Generation ID: Worries about kiddyprinting
There is Generation X and Generation Y; now there is Generation ID: Thousands of children across the U.K. have had their fingerprints and DNA taken without explicit informed parental consent; children — and privacy — advocates say this is dangerous
There is a new term of art in the United Kingdom — “kiddyprinting.” It refers to the controversial practice of routinely fingerprinting schoolchildren. Red Pepper’s Tamanna Kalhar writes that many parents are unaware of it because they have not been asked for their explicit consent, or in many cases even notified that it is taking place. There are no official figures for how many schools in England use some form of biometric identification system. Terri Dowty, director of Action on Rights for Children (ARCH), claims “thousands certainly. But local authorities aren’t keeping any records.” Fingerprint templates do not count as sensitive data in the United Kingdom, she says, and so controls are limited. It was only after years of pressure from ARCH and, more recently, the Leave Them Kids Alone campaign that non-statutory guidance on the use of fingerprints was issued to schools in July 2007. Campaigners are far from satisfied and a House of Commons early day motion has been tabled calling for a full debate.
Is it not alarmist, though, when the fingerprints are only being used for library, catering, and registration systems? Dowty argues that behind the issue of biometrics there is the question of what kind of information the databases themselves are storing: “School canteen systems are storing information on each child’s individual school meal choices and library book reports are being generated that break down by ethnicity, age and gender what a child has been reading. This is a terrible intrusion.” There is also a security risk: “Manufacturers say that they’re encrypting the fingerprints so the systems are secure but they won’t guarantee them beyond ten years. And that’s because with the developments in technology, in ten years’ time the landscape will be unrecognisable. We are entering a stage where biometrics are becoming increasingly important for security-critical functions and if there does come a time when it’s easy to reconstruct fingerprints where you have access to accompanying personal data, it will be a bonanza for anyone who wants to forge identities.”
Jim Knight, the minister for schools and learning, also said this summer that the police could help themselves to the children’s fingerprints if they are trying to solve a crime — regardless of whether they have ever previously been in trouble with the law. Dowty says it is turning us from a nation of free citizens into a nation of
