Ireland pounces on school fingerprinters

The Irish Information Commissioner's Office has come down on the notion of school fingerprinting and taken early action to prevent the technology being deployed arbitrarily. It has told the first handful of Irish schools known to be establishing biometric systems that they ought to have a good reason for doing so and has said …

[Anonymous Coward]

Have other alternatives been considered?

The high school I work at here in Australia issues students with barcoded ID cards that act as library cards, concession cards for public transport, and registering attendance. When entering the school, and leaving at any time other than the schedulaed end for the day's classes, they simply swipe the card through a barcode reader and the details are recorded. This system works well and has cut down on time used manually recording attendance. Have similar systems been investigated for Irish schools, or have they jumped straight to biometrics?

[joe]

taking the PIS?

so what school officials will be responsible for taking the PIS?

my hand's up

[Tarique Naseem]

Our local school has already started the fingerprinting!

You can read more about this here:

www.naseem.co.uk/education/local-school-wants-to-fingerprint-our-children/

I suspect that the school is unaware of the ramifications of such a system. I'm already challenging them on this, so lets see what happens...