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."
biometric scanning of faces by a rent-a-cop's eyes and comparing it to a 2d-scan of that same face on a plastic card the students are holding up before his scanning eyes.
He'll everybody who was sick, who didn't eat their vegetables, who made out with whom and who ate 3 puddings although he's supposed to be on a diet.
He'll share it with the janitor, the cleaning ladies, his wife and their friends.
The costs, 20.000 is about the rent-a-cop's pay, so after the second year, there's a net benefit for the school they can use for more schooly stuff.
But now I make room for the people condemning the new system.
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.
I think this latest story of "progress" falls into the "You have zero privacy now, get over it" category.
This is the slippery slope to robustly archiving every person's fingerprint, available for criminal investigations, surveillance, datamining and targeted advertising.
really??? They can bully people to use there finger to pay for there food?
You said you where paying for my lunch today right?
I'm not really sure what the story is here. As it says in the linked article, this technology has been in use for at least 10 years in a large number of schools. Also, the only "privacy concerns" raised appear in the other article are about an entirely different system at a school in the US.
This is just a variation of what is used in many schools in the USA. Kids have an account that their parents put money in. Then, in the cafeteria, kids type in their account number to pay for lunch. This new system eliminates kids having to learn and remember their account number.
There already is a server that works, without using biometrics: https://www.mylunchmoney.com./ My kids' schools use it, and we've never had any problems.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Go to Disney World and buy any multi-day pass, and your fingerprints are digitally scanned. I'm sure they would be happy to turn over the data to law enforcement if requested. The prints taken from when you were 5yrs old could be used in an investigation decades later.
Loses is a euphamism in this case. Read: child is bullied and money is stolen. To avoid further ridicule and persecution from adults and parents, child may use excuse of being "lost", or school may use excuse of being "lost" to downplay the actual incidents of bullying.
Thirty four characters live here.
My kids bring their lunch. No, we don't want an account, but you gave them each one anyway. No, that one weird charge which appeared isn't theirs; perhaps someone mis-typed the uber-secure 5-digit code. No, we don't want to apply for reduced lunches, no more than the last 15 times you asked us.
The important property of biometric features isn't that they can't be stolen. They can. It's that they can't be changed. If someone gets your fingerprint, you can not set a new fingerprint.
Gather all biometrics and do it from children so they grow up used to it, and sell it to the parents as "convinience and safety" .
The oppression continues.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Awesome! Let's have everyone use their index finger, touch the same spot and then eat a bunch of food with their hands. What could possibly go wrong?
No, it's about an overly complicated solution to a problem that can be solved with much simpler means.
If the students are required to carry their school-issued ID, that school-issued ID can serve as their payment card, and if there's a concern with fraud in the sense of a different student using the card, then add a PIN pad to the card reader. Mind you, at least in the elementary schools the lunch ladies know who's on free and reduced lunch, who has special diets, etc, so it would be harder for fraud by kids.
Or, cross-link the ID card system's picture database to the POS in the cafeteria, so that when the card is swiped, the picture comes up on-screen, and the lunch lady can see if the student paying is the student on the ID.
And as for elementary schools, at least around here the kids come as a class, and many times the lunch lady simply points to the kid's face on the touchscreen as the whole class is on-screen at one time, so the kid doesn't even need ID.
This fingerprint system seems like an overly complicated, overly invasive means to cover a couple bucks or equivalent-pounds worth of food every day.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The benefits are that pupils are less likely to lose [money stored in the fingerprint system than money carried in their pockets]
That is a spurious claim. The security on money stored in pockets and exchanged by physical transfer of a monetary token is fallible, but so is the security on the cafeteria electronic wallet system. Home Depot, Supervalu, and Albertson's are very recent examples of major compromises, and the number of small scale compromises is enormous.
Fingerprints can be faked, networks can be cracked, databases can crash. Merely moving from physical currency to electronic currency does not make it more secure -- just ask Mt. Gox.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Gotta condition the little rug rats as best you can. Parents just want them out of the house...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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."?
Too many kids show up with nothing, or nothing of any nutritional value, because the parent can't or won't prepare a lunch..
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.
I used to walk home and my Mum would make lunch for me and any chum I brought along.
I'm confused - you said:
And then proceeded to list even more complicated means of solving the problem.
As it is, you can't 'forget' to bring your fingerprint with you, or lose it on the bus, or have it stolen. You can't "share" your fingerprints with your friends by handing them your id & telling them your PIN. And you don't rely on a harried, low-paid "lunch lady" to make a positive ID based on a grainy photo taken 6 months ago against the child who's grown 3 inches, gained 20 pounds, and changed their hair completely in last 3 months standing in front of them.
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.
> Too many kids show up with nothing, or nothing of any nutritional value, because the parent can't or won't prepare a lunch..
In a school district like that, there's so many kids on the dole that they are all getting a free lunch anyways. It's easier on the school district that way.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Schools maintain a photographic record of their students already.
A cafeteria would need a device of some kind in either system.
Existing POS software for school cafeterias already can cross-reference the enrollment records and photos.
Troubleshooting a system that's widely implemented beyond the cafeteria is also easier, as the people that maintain the ID database, the enrollment records database, and the POS system already exist. They'd either have to take-on new duties or would have to hire someone else.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Screw that..
Just tag'em at birth, never had any complaints from the cat and you can always just scan the QR code tattooed on their forhead when you forget their name/birthday/age again or whatever.
My children won't have to carry small amounts of cash, won't be allowed to buy snacks, and won't be allowed to buy food they already know they're allergic to? And in return they can spend their formative years being indoctrinated that being fingerprinted by the authorities every single day of their lives is the way we should all live our lives? Where do I sign up?
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.
Exactly. I paid for a school lunch using a similar account linked to a PIN 20 years ago. When a kid forgot their pin, the cashier looked their name up in a binder to enter it correctly. There is no need for account security if the maximum withdrawal rate is 1 lunch per day.
I was in HS from 99 to 03. We had ID cards, but we didnt need them for anything. I didnt think anything of it
Jr year (2002-2002) the security guards started not allowing students in without showing ID. Now, the security guard knew damn near every kid in school (we had a full HS of under 500 people) but no student was allowed in without the id.
Tell me, what good reason is there for that other than getting the students more used to submitting to authority? If the security guard didnt know the student fine, but if he did he STILL had to check every single ID.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So if a new child comes in and isn't in a class photo, then what? Bring the professional photographer back in at more expense to the school and inconvenience to the class? or worse: What if the cafeteria worker is having a bad day and decides to point at the wrong kid, draining money from the wrong account to punish the bad kid's parents?
Fingerprint readers aren't any more invasive than School IDs but they do reduce liability and responsibility of the staff.
Do the students wash their hands before using the scanner? How often is the scanner disinfected? Will it have a fine collection of elementary school nasal mucous?
While there is some wisdom in allowing the natural exposure to "childhood" diseases so antibodies can develop naturally to protect us in later life, do we want schoolkids to be sampling each other's nasal secretions?
If your only tool is a hammer, you'll approach every problem as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Perhaps you should not have broken the law then you would not be on the National Criminal database.
I've never broken the law and therefore not on the database.
This fingerprint system seems like an overly complicated, overly invasive means to cover a couple bucks or equivalent-pounds worth of food every day.
It is.
First, you don't use fingerprints. The dangers have been discussed on Slashdot enough I don't need to elaborate. You NEVER use biometrics for "casual" security, even more so if there is a third party involved.
Second, the British government LOVES surveillance and I'm sure that their law enforcement community will get access to every thumbprint scanned. If it works here (no major public backlash), it will be implemented across the country for this very reason.
Third, it is not necessary to use fingerprints. A student ID card and PIN should be sufficient. Fraud can easily be avoided by adding a cashier to look at the picture on the card. The cashier can double as a monitor to keep the students in line in the cafeteria.
Fourth, this system will fail the same way it does in the US. Parents will forget to keep the students account topped off and their kids will be sent back to class on empty stomachs.
Back then, Biometric was replaced with a "Smart Card", basically todays credit card with a "smart chip" inside and photo ID of its owner.
Our parents would add money to the account which is linked to the user. Then the user just inserts their "smart card" when paying for food at the cafeteria. The operator would check the photo ID on the card, job done.
Biometric is just an upgrade to that system, which worked really well nearly 20 years ago lol. Good times, and years ahead.
What if the cafeteria worker is having a bad day and decides to point at the wrong kid, draining money from the wrong account to punish the bad kid's parents?
I like what my school did like 22 years ago. The "POS" is at the entrance to the Cafeteria.... Going into the Cafeteria, the students lined up in a specific order. She knows who is supposed to be next, you just tell lunch lady your last name and 4 digit code, and you get checked off as present.
You get a standard lunch. The only extras you can buy are a second milk, or a dessert bar, which you can't buy until about 20 minutes after lunch started, and in order to get one of those, you pay cash.
Same department, actually, and yes, I have. When new students are enrolled, the student information system exports changes nightly, and those changes are imported into the ID system and the school is notified to take the picture and generate the ID. If the student qualifies for Title I free/reduced lunch, the export from the student system creates the record for the school lunch system, and the school lunch system knows how to query the ID system.
The three people involved sit in offices about 40' away from each other an routinely meet to verify that it's working. And none of it requires anything more invasive than standard enrollment data and yearbook data.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I knew it was the teachers fault.
Teachers are running the cafeteria now... what's next?... the school buses (they are death traps, I hear).
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
But there's no fingerprint, not picture, nothing to feed to big data some place. There must be control. Having a child outside of the system means an aberration. We must have no aberration. All must be tracked. There might be as much as $2.20 in theft! Imagine-- not eating those nutritious lunches, packed with carbs and "brain food"!
I've been fond of "up the system". Fingerprints. Yeesh.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Old geezer here.
My school lunch was a "standard meal" and cost 27 cents. We paid it to a sweet little old lady in cash. She knew us all so no chance for anonymity.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
How is this news? I work at a public school (in IT) and we've had this option for a number of years (just opted to go with pin number instead, cleaner and cheaper) so I would expect many schools have been doing this for a while.
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?
So how are these kids surviving over summer vacation?
When I was in school, we just had a PIN, no id card needed, no id from the cashier needed. Yes, we could give that PIN to friends, but if you did that every day, your parents would notice the lunch account was draining twice as fast as it should and ask you what was up. I suppose we could have forgotten the PIN, but it's a few numbers that a kid uses way more often than their address, and we expect a kid to remember their address.
Existing POS software for school cafeterias already can cross-reference the enrollment records and photos.
What exactly makes you think it's piece-of-shit software?
A finger scanner looks for certain features and reduces the result to a number. There are many different algorithms to do this encoding. Even different versions of the same model use different algorithms and fingers have to be re-scanned. The bottom line is that, in most cases, finger scans from different systems can not be use to identify someone between systems.
and possibly more importantly (to the parents) the kids can't go tot he local fast food joint and have burger and chip for lunch every day.
For £20k though, the school could have just asked the parents to fund a lunch account of roughly the amount each kid costs to feed. Then they wouldn't have to give them lunch money and the kids would get lunch without having to bother with money.
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!
I encountered the same thing at a grocery store in Virginia. Me and three friends were all in the check-out line, but only one was purchasing anything. He showed the cashier his ID for the booze, then the cashier said she needed to see all of our IDs. As we each pulled out our IDs, I sarcastically stated, "because no one is smart enough to simply stay outside while the one legal adult goes in to buy the booze, right?"
:rolls eyes:
Now I'm wondering just what is the cut-off age. Because surely they won't tell a parent that they must leave their 2 month old kid home alone (or worse, in the car) if they want to buy alcohol.
Going hungry a lot, or getting fed by summer programs set up by various charities to feed kids like this in neighborhoods where it's prevalent.
Some of the high schools around here are upwards of 4500 kids, with two lunch periods, six regular serving lines, a dozen a'la carte point of sale stations, the works. The IDs are necessary in these circumstances to keep everyone straight.
Students aren't required to show their ID to enter the school, but if they're asked for their ID and cannot produce it then they have to go through another annoying process in addition to whatever else happened that caused someone to ask for their ID in the first place. Typlically their IDs are required for checking out books from the library, for engaging in official textbook check-out and return with the school bookstore, conducting drop/add of classes in the front office or counseling office, getting released from campus earlier than the normal end of the school day (for those that have fewer than the full-day's classes and have parental permission to leave), and other sorts of things. The ID acts as the central system for ensuring that all business functions of the school run smoothly, even if they never purchase a school lunch.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
" The IDs are necessary in these circumstances to keep everyone straight. " ..slight modification..
" The IDs are necessary in these circumstances to keep everyone in line. "
Slavery you foolishly attempt to justify.
Ok, a figerprint scanner might be overly complicated but then why did you then proceed to invent
an even more complicated system using picture ids, payment cards, pin numbers, touch screens, etc..
Seems like your system is alot more complicated than a simple finger scan. Kids are notorious
about losing things among other reasons.
The main reason I would object to a fingerprint scan would be because I don't want the fingerprint to
go elsewhere and the precendence of getting kids used to giving away their biometrics.
Our school uses a pin number. In kindergarten they all learn a 6 digit student number then they all
type it in to eat lunch. They don't have problem with stolen pin numbers because it pops up the
name to the cashier who quickly learns the kids names. Might not work in a larger school but even
in a larger school if it said the name out loud then their classmates would easily recognise if it
said a different name.
No, its about teachers having no friggen clue what their job is.
Running the cafeteria is not the teacher's job.
What better life lesson is there than "Lose your money, you don't eat."?
At least in California, it is illegal for the school to let a child go hungry. If they don't have money in their account, then it goes into deficit, and they send emails nagging the parent. I know this because I forgot to fund my kid's account a few times. Most parents pay for the lunches on line, so very few kids have cash for bullies to steal.
No, it's about an overly complicated solution to a problem that can be solved with much simpler means.
All of your "simpler means" require manual human checking by the "lunch lady". The whole point of the new system is that there IS NO LUNCH LADY. It is designed to eliminate a human from the loop. If the lunch lady was earning $40k (much more if unionized), and her position is eliminated, then this $20k system will pay for itself in six months.
Not sure why you all are just finding problems with it.
What's wrong with that?
Or you could just have the kids learn a 4 digit PIN, like the majority of schools in America do...
Honestly, the cashier has a keypad, the kid just types in their PIN after the cashier adds up their purchase, and the account is debited (unless the student is eligible for a free meal, in which case the student does the exact same thing, but no money is deducted from an account - thus removing the stigma of being from a low income family, at least as far as lunch in the cafeteria is concerned)...
Ken
As it is, you can't 'forget' to bring your fingerprint with you, or lose it on the bus, or have it stolen.
You can have your fingerprint stolen, although that's unlikely for school lunches. You can also lose your fingerprint from simple mechanical wear or chemicals. You can also simply not have fingerprints to start with.
you are proving my point for me AC
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
cant talk for him but my objection is giving a school a DB of all kids finger prints. Im SO SURE that it would NEVER be accessed by law enforcement for fishing expeditions....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Ah but a 2 month old kid may be breast feeding so the store has to make sure the mother isn't drinking the alcohol! Think of... never mind.
If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding!
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?!
And when the kid can't remember his PIN and needs to eat lunch? Fingerprints provide the exact same protection as PINs, but it's harder to share or forget your fingerprints. The lunch ladies' information might not be up to date, so relying on them for that information seems rather silly, considering it's available digitally in its most up-to-date form.
The 20k figure is for the whole renovation of the dining area, not just the fingerprint scanner.
It's because if some weirdo got in the school the parents would sue the school district into submission. With the guard and the practice in place, they have a scapegoat. That's the thing.
Your whole "submitting to authority" bent makes you sound like this is something frequently on your mind, which might be something you should get checked out. You sound paranoid to fuck.
The fingerprints don't exist - the devices store a one-way hash of the fingerprint. Kids should get used to biometrics as they are a part of the future. It sounds like your real problem is with the authorities misusing data as opposed to the data itself, which is a problem which should be fixed, but not by simply tying the hands of the authorities, which only serves to perpetuate abuses and never actually solves a thing.
My daughter's school uses this system, it's not a full 'proper criminal' fingerprint, they use the side of their index finger, it is sufficient to pay for things in the canteen, but is in no way an invasion of privacy or 'pre-criminalising' the students.
till one day the kid who keeps getting beet up and having there lunch money stolen takes a weapon to school and uses it on the bully
And, once you've begun, it is apparently difficult to stop, so you move on to "innocent" victims, but you've been to this elementary school every day since preschool, and you know there are no innocents here, just the unindicted! They'll all meet (insert favorite figure from your understanding of your chosen religion here) when you send them there! p.s. beet is a root vegetable. beat is what you do to a rug.
--- Say something clever. Pretend it was me. Thanks.
There's a whole economy with bullies taking lunch money from other kids. How are they supposed to do that anymore?