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scan your fingerprint, buy a school lunch

talloulou

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I'm not exactly comfortable with the government building a database of everyones fingerprints by focusing on getting them from kids. Am I hyper paranoid or does this concern others?

BOARDMAN, Ore. - Instead of using a meal card to pay for lunch, students at Morrow County schools will be using something a little more futuristic - a finger scanner.
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http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060829/NEWS06/608290343

For me it's too "big brother." Kids can pay for their lunches with cash. They've been doing it for years. I'm all for making things "easier" but it seems like schools are consistently trying to get our kids fingerprints under the guise of "keeping them safe" and now this new lunch technology. I have always opted not to have my kids fingerprinted for safety. I don't really see how the police having my childs fingerprint will help them find my child if he/she is abducted. I really can't help but feel they just want a "huge database" with as many of our fingerprints as they can get. :rofl
 

I don't have a problem with this. the problem is with how such systems are used, not their existence. lunch lines at school can be extremely slow. spending 15 minutes waiting in line to get ones food isnt abnormal.
 

The article says that they don't scan the fingerprints themselves, they just use the indentifing points and turn them into numbers. They aren't storing fingerprints just numbers.

I don't see a problem.

fingerprinting children for safety reasons is more about identification rather than safety, since children don't usually have dental records it helps to have fingerprints to use for identification purposes.
 
Purple said:
The article says that they don't scan the fingerprints themselves, they just use the indentifing points and turn them into numbers. They aren't storing fingerprints just numbers.
Click to expand...

Yeah I don't really understand all that. I know they say they aren't taking "fingerprints" per say and nothing is stored. But I'm not sure that isn't a semantics arguement meant to disspell fears. If you can have a program where you identify a kid and their account by their fingerprint then you're taking a "fingerprint" in my humble opinion regardless of how you try to spin it. Whatever the system does it equates somthing with your child's finger. That something is certainly "stored" or they couldn't use it to keep track of your kids account. I'm not comfortable with databases that store information about my childs finger whether they refer to it as a "finger print" or a mathmatical equation.
 

The whole numbers thing is just like anything else concerning computers....binary coding. Everything processed through a computer is really read by the computer as nothing but a string of 1's and 0's. For instance, each character on your keyboard is assigned a certain string of 1's and 0's, and that's what tells the computer what it should be displaying as you strike each key. Pixels in a picture? Same thing. So yes, there IS still an image stored somewhere of the fingerprint.

But I definitely agree with you, talloulou. Lunch tickets/cash worked just fine when I was a kid, I can't imagine how it would just suddenly be a problem now. Unless they're trying to feed every kid in the school at the same time, but most school districts I've been in/know anything about have always had staggered lunch schedules.

Oh, and Purple.....how would a child NOT have a dental record, unless they have irresponsible parents that don't take them to the dentist ever? Kids still have dental x-rays performed to check for cavities and such, last time I checked anyway.
 
In my opinion, this is much ado over nothing. Who cares if they take your kid's fingerprint? How is this possibly affecting their's or your rights? I fail to see a problem. The main purpose is to speed the lines up and eliminate money in the lunchroom.

Around here, kids don't pay cash for school lunches. You pay monthly and present a card to buy lunch. The kids promptly lose or forget their cards. With this system, there is nothing to lose or forget.

Even laptop computers have fingerprint id systems in place now. Get over it.
 

I guess I just find the idea of using body parts as barcodes repugnant. And I also just don't really like the idea of a huge "database" where the government has access to everyones fingerprints however I feel that is the direction we are headed. Why else would the local police depts. send home info every year requesting you have your child's fingerprint on file? Surely they don't do all that work on the off chance that they can identify a dead body in the future. They do it cause it adds to their database. And they understand that most adults won't fingerprint themselves and mail it to the police for filing so they try to get as many as possible when their kids.
 
oh the hypocrisy
so many that are so opposed to dubyas patriot act and other security measures
are the same ones that have no problem with govt schools getting personally identifying information
and for what
a shorter wait at the lunch line
:2rofll:

this is totally in the spirit of 1984
 

If dubya declared that we all had to be fingerprinted tomorrow I'd be alarmed and against it.

I do view this lunch program and the "safety" police fingerprint files for children to be highly suspect. So far it's all voluntary though. If it doesn't remain that way I'll be angry.

If you think about it most of the kids who get free or reduced lunch and thus have accounts are the "poor" kids who have a higher likelihood of turning to crime in the future so I'm not sure these types of programs are all that innocent. Furthermore I don't like the shady way they try to spin it and claim that they aren't taking a fingerprint and nothing is kept on file. It's like they think we're stupid. Clearly sounds like bullshite to me.
 
I know it certainly makes me nervous, but I do know that a whole lot of folks are doing this voluntarily, i.e, grocery stores, credit cards, etc. I guess it all depends on how they use the information, and how safe the information gathered remains.
 

some schools are very overcrowded. my brothers elementry school was at over twice the capacity of what it was built for. feeding all those kids was becoming a huge problems, some kids had to eat lunch as early as 10:30 in the morning.
 
Stace said:
Oh, and Purple.....how would a child NOT have a dental record, unless they have irresponsible parents that don't take them to the dentist ever? Kids still have dental x-rays performed to check for cavities and such, last time I checked anyway.
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Well usually there is no permanent dental work done on baby teeth, since they fall out, thus no accurate dental records. Dental reconds are compiled of work that has been done on adult teeth like crowns, filings, etc.

You can have your child x-rayed every year and every year it will be different because baby teeth fall out. At least last time I checked.

This is why they push for fingerprinting, it's easier to identify the body with fingerprints.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
The Alunimum hatters are going to have a field day with this.
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Yes . . . YES!! They're coming, the aliens, man, and they're gonna identify us all by our fingerprints, see? And then they're . . .

Whatever. I don't see the issue with fingerprints. What privacy are they violating by having your fingerprints on record? What freedom do you lose?

And Deejay, the Patriot Act most definitely violates privacy: financial records, educational records, library records. All of those things are private information, some of it highly damaging to individuals if used in the wrong way. But your fingerprints? What are they going to do with them? Use the kid's fingerprint to frame him for a bank robbery?

Who cares? If it makes it easier to access lunch, there isn't a problem, IMO. If it doesn't, or if this is particularly expensive in the long run, there isn't much point to it; tickets and cards work fine, too.
 

Actually, they can store specific characteristics about the fingerprint without actually storing an image of the fingerprint. Admittedly, it's still just as bad in terms of privacy, since it can still be used as an unique identifier.
 
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