A school is accused of abusing children’s civil liberties with plans to record their fingerprints for school dinners. Such was the outrage from parents at St Martin’s School in Hutton, the idea was put on hold just a day after being unveiled while fears are quelled.
The school wants to use state-of-the-art biometric finger mapping technology replacing the need for cash in the canteen.
But is there really any risk or privacy concerns here? Are we concerned that kids will be tracked on what they eat or is there some more serious privacy or security concerns?
Head teacher Dr Nigel Darby said the school had put the scheme on hold to reassure parents and to see whether the new coalition Government actually bans the use of fingerprinting at schools, as it has previously pledged.
He also said the data being held would not be the actual fingerprint but a unique number based on four individual points of the print.
As a result he said the data could not be used to create a fingerprint and catch pupils for any wrongdoings such as theft.
“No fingerprints are stored and it is not in any way invading civil liberties,” he said.
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