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

s/Freedom/Security/g

[Gothmolly]

You'll lose both, and deserve neither.

Re:s/Freedom/Security/g

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll lose both, and deserve neither.

The dead horse is starting to stink. keep beating, though, if it makes you happy.

We are a police state in the US now. The excuses are terrorism, drugs, child porn, whatever - and there's a loud minority of people who want that shit and a silent majority who just grumble on the rare occasions when it bothers them - like having their nail file being confiscated at the TSA checkpoint.

Those of us who saw it coming have lost. There is nothing to do now except wait for the day that it gets so bad - if ever - that regular people start pressuring their politicians to put the cat back in the bag. I have given up. I point and say, "This is where we are headed!" and I get the look of a cow chewing in its cud.

John Q. Public is worried about his job and his standard of living. He has his big screen TV for his football games that he got on sale for $799 and is estatic but there's this niggling feeling that he's getting poorer. His salary hasn't gone down but he's feels poorer. More money comes out of his pocket for health care, groceries cost a bit more, and it costs $30 more to fill his tank - even though there's an oil boom in the US right now.

And we expect him to care about about some pissant Florida town that's scanning the irises of kids eyes for "security".

Re:s/Freedom/Security/g

[ColdWetDog]

We're not really talking about security hear. We're talking about control.

It's a subtly difference concept.

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.

Oh, the ironies...

[Mystakaphoros]

Meanwhile, down the hall, students were studying the Bill of Rights.

Re:Oh, the ironies...

[JustOK]

Illinois high school teacher John Dryden has been reprimanded and docked a day’s pay after informing his students of their Constitutional rights before administering a school-mandated survey about “at-risk behavior.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/29/high-school-teacher-punished-for-informing-students-of-their-fifth-amendment-right/

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:scanning students for bus?

[Nickodeimus]

...and it takes one law or event like 9/11 to change that. This is the problem with almost all government overreach. It starts out as a benign "think of the children" scenario and turns into something that is monstrous because some law perverts what was originally intended.

Re:scanning students for bus?

[gstoddart]

And yet, once this information is in the hands of a private entity or even a government entity, the DHS can demand it under the Patriot Act and not tell anybody.

At this point, you pretty much have to assume that anything ever collected about you can end up in the hands of government if they decide they want it.

Imagine a world in which children have all of their biometric data collected and cataloged before they can even spell biometric -- because it seems to be happening.

I sincerely hope there are some pretty harsh legal penalties for this, and that the companies are ordered to destroy the data. A school board has no business doing this kind of thing without parental consent. This is just blatant stupidity and over-reaching.