to refuse to allow school to take DSs fingerprints for new fingerprint technology?

[ChaoticEvil]

DS1 & DS2 attend the same secondary school. Currently the school has a system of using key cards in order to get into the buildings and to buy lunch. They (I) pay an exorbitant fee when they lose the card, but they are easily replaced by filling in a form and the old cards blocked from being used. All fine.

The school wants to move to a fingerprint recognition system from September and plan to start taking all fingerprints over the last few weeks of this term. Apparently the actual fingerprint image won't be stored, but instead an algorithm based on unique points which have been taken from the image of the fingerprint.

I can't quite say why I am uncomfortable with this but I am.

AIBU to refuse to allow it? What would happen then?

Or assuming IABU can somehow help me allay my weird feeling about it!

RollOnSummerBreak Wed 10-Jul-19 13:19:51

My ds school removed all cards and other payment methods. No biometrics. No lunch..

So they are acting illegally then. People have the right to opt out of biometrics.

My DD's school did this 10 years ago. Unless you have prolific burglars in the house why would you worry?

We were initially concerned and now really happy with it. Our son's school was still using cash, and I am glad to be relieved of the mental load of making sure we have a jar of pound coins! I get this isn't your issue.

I was concerned, but once I learned how the system works I think it is great.

Of course they store the fingerprints, even if they are in a different format. It's grooming the population into accepting more surveillance, and biometrics used for more things.

Because biometric data isn't only used by the police. It's used by passports, border control, banking, secure workplaces etc etc.

If the school fails to properly safeguard and destroy the data that biometric information will be insecure and thus unreliable for the rest of your child's life.

Nor am I comfortable with my child growing up believing it's totally normal and ok that his biometric data is used to track the food he eats, the books he reads and where he goes.

MummytCSJ Children struggle to,remember a short PIN code? They'll have to remember far more complicated things than that at school!

Have you asked the school who holds the data created from the fingerprint, is it the school, their IT provider or a third party provider of the fingerprint system? What happens to records when the pupil leaves school?

A poor metaphor would be to think of taking a few points from a signature (highest part, lowest part, furthest right, furthest left and so on). Not enough to recreate the image but enough to compare to a new signature and see how closely they match.

The answer to the data holding questionmight give you some comfort though I see you don't have a lot of confidence in the schools IT security.

GDPR has sharp teeth now (see BA and Marriott hotels multi-million fines, much higher than before GDPR) so the penalties and reporting requirements should scare better behaviour in organisations, until Brexit at least.......

The map/points format is how security services screen fingerprints en masse, so the whole thing about 'they are not storing the fingerprint - only points made from it' so it can't be used for anything else is a bit of misdirection.

As to the 'they will remove the data when they leave school' yes quite true but will they also scrub all the backups they have made as well?

When people leave our place we never remove data about them or the the data they produced, with the cost of storing data going down every single year and the amount we are producing increasing so much each year the cost of keeping old data is not significant so we just keep it all.

There are government guidelines for retention and destruction

There are government guidelines for lots of things. It doesn't automatically follow that they are followed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15840373

My partner is a webdesigner and does data management, and he has not given consent for any of his children to be biometrically fingerprinted.
My children have not had it either, and there is no difficulty at school in getting their schoool lunch.
Both of us are pretty objective, highly educated and stay up to date with technology and science.
People are very quick to believe the sales pitch, and then quick to complain when the data is abused/leaked etc. There is alot of clever wording around why it is so different from a fingerprint, but the school has no legal right to enforce this and must obtain your consent.
The school also has a legal obligation to provide easy to use alternative methods of payment.
If you feel uncomfortable with this recent trend then in this instance I would say go with your gut, you are not being unreasonable.

There's always packed lunches I guess.

OP if you have Alexa, Siri, Bixby, Nest et al, then have at it. You've lost the battle.

Get comfortable with putting up with this kind of instrusion and believe it's normal and perfectly safe, because it's easy. In my opinion. I'm not a criminal, I don't think like a criminal (or the government), so just because I cannot think of any nefarious acts that can be done with my data, doesn't mean, someone else can't think of any. Just the idea that it's okay to be spied on in all aspects of your life seems wrong to me. But hey OP, if you've got a smartTV, you've been taken over already.

@JacquesHammer - I've responded to the OP because she was asking and I've shared how I feel about it. It seems to me that you're the one finding differences difficult.

Buddhababy,

Where does it say in legislation of school mandated guidance that 'The school also has a legal obligation to provide easy to use alternative methods of payment? I'm genuinely interested as have never heard this.

I could find the following workplace guidance
payment.www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2013/06/Briefings-and-CircularsBiometrics2.pdf
that says an employer can mandate biometric identification if they follow GDPR/Data Protection requirements and has good reasons but couldn't find anything that says alternatives must be available?

I feel quite left behind! At my DC's schools they use lunch money/tickets at primary, and a code system (linked to a payment system, where I can see what they purchase) for secondary!
I, an old, used ...cash!!!!!

Zilla 26(7) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 - "The relevant authority must ensure that reasonable alternative means are available by which the child may do, or be subject to, anything which the child would have been able to do, or be subject to, had the child’s biometric information been processed."

The relevant Department for Education guidance (<a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/692116/Protection_of_Biometric_Information.pdf" target="_blank">https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/692116) states -
"Reasonable alternative arrangements must be provided for pupils who do not use automated biometric recognition systems either because their parents have refused consent (or a parent has objected in writing) or due to the pupil’s own refusal to participate in the collection of their biometric data. The alternative arrangements should ensure that pupils do not suffer any disadvantage or difficulty in accessing services/premises etc. as a result of their not participating in an automated biometric recognition system. Likewise, such arrangements should not place any additional burden on parents whose children are not participating in such a system."

It seems to me that you're the one finding differences difficult

I very much understand why you would make a different choice.

I don't understand why you would be astonished at someone making a different choice.

Do you find a lot of things astonishing?!

You trust them to look after the welfare of your child everyday, trust them to give them an education, have (presumably) given lots of details about your child - full name, dob, address, medical conditions etc, but you don't trust them to have bits of their fingerprint

As a side note this makes me feel very old, when I was at school it was actual cash money!

It’s a commonplace system now in many schools and even workplaces. We still use cards in the college I work at but it wouldn’t surprise me if we switch over. I wouldn’t be bothered whatsoever.

We have this at our DS's school. They use the thumb print to scan in and out of class too.

It's actually cut down truanting because there's a scanner on each door which is linked to a computer on the teacher's desk. So if DS scans in that morning, then doesn't scan in for maths, it shows the teacher that DS should be there. A young girl went missing between registration and her second lesson a couple of weeks ago. They found her by lunch time. She wouldn't have actually been missed until the afternoon with the old system of registration before classes and after lunch.

Like a few other posters I also like the fact that I can keep an eye on DS's lunches and his attendance (I can log in to see if he's scanned in for classes too).

My husband does this at work. It's great.

“Hang on, have I slipped into a parallel world where fingerprint systems at schools are common knowledge? Literally never heard of this before this post.”

It is very common in secondary schools. DD’s school introduced this system when she started there in 2011. I had no objection to the school taking DD’s fingerprint. It is much quicker than keying in a series of numbers.

“Just do not see why schools should bring in technoloy like fingerprints”

Because prepaid cards can get lost, forgotten or stolen.

Things are bad in schools when the reason for introducing fingerprints to pay for food is to avoid children being subjected to violence and theft.

Both my DCs used this system all through secondary school and DD used it for the university library. These systems are run by experienced companies who have to comply to plenty of rules including the destruction of ALL data once it is no longer in use.

Fingerprints are not stored, points from the print are basically turned into data strings and the finger print cannot be recreated from those data strings.

@FuriousCheekyFucker completely agree. How many on this thread logged into their phones with either a fingerprint or retina scan?