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."
Now bullies are going to beat them up to take their fingerprints. That might be less fun.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
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.
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.
it takes longer because they have to route the data from the fingerprint scanner through the local FBI office to check for people on the no-cafeteria list.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!