LTKA - How does the scheme work in practice? (against schools fingerprinting our children)

"The fingerprint-recognition systems tend to run slowly (slower than manually punching in a number, for instance) if a school is using a computer that is more than a few years old. Additionally, large student populations can slow the system since it has to run through every stored image before identifying the best match." Bob Engen, president of Educational Biometric Technology, Minnesota

"We don't deny it's popular among librarians and many teachers, and there are many quotes to that effect. It reduces their workload. With this and other biometric systems in schools they could spend all day drinking tea in the staff room without ever having to meet a single pupil. Our schools are becoming factories." Concerned parents, Cambridge

"Chesterton Community College have a fingerprinting scheme in their school library and from what I've been told it [seems to be] a disaster; we have a friend who repeatedly gets fines for books he's never had anything to do with, and so has to go through the rigmarole of informing them of this. The reasons are obvious: someone who knows the kids, knows the books, and has developed their own system to suit their needs (cards in shoeboxes if necessary) is always going to be more efficient than a computer system programmed by a computer programmer who knows nothing about how schools, libraries or whatever work." Concerned parent, Cambridge, via email

As delivered, standard Junior Librarian works in three ways - library cards, barcode stickers in homework books, laminated A4 sheet for a whole class, kept in a folder. The entire system functions normally without the thumbprint scanners, which are OPTIONAL EXTRAS costing at least £260 per scanner, but 3500 schools decided within the space of four years to install scanners, earning Micro Librarian Systems an extra £1 million just for fingerprinting our children. So it certainly works well for the company and their investors.

"What is wrong with paper and pencil, and a staff person being dependable and accurate? Our kids are being made into robots with constant use of computers and fingerprints. Someone needs to rethink this idea." 'sunshine' of Palermo, ME, letter to the Portland Press Herald Monday, June 19, 2006

"If your school is networked, the system can be installed on every PC in the school. This will give children the opportunity to search the library catalogue, write reviews and reserve books from any PC in the school." Company Promotional Literature.

"Potentially, this means the system can be hacked into from any PC in the school." Data security consultant

"Fingerprint scanners are vulnerable to hacking with confectionary. A Japanese researcher from Yokohama University fooled scanners from 11 manufacturers on average 80% of the time." The Guardian, November 25, 2004

"An encryption standard widely used in digitally signing documents and programs has a flaw in it that could allow for the creation of forgeries." CNET News

"You don't even need to decrypt the pupils' data stored on the system to use it for other purposes. All you do is scan in another print, lifted from an object or taken from a different database, and see if this results in a match, much as you would do when taking out a library book." Security consultant

"Education, Education, Education" Tony Blair "Consent, Consent, Consent" Parents

We are campaigning to have the widespread use of biometrics in schools debated in Parliament, & henceforth strictly regulated & closely monitored, with a statutory requirement for explicit parental consent wherever biometrics are used.

More about schools fingerprinting our children Please help us!

>> 10 Things You Should Know About Schools Fingerprinting Children <<