Schools Scanned Students' Irises Without Permission

schwit1 writes "Parents in Polk County, Florida are outraged after learning that students in area schools had their irises scanned as part of a new security program without obtaining proper permission. Two days before their Memorial Day weekend break, kids from at least three different public schools — Bethune Academy (K–5), Davenport School of the Arts (K–5, middle, and high school), and Daniel Jenkins Academy (grades 6–12) — were subjected to iris scans without their parents' knowledge or consent. The scans are essentially optical fingerprints, which the school intended to collect to create a database of biometric information for school-bus security."

Comments

Re:If anyone should know..

[Hatta]

All of these issues are pretty much based on so much of the violence which the US schools have been faced for the last 20+ yrs.

Juvenile violent crime has been falling for the past 20 years. These issues must be based on something else.

Re:s/Freedom/Security/g

[cusco]

Actually we're talking about neither, in this case. I work in the physical security industry, and have worked with iris scanners. They're actually one of the better biometric systems out there, EXCEPT that unlike fingerprints iris patterns change as children are growing. This is a rather inappropriate use of a technology developed for use on adults who have a (relatively) stable iris pattern. It's a ridiculously inappropriate application of a technology developed for two-factor authentication, since it's going to be used in place of the current proximity cards. Biometric technologies should not be used alone, they're too undependable.