-Caveat Lector-

Training American children, like pathetic dogs, to obediently live in a high-tech 
cashless socialist police state.  Note: Only 1% refuse to be in the system.  The other 
99% are insane.
And where are the parents objections?
Fingerprints for Food...
This ain't America anymore.
----------------

Learning to Live With Biometrics
By Claudia Graziano

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60342,00.html

02:00 AM Sep. 09, 2003 PT

It's the first day of school and Matt Miller, director of food services for Penn 
Cambria schools, sits at a table next to the registration desk, collecting digital 
images of students' fingerprints with a portable scanner.

The line of students waiting to be scanned is short; Miller is there mostly to scan 
students who've recently transferred to the district and returning students who must 
be rescanned due to a growth spurt.

Students tend to need rescanning in the fifth and ninth grades, Miller said, because 
their fingers have matured to the point where the scanners can no longer quickly 
identify them.

Students see the scanning, which allows them to purchase school lunches without using 
cash, as no big deal. It has been a part of their lives for five years now. Of the 
3,000 or so students who attend one of Penn Cambria's five schools, fewer than 1 
percent opt out of the scanning system, Miller said. He doesn't know whether they opt 
out for religious beliefs or some other reason, but the school doesn't press for 
answers.

The Cresson, Pennsylvania, school district isn't the only one in America using 
biometric technology in cafeterias. Similar systems are in use at schools all over the 
country.

Food Service Solutions, the point-of-sale vendor that sold the Penn Cambria district 
its biometrics scanning system, said its finger-scanning units are in 45 school 
districts nationwide, scanning approximately 250,000 students daily. Food Service 
Solutions president Mitch Johns said the finger-scanning systems account for 
approximately 40 percent of the company's point-of-sale product sales.

The company is adapting its popular finger-scanning system for other uses, such as 
checking out books from school libraries and tracking attendance. Some schools, Johns 
said, are even toying with the idea of installing scanners on school buses to track 
passengers.

Use of biometric ID systems has been on the rise in the private sector for some time. 
Companies from Hertz to Pepsi use finger-, hand- or iris-scanning systems to identify 
employees and sometimes customers. This year, biometrics system revenues will top $928 
million, according to the International Biometric Group. In 2004, sales are expected 
to top $1.5 billion.

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates are worried about the use of biometrics in public 
schools, where minors are the ones being scanned.

At best, the technology is overkill and a waste of taxpayer money, said Chris 
Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 
Washington, D.C. At worst, it sets a dark precedent, conditioning students at a young 
age to embrace the idea of Big Brother-style biometric tracking. "If ever there was a 
generation that would not oppose a government system for universal ID, it's this one," 
he said.

Hoofnagle said that, for every biometrics system, there has to be a backup. Penn 
Cambria students who've opted out of the finger-scanning system can just key in their 
student ID numbers to participate in the cashless cafeteria system. If the scanners 
aren't functioning properly, or if the computer running the scanning software is down, 
students and administrators rely on other means to buy their lunches and check out 
library books -- usually, recording transactions by hand. So Hoofnagle questions the 
need for the biometrics system -- which costs about $5,,000 for schools to implement 
-- in the first place.

Those who support school use of biometrics say the technology is largely 
misunderstood, that the finger scanners don't record actual fingerprints, just a 
numerical image representing 26 points on an individual's index finger. Because the 
recorded image is just a string of ones and zeroes, it's of no use to law enforcement, 
said Bob Engen, president of Educational Biometric Technology, a firm in Caledonia, 
Minnesota, that has been installing finger-scanning systems in schools and 
universities since 1996.

Engen said speed, not security or privacy, seems to be students' biggest concern with 
the system. The fingerprint-recognition systems tend to run slowly -- slower than 
manually punching in a number, for instance -- if a school is using a computer that is 
more than a few years olld. Additionally, large student populations can slow the 
system since it has to run through every stored image before identifying the best 
match.

Parker Memorial Elementary School in Tolland, Connecticut, implemented a 
fingerprint-recognition system in May 2002 that has proven useful for tracking student 
expenses. Parents have long had the option of prepaying for students' lunches on a 
semester basis. The difference now, said lunch program coordinator Jackie Schipke, is 
that parents only pay for lunches their kids actually eat, thanks to more-accurate 
reporting. Now, students can also buy lunches on credit, meaning that even if their 
debit accounts are empty, the system can tally money parents owe.

"Are the lines moving as fast as we'd hoped? I don't think so," said Schipke.

---------------------------
-iNFoWaRZ
America, get your children out of those government socialist indoctrination centers 
known as "public schools".

The only people that ought to be fingerprinted and scanned in a Free country are 
politicians and bureaucrats.

America, turn off your brainwashing box and do something to save your nation.

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