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Aussie Kids Foil Finger Scanner With Gummi Bears
mask.of.sanity writes "An Australian high school has installed 'secure' fingerprint scanners for roll call for senior students, which savvy kids may be able to circumvent with sweets from their lunch box. The system replaces the school's traditional sign-in system with biometric readers that require senior students to have their fingerprints read to verify attendance.
The school principal says the system is better than swipe cards because it stops truant kids getting their mates to sign-in for them. But using the Gummi Bear attack, students can make replicas of their own fingerprints from gelatin, the ingredient in Gummi Bears, to forge a replica finger. The attack worked against a bunch of scanners that detect electrical charges within the human body, since gelatin has virtually the same capacitance as a finger's skin."
And the kids circumvent it by keeping the gummy bears in their pockets on the way to class.
Once again, a "foolproof" system proves to be only as useful as the fool who invented it.
Fuck, YES. I read the original story, about the school introducing this moronic system, and could only shake my head. Attempts at total control are generally the solution proffered by lazy bureaucrats as an alternative to them doing their jobs. Here’s an idea - instead of working out ways of forcing the kids into school and keeping them there - why not work to make it compelling for them to come to school in the first place. I know, hard, right? Idiots. However, the creative (dare I say scientific) solution employed, and so quickly makes me remotely proud of our clever children. It’s nice to see the kids are far more intelligent and creative than their so-called teachers. I will have somewhat less pride when they remotely drain my bank account and I am forced to live on cast off gummi bears, but hey.
* You have to buy a new system and probably sign a support contract for it
* It ties up personnel with deployment
* It doesn't work any better than the old system
* It raises significant privacy issues not present in the old system
* It raises huge data security and disposal issues not present in the old system
* Adding a new student is more invasive and time consuming than in the old system
* Fingerprint biometrics can track an arbitrarily large set of individuals...but they can only distinguish a few hundred
Yep, that sounds like a textbook example of educational bureaucracy.
"Chris?"
"Here Miss"
"Peter?"
"Present Miss"
"Well it looks like everyone who's going to be here is here already, let's get started!" She thought knowing full well that a few of the students skipping the class will be reported to the principle yet again.
Fingerprints? Really? Whatever is wrong, it's not the fault of the system that has served us for hundreds of years, and doesn't need some stupid technology to fix it.
What? Kids willingly walk miles to school every day because it's drilled into their heads that the only way off the farm, out of the slums, or whatever their particular disadvantage happens to be, is through education. There's no magical inspirational African/South American/Chinese teaching model that somehow drives these kids out of their beds before dawn and across miles with hungry bellies and an urge to learn. Hell, most of those kids are walking miles to school every day to learn arbitrary information, out of order, and by rote. Teaching kids to be critical learners, to engage with knowledge? That's a privilege that's only found in the rich western educational model, certainly not in the shanty towns.
That being said, I understand your broader point and agree somewhat. Education has to be relevant, it should be interesting, and it shouldn't be one-size-fits-all. However, if we're honest we have to admit that that kind of system is expensive, demands teaching excellence, is hard to assess, and complicated to run. The US has over 60 million students in primary and secondary schools - that's an enormous population. There are a lot of problems with education in the west - most of them related to broader social issues like violence, poverty, ignorance et al - but it’s not nearly as bad as some of us seem to feel. There is a logic to a lot of the problems you’re complaining about and while matters could possibly be dealt with in better ways it’s going too far to claim the system itself is bullshit hell.
If the problem with cards was that people were swiping their friend's cards, and the problem with fingerprints is that they're faking them, then the problem seems to be a social one.
As noted, there's no technical solution that will keep motivated teenagers at bay.
No sig today...