Manchester school now fingerprinting children

[Kingboy_D]

Surprised that there's not been more of a stink about this. It's to "ease teacher workload" apparently.

Liberty raps school fingerprint checks

THE civil liberties group Liberty has criticised a school's decision to take fingerprints of all their pupils.

The prints will be used at Ashton on Mersery School each time a pupil wants to make a payment for school trips. It could also be adapted to borrow school library books or to use a cashless canteen swipe card.

But for some parents the move smacks too much of Big Brother. And Liberty says the move sends out the wrong message.

"Fingerprints are, rightly or wrongly, associated with criminality," said Liberty spokesman Barry Hugill. "What message does taking fingerprints from pupils send out? It's as if they don't trust people.

"I fail to see what's wrong with the tried and tested systems. It's fairly easy to identify children from their appearance - I just don't understand the rationale for this. It has come to something if a school's staff don't recognise a pupil."

One parent - who has asked not to be named - said she too was concerned about the technology.

"They already have names, addresses, qualifications, family information and they know who has free school meals - so they know parents' income bracket," she said. "The only people I know that hold fingerprints are police. And I'm worried about what could happen with this information. It's a debate that needs to be widened."

If you're a concerned parent, you can vent your spleen to the company responsible here.

Pine Cone Associates,
Carrington Business Pk,
Manchester Rd,
Carrington,
Manchester
M31 4DD.
Tel: +44 (0)161 776 4405
Fax: +44 (0)161 776 4407
office@pineconeonline.com

[New World Order]

Might be a long journey for children who cant drive, but after a hard day at school they could continue the police state theme by visiting this lovely venue.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/3375057.stm

Young clubbers 'fingerprinted'

An Essex nightclub is helping police to pioneer a new digital identification system to screen people as they are admitted to the premises.
Staff at the Cave in Chelmsford are taking digital images and electronic fingerprints of clubbers, and storing them on their database.

Owner Joe Ferrari aims to reduce underage drinking as well as give door staff an effective identification system which will increase security.

He said: "The system produces a scan not a police-type fingerprint as such but it helps people because they only have to bring their ID once.

Details kept on database

"Next time they visit they just put their finger on the screen and up comes their details and it verifies they are 18 - so it is really to stop underage drinking.

"A lot of people do not carry ID like driving licences or passports. Here they just bring evidence of identity just once."

Police want to use the system at more night spots and say it is a natural progression from the "no-nonsense" bouncer.

I've since removed all of my fingers and I' writing this with my other leg.

[Pinball]

It's a comin', boy. On R4 they had a news item last week about fingerprinting all newborns. Can't find the link tho.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3389209.stm

Facing a biometric future
By Jo Twist
BBC News Online technology reporter

By the middle of next year, the British passport could be quite different to the document currently waved at immigration.

As part of growing concerns about national and global security, immigration and asylum, as well as plain old identity theft, the official UK travel document will not just carry a photograph, it will also have a microchip in it.
The chip will hold biometric data - unique physiological or behavioural characteristics - and will be mandatory in passports renewed from 2007/8.

From mid-2005, this data will be in the form of a digitised photograph which will be matched with the passport's chip.

The photo and the chip will have the digital signature of the UK Passport Service (UKPS), in an attempt to protect against possible fraud.

One other biometric identifier, iris pattern or fingerprints, will also eventually be stored on the chip and trials are underway in the UK to decide which one is used.

According to Bernard Herdan, chief executive of UKPS, "biometrics are an essential element in the UKPS drive to strengthen identity authentication and reduce identity fraud and related crimes".

Facing facts

Although "facial recognition biometric data" all sounds very sci-fi, it is in fact the least accurate biometric identifier there is, according to experts.

It will, however, be good enough for entry into the US without a visa.

In May 2003, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), approved facial recognition as the global standard for biometric data, with the option of including a secondary biometric, such as a fingerprint or iris image.


But do not expect to see machines picking out suspected terrorists in the crowd just yet.
"The current encoding of photographs digitally into passport chips is almost entirely for the purpose of ultimate visual comparison by a human," says Professor John Daugman.

And although humans are not very good at that, he says, machines have an even harder time.

Based at the University of Cambridge, the professor developed the international algorithms used in iris recognition technology being tested by the UKPS.

If a machine were to take over in order to match passport images against a database of pictures, Professor Daugman says the rate of error would still be five to 40%, even with the best algorithms.

"Today's computer algorithms for automatic face recognition have a truly appalling performance, in terms of accuracy," he says.

"Even small variations in pose angle, illumination geometry, viewing angle, and facial expression have catastrophic effects on algorithm accuracy," says the professor.

These factors mean there are more variations in your face than there are between your face and another.

So, machines will be able to verify identity purely by matching the face on the photo with what is on the chip. No big technological leap there.

What it will not be doing is searching and matching faces from a database of potentially dangerous individuals.

Do the eyes have it?

Fingerprinting and iris scanning could be a far more accurate test than facial recognition.

The key to the power of biometrics to identify people is the amount of randomness and complexity that the biometric contains, according to Professor Daugman.

"Face recognition is inherently unreliable because there isn't nearly enough randomness in the appearance of different faces.

Fingerprints are vastly better biometrics than faces, he says, but better still are iris scans.

"Irises have about 249 degrees-of-freedom," explains Professor Daugman, "whereas faces have only about 20 degrees-of-freedom (independent dimensions of variation), and fingerprints have about 35.

"This makes a huge difference in the uniqueness of each one."

In January 2004, the UKPS began a six month test of the recording and collection of facial, iris and fingerprint recognition involving 10,000 volunteers.

It is testing not only how people feel about having this data collected, but also how feasible it is to collect this information in the first place, practically and financially.

The results will feed into the UKPS passport plan, but also the wider scheme for national identity cards.

Dr Tony Mansfield, of the National Physical Laboratory and co-author of a key study on the use of biometrics, says the technology is good enough to start the trials.

But there will be some stumbling blocks and no biometric method offers 100% certainty.


ID PLANS
2008: 80% of economically active population will carry some form of biometric identity document
Estimated cost of £3.1bn
Consortium of companies in UKPS trials led by SchlumbergerSema include NEC, Identix, Iridian
Source: Home Office
"It will still improve over next few years, but the technology is capable of being used, even though there are still some areas of uncertainty."
He thinks these areas of uncertainty, including acceptable margins of error, and the overall cost of a such a scheme, will be clearer after the UKPS trial.

As well as the practicalities of getting biometric data from people, the fact they might not like doing it could prove difficult.

Iris scanning is currently used at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam; Toronto, Vancouver, and six other Canadian airports.

By next summer, 10 UK airports will be using iris scanning technology, with a planned roll-out awaiting approval for all 141 UK ports, says Professor Daugman.

But with more than 60 million people travelling through Heathrow each year, even if an iris scanning system with 99.9% accuracy was used, it could still fail to recognise 63,000 individuals a year.

Ultimately, these hi-tech solutions are only as good as the existence and the size of the databases they are compared to.

"All of this identification power by iris patterns could only help thwart terrorist attacks if terrorists were already enrolled in a database as terrorists," says Professor Daugman, which, he adds is "highly unlikely".

"More generally, and in a modest way, having a means to know reliably who is who - whilst not their intentions - is surely some valuable contribution to national security."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3389209.stm

Published: 2004/01/13 10:35:25 GMT

[mook]

I was under the impression most Manc schoolkids had already been fingerprinted by the time they reached schoolage anyway. ;-)

[Krang]

My old college introduced those "credit" canteen cards.

It was fucking awful, i dont think i ever had any money on my card, i just used to say i hadnt got mine, and theyd let me pay with real money (like a big boy)

[chumfatty]

I' m confused as to why it is necessary to fingerprint children for identification purposes in a school. Who do they expect to check and verify the marks???

In order for a fingerprint to be identified by the police in a criminal case it has to be verified by 3 seperate Fingerprint Experts who must have the minium of 5 years experience as a fingerprint officer.

Computer system aren't advanced enought to verify them at this level, and are also very expensive, a lot more than a few hundred ID cards. Another fantastic way to waste OUR hard earned cash.

Pah!

[Pinball]

The agenda seems to be to get everyone's fingerprints in a national database, one way or the other. Whenever these tinpot schemes are started, you can be sure the local police force will get the data added to the national police database. Just as they have failed to delete data from cautions etc. when they're supposed to (Ian Huntley notwithstanding), now they're breaching the Human Rights Act & Data Protection Act in another way. It really is time the European Court of Human Rights & Data Protection Registrar got involved, as it's the only language these fascist fucks seem to understand.

For example, how did they obtain informed consent for children to give their fingerprints? No doubt they would reply that they wrote letters to the parents to get a disclaimer signed, but did they really offer a choice to the parents? This should be challenged in the courts. I would also be interested to know if schools are being organised to collect this sort of data, because it increasingly looks like they are being.

More generally, we really should ask what sort of society we want to live in, because Blunkett and his authoritarian ilk (who are actively being encouraged nowadays regardless of the law) are turning it into a nightmare.

I suppose realistically the "process" is being driven by Bush e.g. the timeline for changing UK passports is solely to comply with Bush's dictat. Once again, the ultimate joke is how the UK government pretend that the actions they are taking are their decision.

[chand]

I was under the impression most Manc schoolkids had already been fingerprinted by the time they reached schoolage anyway. ;-)

Although there was a stabbing there recently, Ashton On Mersey School (or 'Cec Ave' as it's known to us locals), is in Sale, which is hardly fucking Compton.

[chumfatty]

The agenda seems to be to get everyone's fingerprints in a national database, one way or the other. Whenever these tinpot schemes are started, you can be sure the local police force will get the data added to the national police database.

As it stands at the moment only fingerprints that have been taken from a person in custody arrested for a recordable offence can be submitted to the national database and thus searched against in relation to any criminal offences. Any other way of obtaining this information will not be admissable in court.

If you have nothing to hide then there is no reason not to allow you fingerprints to be taken. I do agree that you shouldn't be forced to do so unless you fit into the above criterea. So don't worry there is no Big Brother in relation to fingereprints .............yet..............

[New World Order]

Thursday, 23 January, 2003, 08:47 GMT

Faces and eyes rival passwords

Biometric technology which identifies people by the shape of the face, pattern of the iris or fingerprint is going to play a greater part in our lives.
This is the message from the US military, which has a special team devoted to testing out the latest biometric systems.

"The technology is really maturing," said Gregory Johnson, technology spokesman for the Department of Defense's Biometrics Management Office (BMO). "The stuff that is on the market is here and now and reliable. Now it's becoming widespread."

But he admitted that biometric systems could be beaten and so would be used in combination with other security systems like a swipe card and a PIN number.

Need for security

The BMO was set up two years ago to test and evaluate biometric technology developed by commercial companies.
Interest in the technology has increased since the attacks of September 11, with the US concerned about the threat from potential terrorists.

With a budget of $33.1m in 2002 and an expected budget of $41m this year, the BMO is at the heart of US military interest in biometrics.

"There is a need for greater security for DoD activities, whether it is physical access to a building, logging onto computer networks or to know who is getting on an airplane," Mr Johnson told BBC News Online.

"What we want to do is know that we have the right person in the right place doing the right thing."

Rival systems

Biometrics is a nascent industry, which analysts say is worth between $240m to $400m. Rival technologies are vying for lucrative government contracts.

These include fingerprint and facial recognition, but also iris recognition, which looks for a pattern in the eye, and hand geometry, which analyses the layout of the hand.

One other technology attracting interest is signature recognition. This works by looking at how you write your name, not what it looks like when you are done.

The BMO's job is to look at all the commercially available technology and make recommendations to the US military.

"Biometrics will enable Department of Defense users to be identified as someone who they are," explained Mr Johnson, "the actual person as opposed to something that they are carrying or something they have memorised."

"We're looking at it for all sorts of applications and many of the military missions are helping in the fight against terror.

"But it can be as simple as who gets into a secure base or building and who has access to data on a network."

Flawed technology?

The reliability of biometrics has been called into question. Last year, researchers in Germany tested several of the technologies and successfully fooled most of them.

Mr Johnson agreed that biometrics could be beaten. But he argued it should be used together with other existing security measures, such as a smart card or a memorised PIN number.

"Biometrics systems have great parallels with door locks in that there are different levels of them," he said.

"A bathroom door lock is very easily bypassed and a bank vault is not."

"To increase security you might have a combination of something you know, something you have and something that you are."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2681147.stm

Neil knew the owners of all the pubs you've all been meeting up in.  Not wanting to scare anyone but Neil has 319 empty glasses in his living room reading for processing.

[Purple Tentacle]

My old college introduced those "credit" canteen cards.

It was fucking awful, i dont think i ever had any money on my card, i just used to say i hadnt got mine, and theyd let me pay with real money (like a big boy)

Wasn't this supposed to stop the children of gay parents having their pocket money stolen from them by bullies?

[Sherringford Hovis]

I tried volunteering to become part of the trial group of biometric ID cards back in December last year - haven't heard anything yet: here's the sum total of my communication with MORI:

From :    trial <trial@mori.com>
Sent :    09 December 2003 09:48:57
To :    "Sherringford Hovis" <xxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com>
Subject :    RE: ID card carriers - I want to volunteer

Dear mr hovis
Many thanks for your enquiry.
At present we are in the process of arranging the locations at which the
trial will take place. Once these are finalised we will be contacting
all interested parties in order to confirm their interest and provide
details of these locations and opening times.

Kind regards
The MORI research team

-----Original Message-----
From: Sherringford Hovis [mailto:xxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com]
Sent: 08 December 2003 10:36
To: trial
Subject: ID card carriers - I want to volunteer


Hi,

I am fascinated by the whole UK ID card debate, and I would be willing
to become a volunteer to carry a card as a part of the trial scheme. Please
find my full contact details below - if there's any other information
that you need, such as NI number, blood group etc, please get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Sherringford Hovis

I'll let you know if anything happens or I hear anything...

[daveytaylor]

THE civil liberties group Liberty has criticised a school's decision to take fingerprints of all their pupils.

The prints will be used at Ashton on Mersery School each time a pupil wants to make a payment for school trips.

How far behind the times are they? A very popular library program used in primary schools is "Junior Librarian". That comes with a fingerprint scanning module and this is in use in several primary schools around the country. It actually used an algorithm to turn the fingerprint into a number. This means that the number cannot be turned back into a fingerprint and I think that is how they get around civil liberties.

I was at the BETT show in January and they were showing off a fingerprint registration system. Basically, you have a simple fingerprint scanner in every classroom, plugged in through a normal ethernet cable. As the child enters the room they put their thumb on the scanner and it registers them into that class.

Right or wrong... this stuff is already here.

[gazzyk1ns]

I see that they're now offering children money to turn up to school - the best attenders get entered into a prize draw or something. I don't have a link, I saw it on the real news.

Why don't they just go the whole hog and start giving porn mags to the boys and vibrators to the girls, should they do the school the pleasure of turning up once in a while and not beating teachers up or anything.

[session9]

Since you can get your pets chipped now so they have their medical data with them, and tag criminals to keep track of their whereabouts, how long until it is suggested that concerned parents volunteer their kids for similar treatment in order to protect them from paediatricians? Can't be long now, surely.

[hencole]

I've got some bad news for you, it's already been done. OK the goverment aren't making it compulsory yet, but some parents are tagging their children with GPS.

[session9]

How clever of them to chip their children. I should imagine that some enterprising perv's already developed the equivalent of an electronic child sniffer.