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Fingerprint Requirement For a Work-Study Job?

Posted by timothy on from the dept-of-double-speak-is-closed-please-come-in dept.

BonesSB writes "I'm a student at a university in Massachusetts, where I have a federal work-study position. Yesterday, I got an email from the office that is responsible for student run organizations (one of which I work for) saying that I need to go to their office and have my fingerprints taken for the purposes of clocking in and out of work. This raises huge privacy concerns for me, as it should for everybody else. I am in the process of contacting the local newspaper, getting the word out to students everywhere, and talking directly to the office regarding this. I got an email back with two very contradictory sentences: 'There will be no image of your fingerprints anywhere. No one will have access to your fingerprints. The machine is storing your prints as a means of identifying who you are when you touch it.' Does anybody else attend a school that requires something similar? This is an obvious slippery slope, and something I am not taking lightly. What else should I do?"

4 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. What else should I do? by NfoCipher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Start looking for another job..

    --
    I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
  2. It's like storing a hash. by HiggsBison · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apparently what it is storing is a statistical summary of the biometric information (if that's not redundant). It doesn't store the fingerprints themselves anymore than an operating system will store your password. With the password, whatever you type in has to have a hash which matches the hash associated with your account. With the scanner, the summary generated each time you plop your hand on the scanner has to match (to a significant degree) the summary on file.

    But, yes, if someone finds your fingerprints somewhere else, and they have access to this data, they can be reasonably certain it is you.

    --
    My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
  3. Re:Non-issue? by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not sure what `safe` has to do with anything, unless you think you're likely to catch swine flu from touching a fingerprint reader or something.

    Safety means you won't get your finger chopped off by someone who wants to impersonate you to enter the building.

    Safety (for people) is higher when there's no biometric system in place, becaus the bad guys don't have an incentive to chop their fingers off or gouge out their eyes.

  4. Re:They could go even further... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This leads to the principle flaw of biometrics: If someone manages to reproduce the key (synthetic fingerprint for example), there is no way to issue a different key to the owner of the original. Anywhere you authenticate with a fingerprint, the people who control the system can gather all information which is needed to create a fake fingerprint, plus there are countless other ways to get a person's fingerprint, and you still only have that one set of fingerprints that you can't change. What are you going to do then?