Father bans school from fingerprinting daughter
June 24th, 2009People are waking up to what all of this really means, and how all the dots join up.
By Chris Buratta
A father has refused permission for his daughter's Oxford school to take her fingerprints – fearing it is step towards a 'Big Brother' state.
IT IS a step towards exactly that, and even if this library system is self contained, i.e. does not connect to any other database anywhere, the very fact that they have it serves to soften up the students into accepting this sort of technology as a part of ordinary life, when it is not. It is a total invasion and violation, and as we can see below, even the ignorant pigs administering it do not know how it works.
Ben Emlyn-Jones's daughter Louisa, 12, attends St Gregory the Great School in Cowley – which is planning to use fingerprint recognition software in its library.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Windale Primary School, Glory Farm Primary School, Matthew Arnold Secondary School and The Cherwell School currently use fingerprint systems in libraries and Cheney School uses the technology to register pupils.
Absolutely ridiculous. Whats more, I would like to know how much this system cost the school. I wonder how many BOOKS you could buy with the same money….hmmmmmm!
Mr Emlyn-Jones said: "I am really quite disturbed about it, it reminds me of a Big Brother state.
"There may be advantages in having a fingerprint database, but the price you pay is too high."
There is NO advantage to it. Library books in a school, where all the pupils are known and where only pupils can enter has no need to install a system whose purpose is to uniquely identify an individual. The people who allowed this to be introduced into the school simply cannot THINK.
He refused to allow his daughter's fingerprints to be taken and was also concerned that the school had not contacted parents.
Well done Mr Emlyn-Jones, you are a hero, and a good parent.
He added: "It is as if they know it is wrong and have done it secretly, hoping no-one finds out."
That is EXACTLY what they are doing, otherwise, they would have contacted everyone in advance. The amount of time, effort to explain and money to roll this out is a complete waste of scarce resources.
Mr Emlyn-Jones said he was opposed to the principle of biometric data being used by schools.
"Once people are on a computer then the world's your oyster as far as the Government is concerned.
"It also desensitises kids. When they're grown up and they apply for a passport and apply for jobs they won't bat an eyelid about having fingerprints taken or a laser being shined in their eyes."
This man's brain is switched to 'ON'. And what is great is that his daughter will also have her brain switched on also.
This week, Liberal Democrats called for Government guidelines to be introduced to control the use of the technology in schools.
But Mr Emlyn-Jones said that would not satisfy his concerns.
He said: "Once the infrastructure is in place those guidelines could be abolished. That's my concern."
Once people have their brains working, its impossible to placate them with doubletalk and weasel words, at which the Liberal Democrats are masters. They want to cancel ID cards because of the 'privacy concerns' but then want to replace the rates with a local income tax which would mean the council getting into far more of your private affairs than they do now, either by having data shared with them or by collecting it to calculate your new 'more fair' rates. You see? COMPLETELY STUPID. But I digress…
Now comes the ignorant pig part:
St Gregory the Great's learning resources manager Hilja Bassett said the library system, which would be operational next term, was very efficient and secure.
Just because it is efficient, that does not make it right. And in what way is it more efficient? By what measure? Does that library exist for the convenience of the students or the convenience of the staff? As for 'secure' how does she know it is secure? Did she design the system? Does she know wether or not it connects to any other computers over the internets? Does she know ANYTHING ABOUT IT AT ALL? Or is she just repeating verbatim from the sales pitch?
She added: "It can only be used in this one place, in this one way, for this purpose."
And that one way and one purpose are illegitimate.
She said fingerprints were not stored, just certain data taken from the print.
And there is the proof that Hilja Bassett is a completely ignorant pig, computer illiterate student violating jackass. NO biometric fingerprint system stores the ENTIRE PRINT. They ALL work by mapping the print, finding points to store and then storing those points; that is enough to (90% of the time) uniquely identify the person whose finger it is on the scanner. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT YOU STUPID RETARD its not about actual images of the fingerprints, its about being identified by a part of your body that is unique to you. And of course once it is in the database it can then be transferred (along with all the prints and the names and addresses of the other students) to other databases and systems where if the admins are corrupt, your UNIQUE IDENTIFIER can be placed alongside a criminal profile turing YOU into the criminal, even though you have never done anything whatsoever. Don't believe me? IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING:
Old news department, or a taste of how NIR information will be implemented. I emphasise.
A FYLDE coast student was arrested after posting Christmas cards to his family
Stunned David Atkinson found himself at his local police station under suspicion of stealing the festive greetings he last saw when he put them in a postbox five years ago. Due to fingerprints found on the mail – which was stolen then recovered – police thought they had their man. However, it transpired the “suspect’s” fingerprints were those of the student who had innocently sent the cards to relatives when he was 15.
Mr Atkinson, now 21, of [address omitted – gosh, to think that his address was posted online after this, mm], was arrested because his DNA and fingerprints had been kept on record under controversial Government laws to combat terror.
It was only after Mr Atkinson asked officers to look more deeply into the crime his innocence was proved.
The law student said it has shattered his confidence in the system. He said: “The potential incompetence, laziness, or over enthusiasm of an individual officer means an innocent, law-abiding citizen can never truly have confidence in the giant police database.”
It was the second time Mr Atkinson had been arrested – twice for crimes he did not commit. He has now lent his support to a campaign to force a rethink by the Home Office.
The mix-up began last March when Mr Atkinson was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage – but, when the real culprit gave himself up to police, he was released without charge.
During his short time with the police, he had his fingerprints and DNA taken as part of the arrest procedure but, under recently passed laws, all details – no matter whether the person is innocent or guilty – are kept on a national computer.
Mr Atkinson thought nothing of it until he got a call from officers a month later asking him to go along to the station. He said: “I was arrested as soon as I went in. “The officer told me he had a computer report which had automatically matched my fingerprints with those recovered from a number of items of post which had been stolen from a letter box in December 2000.
“As a result of this report alone, and no further investigation, the officer advised me to ‘get the matter out of the way quickly and take a caution now’.
“After refusing to admit a crime I’d not committed, I was bailed while further investigations were made.”
“The recovered letters were in fact my family Christmas cards which had been taken after I had posted them five years ago.
“This innocent explanation had not even crossed the officer’s mind and, as far as he was concerned, if his computer report said I was guilty then I had to be.”Mr Atkinson complained to Lancashire Constabulary and eventually received an apology. But, he claims, without the Government’s “menace to our freedom”, he would not have been put through the ordeal. A police spokesman said: “We can confirm that we did receive a complaint in August about a wrongful arrest concerning stolen post. “This was investigated thoroughly under our normal complaints procedure and dealt with locally to the satisfaction of both parties. “Under current legislation, all police forces can retain and record DNA taken for arrestable offences no matter what the eventual outcome of the investigation.”
And there you have it. These systems are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and should not be in schools for any reason WHATSOEVER.
Parents had been informed through a newsletter, she added, and pupils who did not wish to use the system could still make use of library services.
So out the window goes Mutterschwein Hilja Bassett’s claim that it is for efficiency; if people can opt out of the system, that means they will be running two concurrent systems, the old and venerable Library card system and the new one, causing inefficiency.
And apologies to all Mutterschwein out there; calling Hilja Bassett a pig is an insult to pigs.
If you are a Home Schooler, you never have to deal with any of this of course!
FURTHERMORE
This courtesy of Home Ed Forums:
The truth about biometric systems used in schools (using verifiable references)
“People have to be stark, raving mad to use conventional biometrics to improve the efficiency of a children’s lunch line.” Kim Cameron , Microsoft’s Identity Architect, 05 April 2007 (read more from Kim Cameron)
“If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime. Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the matching algorithm for the rest of their lives.” Brian Drury , IT security consultant, 12 March 2007 (read more from Brian Drury)
Schools that introduce fingerprinting usually try to reassure parents by saying “the system does not store a fingerprint, just a number. It is not possible to reconstruct an image of a fingerprint from what is stored”.
- The short answer is that fingerprint templates are what is stored on these systems. These are the equivalent of fingerprints – rather like the difference between a drawing and a photo – otherwise the systems simply wouldn’t work.
- Police, the security services, and governments use fingerprint templates to identify criminals.
- There are international standards to ensure that biometric templates from different manufacturers are compatible – so what’s stored on one system can be read by any other, including government systems.
- Where fingerprint templates are stored in an encrypted form, it is impossible for anyone to guarantee that this won’t be broken during a person’s entire lifetime. A PIN number can easily be changed. A fingerprint, and the template dervived from it, cannot ever be changed.
- Moreover, the Government has the power to demand encryption keys from the system supplier, under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 Part III.
- In the future, fingerprint templates will be used to authenticate passports, bank accounts, etc. Thus biometric templates are extremely valuable and need to be kept in a highly secure environment.
- In addition, fingerprint templates can be used to rapidly link different databases and to build up a disturbingly accurate profile of an individual without their knowledge or consent.
- The US government’s official National Science & Technology Council says you CAN reconstruct a fingerprint image from a fingerprint template.
- Government security experts have successfully hacked the fingerprint scanners used in schools.
- Schools cannot possibly provide the level of security necessary to protect children’s data.
- A school might not even be aware that children’s data had been compromised until it was far too late.
“If you want to find out who owns a fingerprint, just convert the fingerprint to a template and do a search for the template in one of these databases. Call the template a binary number if you want to. The point is that all you need to save in the database is the number. Later, when you come across a “fingerprint of interest”, you just convert it to a number and search for it. Law enforcement can use this information – and so can criminals.”
Kim Cameron , architect of identity and access in Microsoft’s connected systems division, 09 May 2007