Schools embrace fingerprint scanning

[flashl]

Source: Stateline

The lunch lines in West Virginia’s Wood County schools move much faster than they used to. After students fill their trays with food, they approach a small machine, push their thumbs against a touch pad — and with that small movement, they’ve paid for their meal.

For half the state’s school districts, as well as hundreds more across the country, the days of dealing with lost lunch cards or forgotten identification numbers are over.

“A student cannot forget their finger,” said Beverly Blough, the director of food service in Wood County School District, which in 2003 became the first district in West Virginia to use finger scanners.

But the emergence of finger scanning has also sparked a backlash from parents and civil libertarians worried about identity theft and violation of children’s privacy rights. In several cases when parents have objected, school districts have backed down, and some states have outlawed or limited the technology.

Stateline

Read more: http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=292262

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Don't worry, its FOR the Children!

[Zorra]

1. The genius of George Orwell becomes more apparent every day that Bu*h

remains in the position of court appointed head of state.

[OKthatsIT]

13. Confront Sen Byrd...After all, there is a Dem Majority in Congress

This is so outrageous, and unnecessary, it's obvious a 'investment decision'.

The New Wave in American Economics is neither Democrat or Republican. Both parties are supporting these upstart 'surveillance companies' to take hold and become a permanent fixture. And for what?

We, The People, are paying for our own imprisonment and enslavement. And Congress permits these practices because they're involved in the funding deals. There wouldn't be any other explanation for this.

Always watch where these campaign contributions originate...look at their records.

[Popol Vuh]

17. Here's another thought

Is the wall which is being built along the southern border a wall to keep people out or a wall to keep people in?

So many video surveillance cameras, RFID chips and GPS tracking devices now days. Makes you wonder.

[OKthatsIT]

22. Washing Politicians need campaign finance from some reliable sector

It's really disgusting and it is bipartisan.

[tpsbmam]

2. Parents who don't object to this seriously need to have their

heads examined. They should be protesting loudly -- instead, I'm sure way too many are shutting up and going blindly along.

[Burma Jones]

3. I'm not so sure about nefarious intent here

Harris Teeter grocery stores have this technology available to check out. I figure someone saw this in action, thought it would be a good thing and got it going. Of course, the road to fascism is paved with good intentions.

I do see a very positive benefit from this though for kids that are on free or reduced meal programs. Currently, many of these kids do not avail themselves of this important benefit because of the stigma attached to using a voucher or going to a separate line to get your breakfast/lunch. Now, if you replace the fingerprint with something else, and make everyone use it, you can remove the stigma.

[tpsbmam]

5. Slippery slope....and it builds a database for the gov't to access. n/t

[Gormy Cuss]

9. The fingerprint scan links to some deposit or billing account. Why not just use names?

Kid gives his/her name at the register and the cost is debited. No need to treat the free/reduced lunch kids any differently.

This could leave open the option for parents who choose to send the kid to school with cash, but I suspect the real motivation behind the fingerprint scan is to force everyone to use a cashless system (thus "saving" time and effort accounting for the money.)

[Lorien]

4. Train them to accept Big Brother from a young age

that will create a very manageable flock of sheep!

[flashl]

6. Let's sing! "Every step you take, I'll be watching you ..."

"A growing number of schools are using biometrics, or the science of identification based on physiological or behavioral features like facial or voice recognition, to have students pay for meals, log their attendance, board buses, check out books and visit the nurse’s office. Administrators cite many benefits, chief among them efficiency."

[meow2u3]

18. Only one good thing about biometrics

It's the only thing that guards against identity theft. Otherwise, it's useless and invasive.

[blackspade]

7. NO frickin' way

will my kids be subjected to this crap.
Implants, fingerprints, and retina scans!!
I'm waiting for them to cut to the chase and just give us all bar code tattoos.

[HockeyMom]

8. Fingerprinting for LUNCH?

The parents at the school where I used to work had a fit when the school wanted all the kids to have picture ID cards (like the teachers wear).

Imagine what the reaction would have been to fingerprints?

[LeftyMom]

19. The teachers wear photo IDs?

If the school's so big that the teachers aren't all known on sight, it's definitely too damn big.

Really, what's the point of that?

[LibDemAlways]

10. Then, when they get back to class, they are

interrupted by a school administrator who orders them out while their belongings are sniffed by dogs looking for drugs.

This is standard procedure in my daughter's school.

Unbelievable how quickly we've surrendered our right to privacy and with so little protest.

[LeftyMom]

20. They did that in my HS

but the dogs were only allowed to sniff at the lockers, supposedly.

The thing was, the school was overcrowded that lockers were only assigned one for two people. I certainly didn't want to be responsible for some other kid's bag o' weed, and I knew my family didn't have the money to get me out of it if some dog alerted on my shared locker, so I just fucked up my back carrying all my books around for four years.

Then, my junior and senior year, they started doing those stupid lockdown drills where they pretend there's a school shooter or some nonsense like that. Reminded me of bomb drills when I was a kid. Man, I must have hit the sweet spot of nonsense to catch both in one academic career.

[Doctor Cynic]

11. BMW tried fingerprint keys a few years ago

they abandoned it after bandits cut off fingers. So I'm sure some bully will cut off fingers instead of asking for their lunch money now.

[pleah]

12. There is already a whole generation of kids in the data base.

Every time they publicize a kidnapping parents flock to have their children printed.

Are we there yet?

[AlphaCentauri]

14. The next thing, those machines will be in the police patrols

so the police will know if someone has skip lunch

[flashl]

15. Are we there yet? Cashless.

CASHLESS, NOT BANKLESS

Sep. 23, 1996 <=======

After watching everyone from Microsoft to Meca Software gobble up online-banking customers, banks have become eager to prove that they're not headed for extinction. Last week IBM and a group of 15 U.S. and Canadian banking behemoths, including Bank of America, Banc One and Mellon Bank, unveiled a venture that aims to provide a full range of financial services to the banks' 60 million customers at the touch of a telephone button or the click of a mouse. Called Integrion, the partnership will phase in such activities as bill paying, electronic lending and stock and bond trading beginning next year.
...
The ambitious project will join a host of so-called E-money experiments that are popping up around the globe. The goal is to replace cash and checks with electronic transactions that cost just pennies to process. Citibank, a leader in this push for a cashless society, is developing what it calls an Electronic Monetary System that will permit consumers and companies to make payments electronically anywhere in the world. Visa, fresh off a test of 300,000 smart cards--plastic embedded with a cache of electronic cash--at the Atlanta Olympics, will soon launch similar projects in 14 other countries, including Canada, Australia and in Hong Kong.

E-money devotees like Valerie Baptiste, a San Francisco secretary, think cash is passe. Baptiste pays for her morning bagel and decaf with a smart card designed by Britain's Mondex and being tested in the U.S. with partners that include Wells Fargo and AT&T. As other customers fumble with change, Baptiste hands her card to a cashier who takes less than five seconds to punch it into a machine that deducts $2.15 from the stored-up funds. "This is the beginning of the end of cash," Baptiste says. Unless banks charge swiftly into the E-money era, it could be the end of many of them too.

Time

Just thinking out loud, maybe our current credit crisis will usher in the cashless society?

[The2ndWheel]

16. Well that's another step to be taken out of the process

"Baptiste hands her card to a cashier who takes less than five seconds to punch it into a machine"

Who needs a cashier? A cashierless society would save another 2, maybe even 3 seconds. Hell, lets say 3.5 seconds. You can save 3.5 goddamn seconds!! 3.5 seconds!!!!!!!!!!

[superconnected]

21. Should we ever have to over throw our government if they decide to be an autocracy and govern us

without or consent(our right per the declaration of independence), then this only makes it harder.

However the would be totalitarian regime will have a much easier time of it with these orweilling control steps.

So I guess I'm saying, the bad guys just scored more points and vigilence to protect our constitution seems to be failing again.