Iris Scans Are the New School IDs

An anonymous reader writes "Winthrop University in South Carolina is testing out iris scanning technology during freshman orientation this summer. Students had their eyes scanned as they received their ID cards in June. 'Iris scanning has a very high level of accuracy, and you don't have to touch anything, said James Hammond, head of Winthrop University's Information Technology department. 'It can be hands free security.'" I wouldn't want to be locked out a building because of a scratched lens or a system outage, though.

Comments

How would that be different...

[Anonymous Coward]

from being locked out due to a broken/lost/defective key/card/etc in any other building access system...?????

Re:How would that be different...

[MacGyver2210]

I think the first thing I would do, then, is to opt to use a 'disabled' alternative. My iris pattern is not something I am willing to provide to the school under any circumstances, along with my fingerprints, retinal map, and a number of other biometric options.

If they need something beyond an ID with RFID, QR code, or a magstripe, they need to provide some pretty fucking compelling reasons for me to go along with it.

Re:How would that be different...

[Anonymous Coward]

from being locked out due to a broken/lost/defective key/card/etc in any other building access system...?????

You can replace keys/cards if somebody else gets the numbers off them and uses them for other activities.

Now stop trolling.

School full of stupid kids?

[superdave80]

The reader will beep if they're on the right bus and honk if they're on the wrong one.

Or you could teach them to read the numbers on the side of the bus, but that's just my zany, wacky idea. Or are the kids too stupid to get on the exact same numbered bus day after day?

Re:School full of stupid kids?

[cervesaebraciator]

Besides, we still have human beings driving the buses, do we not? These same humans are charged with remembering the route to and location of each student's home. I should hope they'd also be able to recognize the student at sight.

Re:School full of stupid kids?

[khallow]

Or you could teach them to read the numbers on the side of the bus

if these were regular kids, you'd have a point. But these are college students. It's not fair to expect people like that to master such sophisticated mental tasks.

Re:School full of stupid kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

That part's harder than you think. I drove two busloads of kids a day with 50+ kids. I knew where the stops were, but it took me a few weeks to start getting familiar who was getting on and off where, still it would have been easy to sneak an extra person or less people- plus people are absent, have approval to bring home a friend, etc. We do our best, but there's no way I'm going to learn 100+ kids faces that I see for at most about 30 seconds a day as they get on and off to the point I'd know exactly who gets on and off at each stop and their names/faces.

What are we doing to our children?

[Presto Vivace]

We are conditioning them to live in a police state.

Re:What are we doing to our children?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That is such bullshit. Public education leads to more workers full stop - that's why industrialists promoted public education.

The whole brainwashing/docile/pod-people crap is just conspiracy theory gone wild.

Re:What are we doing to our children?

[cervesaebraciator]

Public education leads to more workers [...] that's why industrialists promoted public education.

These things are not mutually exclusive. I think you have mistaken my meaning and that we have more in common than you might guess. I hold to know "brainwashing" or "pod-people" theory. Indeed, the only snarky comments you'll find me make on /. is in response to people who reckon others "sheeple". Neither did I indicate that manageability was the only interest industrialists would have is in publicly educated workers. I only focused on this because it pertained to GP's comment. Just because the powerful secure one set of interests does not mean they do not simultaneously secure others. Nor is this "conspiracy theory", much less conspiracy theory gone wild.

From your statement quoted above, I'll take for granted that you agree with me that the industrialist/philanthropists who supported public education did so at least in part to serve their own interests (much like the modern parallel FWD.us has an interest in promoting certain kinds of immigration policies). Indeed, having a worker who can at least read is an enormous advantage to the industrialist, to say nothing of the worker. Even so, there are aspects of public schooling that lend themselves quite well to promoting what I described as "docile" behavior. The first is the unnatural hours for a child. No one who has spent any amount of time with children can hold that maintaining an 8-4:00 schedule is natural for them (or, arguably, any human being). It's not. But it's perfectly fitted for the needs of an industrial economy where laborers working in shifts make the system more efficient.

Second, the grouping of children in the institutionalized environment inevitably requires that they maintain a certain kind of regular discipline which would be unnecessary for other economic structures, but is essential when you've an industrial economy. In school you learn you must work precisely when you're told and rest only during allotted breaks. You have a lunch hour (which you must walk in a line to attend). You must request trips to relieve yourself. You are always answerable to supervisors, indeed for every word that comes from your mouth. You learn to apply peer pressure to others on the line (I mean classroom), knowing you're often evaluated based upon group projects. You're encouraged by those in power to rat your peers out. All these things are necessary in the setting of the modern classroom but they're also perfect motivations for support from industrialists. Little wonder, in light of this, that the pro-industrialist Whigs would be so pro-public schooling. Thus we find so important figures as Horace Mann promoting public education as a means of "moral" improvement and disciplining the rabble. The discipline here is the discipline of the industrial age, governed by the clock and not by the natural rhythms of the adult (much less the juvenile) person.

But I also say this from personal experience. My own wife was home-schooled and I've had numerous friends who were as well. Of the home-schooled, I've noticed a common pattern: they've a much lower tolerance for institutional, bureaucratic nonsense than I and my other public-schooled friends have. For the latter (myself included) it seems perfectly, even comforting, to pull a 9-5, deal with irrational BS from coworkers, and blow it off at the end of the day. For the former, at least in my experience, have some trouble adjusting to the rather absurd work schedule and, above all, to the basic irrationality of human behavior in institutionalized life. They're just as bright and often better educated (again, in my experience) than their public school peers. But they frequently lack that cynicism one manages to develop as a survival mechanism in public school. I remain uncertain whether such a survival mechanism is a blessing or curse.

The fact is that the modern educational system works on

Re:lol wut?

[cervesaebraciator]

Sure. Those have problems too. But why would you pay for a new (read: more expensive) version of a system that will have those same problems, plus new as yet undiscovered ones? Unless, of course, it has more to do with the business and office politics of the thing (the former being a salesperson willing to promise you a solution to a problem you didn't know you had; the latter being an administrator who will subsequently seek a promotion based on how effectively he increased campus security [theater]).

Re:Scratched Lens?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if you take sandpaper to the sensor on the device itself periodically.

Not an easy process for some people

[techno-vampire]

My eyes are very sensitive to bright light. Every year, when I get my eyes examined, I have to have them dilated so that the inside of the eye can be properly examined. This procedure is so painful that the ophthalmologist has to hold my eyelid open because no matter how hard I try I can't keep it open otherwise. I've offered to do i, but she always prefers to take care of it herself. And, from what she's said, this isn't exactly uncommon. I can just imagine what's going to happen the first time a student finds out that they can't keep their eye open long enough for the scan and can't get into class without it.

Re:Not an easy process for some people

[MacGyver2210]

They can scan the Iris with Infrared light which is not detected by the eye, and therefore won't trigger the bright-light reaction. The part they are scanning is also the Iris - the colored ring surrounding the pupil - and not the Retina, at the back of your eye, requiring said pupil dilation.

Re:Height issues

[cervesaebraciator]

This brings up an interesting point: think of the accessibility issues this raises. You can reach a card reader from a wheel chair. Will everyone have to bend down to wheel chair height to use the scanner or will those in wheel chairs be asked to stand?

So when someone steals...

[MasseKid]

So when someone steals credentials, how do you change your "password"?

Re: lol wut?

[alen]

You can share ID cards, but how do you share eyes between people?

Again, biometrics are not good for authentication.

[LeifOfLiberty]

Biometrics are good for surveillance but not for authentication. A good authentication method supports revocation of an identification key, such as would be needed in the event of its compromise. It should not be trusted as a factor in authentication either, for the same reason. Great for theater though I suppose. Article about it here growingliberty.com/thumbs-down-for-fingerprint-identification

Re: lol wut?

[publiclurker]

Well, borrowing is easy, it's returning the eyes that is difficult.

What exactly is the security issue?

[FuzzNugget]

What exactly is the security issue that's significant enough to warrant such extreme and invasive measures? Is it such a prestigious institution that there are hoards of non-registered kids trying to sneak in? Is there a problem with rampant crime or extremely bad behaviour? What possible real reason could they have, other than, "hey, we got funding for this fancy new tech!" or conditioning them to the future of a police state?

Re:Another reason

[rubycodez]

nice going, those jerks will have spawn but you won't, so you've contributed to the decline of the species.

Hold on!

[Loki_666]

Why is everyone discussion the actual method, and not mentioning why the hell any sort of security system is needed in the first place?

Ok, maybe i'm going to sound like an old fart here, but when i was a kid school doors were only locked overnight. Otherwise it was open access. Not sure how it is in the UK these days, maybe they are also becoming scaredy cats like the 'muricans. I'm now in Russia and our kids' nursery didn't lock the doors either, they go to private school now, and while the door isn't locked we do have a security guard at the entrance, but i'm pretty sure that is more to stop people coming in and nicking stuff rather than protection of/from the children.

Why do i think this is only about control and security theatre? Making sure he kids actually attend? Hell, when i was at school it was normal to occasionally skive off school but the class register would show your absence anyway. If kids are not attending then its time to have a word with the parents.