Slashdot Mirror
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."
We had biometrics in our school 15 years ago, in Sweden.
in my kid's school in the USA the only way to pay for school lunch is to send a check once a month. no check, no lunch, no lost money, no tracking
I'd like to see this system implemented in The States. It basically circumvents the school yard bully from stealing lunch money from would-be victims.
Already happens in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_National_DNA_Database
Fucking sucks. I'm on it, despite committing no crime or ever having been charged with one!
No, its about teachers having no friggen clue what their job is. What better life lesson is there than "Lose your money, you don't eat."?
Okay - and? Have you ever looked at a photo of a child at the beginning and end of a 9-month school year? They grow fast, and change *dramatically* over the course of 9 months. If you have to perform a match between "little Johnny" today and a grainy photo of "little Johnny" 9 months ago, that's not as easy as you make it sound - especially when you have about 3 seconds or so to make that determination. And using a swiped ID card still doesn't address the problem of "I lost my ID," or "I forgot my ID at home," or "somebdy stole my ID on the bus / at recess."
Pretty hard to imagine "forgetting" your fingerprints... also hard to imagine no raised eyebrows if somebody walks up with a severed finger and tries to use that to pay.
Great, and nothing's stopping that from happening now - in addition to a photo record, the administration will take a fingerprint, and tie that to the student's records. Then at the cafeteria terminal, the student will present their finger (rather than a possibly-lost-or-stolen ID card).
Why? To attach a fingerprint scanner to the POS terminal, instead of a magnetic card reader? That's the ONLY difference in the system you're proposing - don't use fingerprints, use a card instead. The integration of these systems has to happen anyway, the token - be it a card or a fingerprint - has to be registered at the POS terminal. Except you can lose a card easily. Much harder to lose fingerprints - which means... the child is less likely to go hungry because they lost a card.
Yes, we can't have people learning to defend themselves from robbery, when the authorities have repeatedly ignored it (or threatened to punish both victim and aggressor in a 'zero tolerance' policy). I mean, if we have people who learn to take care of themselves, how are we supposed to be able to justify our sprawling police state?
The last time I bought alcohol, I happened to have my 17-year-old son with me. The cashier wanted to see his ID as well as mine. She wasn't going to sell to me because he was with me! Said it was the stores new policy. I asked to speak with the manager, who confirmed that it was the store policy. When I told him this policy was stupid, he backed down and sold me the alcohol. This "It's for the CHILDREN!" crap has got to stop!