The East Dunbartonshire Council in the UK is currently trying to introduce biometrics into their schools, but they are being met with opposition to the newly proposed system by some of the local parents, according to a Bearsden Herald article.
The new system would be looking to incorporate students’ fingerprints as a means of using the free school meals without drawing attention to it, as well as preventing bullying. Parents of the children enrolled at the school, however, take issue with the system for a few reasons. One of the major reasons is that they feel the money needed to implement the new system could be better used towards educational items like books and computers. The larger worry, however, is the idea of implementing a “big brother” feel at the school with this program.
Some of the parents feel as if implementing this system will be an invasion of the child’s privacy and worry that the children will feel too at ease having their biometric information listed in a database. In response, officials from the East Dunbartonshire Council have said that that the program should involve encrypting the data and destroying the actual fingerprint data to keep it from being stolen or used improperly. Additionally, they cite that the program is intended to be optional for students and that they may choose instead to have a PIN assigned to them in place of the biometrics.
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