Laughing Boy wrote:
] Call me crazy... but my highschool had I think a magstripe or
] barcode reader for scanning student photo IDs. It seemed to
] work really well at keeping track of who bought what in the
] cafeteria without conjuring scary Orwellian "Big Brother"
] images. I fail to see why a biometric system is necessary in
] a school cafeteria.
]
] Moral of the story... your civil liberties are not taken away
] in one foul swoop - they are chipped away little by little so
] not enough people notice to raise any red flags with a large
] percentage of the population.

I'm not sure exactly how to respond to this one.. I'm not so sure this is a problem.

I am of the opinion that biometric authentication and tracking systems are going to become more common, if only because the technology is starting to get cheap and work properly. Many of us have dealt with hand scanners, as they are pretty common in high security data-centers. They are rarely used though, because they take forever, and fail two out of three times. Aside from those technical flaws which relegate the scanners to wall flower duty, I don't see a problem with them.

In the case of authentication, something-you-know coupled with something-you-are is much stronger then something-you-have schemes. We will see more of that. In the case of tracking, it simply removes the requirement of a token. Kids frequently loose things, so its only fitting this winds up getting used in schools.

I don't really understand why everyone gets so worked up over the application of biometrics.. Maybe I'm missing something. This isn't facial recognition profiling, or something like that. This is just trying to eliminate a physical token.

I'm not sure what civil liberties are being chipped away at here.. "Show me your papers" and "Show me your hand", only you can't get yourself a fake hand. The possible problems lie in who is doing the asking, and what for. In this case, its looks like the same situation as before, the style of asking is just changing.

This is a far cry from having a thumb scanners on some big all knowing network at the door of every bar, coffee house, club, etc.. If the system in question here is just used by the school, to track/authorize school lunches, I don't see it as a problem. If the system gets extended to things beyond that then it may be a problem, but no more so then any other networked id system.

For instance, those magstripe systems you didn't have a problem with. The way most college's use them, I do have a problem with. The systems are insecure, they are tied into everything, and they usually use an SSN for an identifier. Those are more of a problem then this, from the sounds of it. Someone can't steal my thumb and screw up my life without me realizing it.

RE: Some question using student fingerprints for school meals