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Biometrics in Schools

Since this blog has just been renamed it may be interesting to comment about a real technology/education collision and that is the use of biometrics in schools. In the last 24 hours there has been a couple of articles in the mainstream press on the use of biometrics. Last night on the news Japan hit the headlines with its adoption of biometrics for processing foreigners entering the country. This follows on from the lead in the USA although in the US I think everyone is fingerprinted and photographed. The justification for doing this is of course the struggle against terrorism. To date I think there has been a mixed reaction to this. Some feel that initiatives such as this are ok if it improves their safety, others have major concerns over privacy and the uses that such information could be put to. This morning on the radio there was a piece on a supermarket chain in Germany using biometrics as a way of paying for your groceries. Using your fingerprint to authorise payment of your groceries brings a whole new meaning to the term 'finger food' (not my joke). The article was aired on ABC radio but I haven't found a link to it yet. I am sure privacy groups would have concerns here. Imagine the uses such information could be put to. Say for example, your health insurance company had proof that your diet was a major risk for certain medical conditions, what would they do with that? Of course if you are paying by credit card or any other payment method that identifies you, the same information would be potentially available. You could try to argue that just because you bought the food doesn't mean you ate it! So what is the purpose of this rant? I wonder whether we may gradually be becoming more accustomed to the use of these technologies and will look back one day and ask 'how did that happen?'. Back in the day when PDA's were nearly a useful thing I used to have one that had biometric authentication. It was a Compaq iPaq with fingerprint identification on it. Walking around the office today I noticed that there is at least one laptop in the organisation that also has fingerprint authentication built in. Is this stuff starting to become more prevalent? What about in schools? I did a quick Google search and there is a stack of information on the use of biometrics in schools being put to use in areas such as lunch purchases, borrowing from the library, attendance etc. Obviously there are major concerns about the use of these technologies from privacy groups, parents etc and there seems to be far more articles about these concerns than the use of the technologies themselves. Some technologies just get snapped up and adopted by the community without much thought while others strike fear into our hearts. Do we pay enough attention to the adoption of new technologies - should we pay more or less attention to specific types of technologies and are we truly aware of all the implications of adopting different types of them. Do we really understand the potentials (good and bad) of those that we accept or reject. Access and authentication is always a challenge and biometrics offer very interesting solutions in this area. In security terms I believe there are three types of authentication that you may be able to offer. These are: something you know (your userid/password. PIN etc), something you have (an access card, key), and something you are (fingerprint, retinal scan etc). There is a line of thought that the presence of two of these types provides reasonably strong authentication. They are all being used to provide the same service yet one of them seems to induce fear rather than comfort in being secure. Its an interesting area and one that I am sure will generate much discussion going into the future.

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