Santa Barbara to fingerprint elementary school students

[madmusic]

By Last Night in Little Rock, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 11:38:04 AM EST

Yesterday's Examiner: Three Santa Barbara elementary schools to fingerprint students. The purpose: use of the cafeteria.

A plan to fingerprint elementary school students when they buy lunch has some parents worrying that Big Brother has come to the cafeteria.

The Hope Elementary School District has notified parents that beginning this month, students at Monte Vista, Vieja Valley and Hope elementary schools will press an index finger to a scanner before buying cafeteria food.

The scan will call up the student's name and student ID, teacher's name and how much the student owes, since some receive government assistance for food.

"It raises sanitary issues, privacy issues -- it is kind of Orwellian," said Tina Dabby, a parent of two at Monte Vista Elementary. "It just sounds kind of creepy."

School administrators said the idea is to speed up the cafeteria line. The same information is currently handled with old-fashioned paper and then transferred to computer so that reports can be compiled.

Invasion of privacy? Yes. Violation of the Fourth Amendment? Not necessarily, I regret to say.

What are the competing interests? The school already gathers this information, just without a fingerprint. Parents voluntarily fingerprint their children in case of abduction. Kids in elementary school don't have a choice because of their age, and parents are not being asked for consent. Here, the school will likely use a single finger or thumb, like used at customs for visitors coming into the U.S., or the use of a finger to access a secure computer. Can the fingerprint stored in the school computer be used to investigate a crime? What are the internal restrictions on the use of the fingerprint? If none, the fingerprint may not be able to be used to investigate a crime later, even years later after the elementary school student has come of age to commit an offense for which he or she can be arrested.

Compare an employee of an airport working in a "sterile area" who has to use a fingerprint scan to open a door. The prison system in my home state has been using retina scans at some prisons to identify employees on entering and leaving the prison. With adults, they choose their jobs and thereby consent to the process. But, both of these examples involve adult employees who may have had to submit to a fingerprinting to get their job, so these may not be the best examples.

Orwellian? Definitely. Unconstitutional? One would hope, but not necessarily likely, depending on what internal safeguards there are or aren't.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/11/5/12384/4268

[sakabatou]

1. Our school got fingerprinted but is was for safety awareness

They talked about kidnappigs and other safety stuff. And then they fingerprinted. This was early 90s.

[madmusic]

3. Did they take DNA swab samples too?

And did you take the prints and the swabs, if any, home? If your parents kept that, that's cool. The concern here is that the government keeps the data and does who knows what with it.

[XemaSab]

5. When we got fingerprinted,

the cops kept the prints. :D

[madmusic]

12. Well, the Secret Service...

Probably has your prints matched with your DU user name and IP here by now. :)

[XemaSab]

14. No doubt

:D

[sakabatou]

8. No

Just the fingerprints that were from an ink pad.

[madmusic]

10. And did the cops keep them?

Just curious. What do they do with them and for how long?

[sakabatou]

13. Yeah, the cops took them

But that was over a decade ago. So I don't know what happened to them?

[Nolo_Contendre]

2. Just making Santa Barbara safe for Nancy Reagan and her ilk

Nothing to see here.

[XemaSab]

4. I think this is a nonissue

We got fingerprinted back in the 80s for safety.

If they want to fingerprint kids, there are valid reasons for doing so.

Fingerprinting is an easy and accurate way to keep track of cafeteria use, and I can't imagine an evil purpose behind it. :shrug:

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. We use pupil numbers in my district

The kids key in their number on a little pad. It works well. No DNA involved.

Fingerprinting is just so over the top. Every kid in this school dostrict is going to think about the cops fingerprinting criminals. It is a grotesque activity for kids in school.

[madmusic]

9. Great idea.

Congrats to whoever thought of it. Why do they make things complex sometimes when simple is more beautiful?

[madmusic]

7. By itself, true, nonissue.

But coupled with http://www.fightcps.com/articles/newfreedom-2004.html">The New Freedom Initiative and the human Genome Project, maybe the government is asking too much.

I don't trust them.

EDIT: fixed link

[pooja]

11. I wonder if these kids have to wear passes like at some schools

If they did.. wouldn't a magnetic strip that you swipe be better than a million germy kids hands passing over a scanner work better?