I read almost all the way through this article by Adam Vrankulj before I realized they were talking about the U.K. and not the U.S. The concerns are the same, of course. The following is in reference to the U.K., and I’m not sure what the comparable statistic is for the U.S.:
According to the Department of Education, 30 percent of secondary schools and five percent of primary schools in the country use fingerprinting or facial recognition to record attendance, enable students to borrow library books, pay for lunch of access certain buildings within school systems.
Last year, the Biometrics Institute, an independent international body representing biometrics users, academia and the industry called for caution in widening access to the National Pupil Database (NPD) as proposed by the UK government.
According to the Biometrics Institute, the government’s proposal would allow private sector and other previously excluded groups to access the national database in order to enable research, education planning and other services to be performed.
Whether it’s an issue of adoption, privacy, security or cost, it’s likely biometric systems will increasingly be implemented in schools, and their use in cafeterias is just the tip of the iceberg.
Read more on BiometricUpdate.com.