRM NOW WORTH £8 MILLION
"The size of the UK market means there remains significant opportunity for growth."

12-09-2006 Fingerprints check at city school libraries The Scotsman

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

"[Fingerprinting children at school] 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 of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC.

"You may ask, why stop with library systems, when schools have so many concerns with registration, attendance, and security? I assure you, we are way ahead of you. Watch this space." Lynn Stevens, Customer Services Manager of Micro Librarian Systems, September 2000

28-11-2006 School fingerprint plans reviewed BBC Scotland

12-09-2006 SCHOOL FINGERPRINTING HALTED IN DUNDEE The Evening Telegraph

27-10-2006 Biometric scans served up with school meals The Scotsman

15-09-2004 UK SCHOOL DROPS 'WORLD-BEATING' BIOMETRIC SYSTEM Register

04-08-2006 FINGERPRINTED AT 13 - AND NOW I REGRET IT!!!

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves." D.H. Lawrence

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side', I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already..." Anon (1933)

Will this be Tony Blair's lasting legacy? Will he be remembered as the first ever British Prime Minister to just sit back in his final months in office and let schools and nurseries quietly fingerprint MILLIONS of trusting children, some as young as three, WITHOUT having the courtesy to even inform their parents? Parents may also wonder what else schools may be secretly doing without informing them.

In the latest in a long series of misleading statements to parents, the DfES has now made the absolutely appalling claim that schools CAN fingerprint our children as much as they like WITHOUT parental consent. Whether you are a parent or not, NOW is the time to write to your MP and make your views known. Please do it today. Contact your MP here.

07-09-2006 Parents cannot prevent schools from taking their children's fingerprints, say Department for Education and Skills and the Information Commissioner. The Register

If whistleblowers with a troubled conscience choose to contact LTKA with details of any government involvement in fingerprinting four-year-olds, we urge them to use a temporary email account, such as anonymouse at an internet cafe (don't use the same cafe twice) or an unregistered pay as you go phone (bought and topped up with cash) and take care. Help us to build a better world for our children - one where they can take out a school library book without being treated like criminals. And where the state treats its citizens with the respect they deserve.
Click here to email us or send a text in confidence to our new fingerprint hotline 078 66 76 21 31.

READ MORE ABOUT SCHOOLS FINGERPRINTING OUR CHILDREN

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"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.
 
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