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School Installs Biometric Fingerprint System For Cafeteria
An anonymous reader writes with news about a school in England that has introduced a cashless cafeteria system that is raising some privacy concerns among some. Stourbridge students will soon be able to pay for their lunch without searching their pockets for change. Redhill School has spent £20,000 updating its dining facilities and introducing a cashless catering system. The system will allow parents to deposit funds into students catering accounts, to be debited by the pupil's biometric fingerprint scan at the point of sale. Headteacher Stephen Dunster said: "The benefits are that pupils are less likely to lose cash, parents know their children are using their dinner money to buy nutritious food and there will also be a system to alert staff if students are purchasing food that they may be allergic to."
I work in IT in English schools.
Welcome to a decade ago.
I've worked in several schools that have biometric library systems and the move to cashless canteens has been underway for years (I've never happened to work with one, but that's not because they aren't around).
It is sold as preventing bullying, stopping you having to pay for the cards, etc. The privacy implications came up 10-15 years ago. Nobody, especially parents, really cared.
Hell, five years ago, my daughter's creche had fingerprint entry (I refused to take part, mainly because I saw it as insecure given I could gummi-bear the reader and enter as whoever came in last, but I was apparently the first to complain).
Old news people. It's already in schools all over the UK. There was minimal protest.
Two things...
First off, British schools don't have "rent-a-cops", security scanners or ID cards, this is an American thing. The hardest security you'll come across in a school in the UK is the school gate.
Secondly, the biometrics are just an additional method of payment, it's entirely optional. No one's stopping you from paying in cash. If I was tasked with setting up a hassle free method of tracking kids deductions from their pre-paid balance, this would likely be the route I'd go too. It's far cheaper to buy 2-3 scanners than to kit the whole school out with RFID tags, and it doesn't come with the inevitable hang-up of things getting lost, stolen or forgotten.
There's not much risk of the data being shared outside the school, as even the police aren't allowed to store biometric records of anyone without an active criminal record.