Big Sister is Watching You - Part 1
As a new parent, I am worried about the safety of my child, as any normal parent would be. I am also concerned about civil liberties and privacy. However, these two concerns are colliding together in various ways in our society right now, and you should be worried about it. Let me try to convince you that your lovely UK government wants to treat all of you - yes, even you there on the third row - wants to treat all of you as a terrorist threat. In this post, I will give you the first example: children’s fingerprinting.
Fingerprinting of children is growing at an astonishing rate in England’s schools. Touting fingerprinting as a way to make access to library books simpler (just put your thumb on the reader), Micro Librarian Systems for example sell a fingerprint recogniser for primary schoolchildren. On their website, they use the following enticements as to why it’s a good idea to buy and use such as system in the school library:
No more lost or damaged reader cards!
No more lending of ID cards between borrowers!
No more bar codes being washed or tumble dried!
In other words, spend about £20,000 on a fingerprint system, fingerprint all the children in the school, and it will make it slightly easier to control the ditzy little b*stards reading habits. After all, it’s too hard to write down what books they’ve borrowed in something as simple as a book, and the children need their fingerprints scanned so the teacher can remember what their names are.
Sounds unconvincing said like that, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, plenty of schools have been taken in by the technobabble the companies spout about convenience, and about 2 million children have now had their fingerprints recorded, mostly without the knowledge, and therefore without the consent, of parents. And it’s not just for library books; such systems are also being used to keep track of lunch payments, again with the vague notion of improving efficiency, however that is defined.
Of course, the companies that sell these systems claim that the fingerprint data is secure, but having seen the entire Child Benefit database disappear on a CD a few months ago, I don’t believe that for a moment, and neither should you. And neither did Fionna Elliot, who has campaigned for parents to be informed that the security of their childrens’ identity is being compromised. As a surprisingly well-informed Daily Mail article points out, schools are even worse than governments in taking care of personal data, and most teachers are unaware that a scrapped fingerprint computer would be very handy for ID thieves. Once your fingerprints are copied by someone, you cna’t use them to identity yourself any more. Think it’s hard to copy a fingerprint? Actually, it’s quite easy, and can be done with a few simple ingredients.
LTKA has more information on all of this, but the message is pretty simple: tell your kids that if their teacher asks them for their fingerprints, say no. This message, and the fact that fingerprinting children is anyway illegal (it’s a breach of human rights, goes against the Data Protection Act, and can breach the 2002 Education Act), is finally getting through to some people, and councils are starting to distance themselves from possible litigation.
What does central Government have to do with fingerprinting in schools? UK.Gov is subsidising fingerprinting technology formerly through the DFES curriculum online project, and now through Harnessing Technology funds. This is seen by a number of people as softening up our younger population to accept intrusive identity checks as a normal part of life, in preparation for the dreaded Identity Cards.
By the way, it’s not just kids that are being asked to present their thumbs to identify themselves. Parents at a nursery in Kent are also being asked, as are those at a nursery in Swansea. Whatever happened to using your eyes and brain to identify the person coming through that front door? And anyway, as anyone who has used a security gate knows, you can just tailgate behind someone who is authorised to get in. Totally pointless.
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