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Say Goodbye To Privacy: British Schools Using Thumb-Scanners to Store Kids' Fingerprints
timesonline.co.uk -- IT PROMISED to be the high-tech saviour of the embattled primary-school librarian, an ingenious device that guaranteed no more lost library cards and fewer missing books. All a child had to do to borrow Topsy & Tim for the week was flick a thumb through an unobtrusive fingerprint scanner, so sensitive it could even recognise a pattern from under layers of sticky chocolate. There was only one snag: in many cases, parents were not told that schools were storing their children’s fingerprints. Parental outrage followed and, by last night, the school thumb-scanner being used by 1,000 British primary schools was being internationally condemned as a blatant breach of children’s human rights. The trouble began when the mother of an 11-year-old attending the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic School in Ruislip, West London, discovered that her son had been fingerprinted without her consent. Furious, the woman, who refused to be named, contacted civil liberties groups such as Privacy International and a child’s advocacy group, Action on Rights for Children in Education (Arch).

posted by West 8:42 PM