Public schools are now running fingerprint scanners in school cafeterias... It's never too early to start obedience training!

Sunday, May 15, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: biometrics, fingerprinting, school cafeterias

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(NaturalNews) Students at Harrison Street Elementary school in Geneva, Illinois, will no longer have to keep track of their lunch money. Geneva School District 304 is putting in a new biometric scanner system that will read students' thumb prints at the lunch checkout line. Privacy experts warn that this kind of system could turn unsuspecting students into suspicious subjects, monitored by school administrators and tracked down by local law enforcement.

The biometric scanner, installed by a local company called PushCoin Inc., has the potential to speed up the lunch line, by forcing students to press their thumbprint into the system. One fifth grader from the district says, "It's good, because you don't have to carry your own money or anything like that. It's just there. Your thumb is easy, because you just have to put your thumb on (the device)," Signs Of The Times reports.

Schools installing biometric scanners for 'convenience' while breaching student privacy

Other area school districts are considering the biometric scanners for their lunch lines, too. Unit District 95 board president Doug Goldberg is looking to install the system for the 2017 school year.

"I will tell you that many of the kids aren't very good about keeping track of their ID cards. And so moving to biometrics was felt to be sort of the next generation of that individual, unique ID," he said. "We'll record their thumbprints, there will be thumbprint readers at all the cash registers, and they'll simply come by and — bang — hit their thumbprint."

PushCoin Inc. connects the child's biometric ID with their parents' home and email addresses. Parents receive email updates regarding the status of their child's lunch account. This technology is not new. Other school districts around the country have put thumb readers, iris scanners and even facial recognition technology in place to make automated processes more efficient, and to track and monitor students.

Privacy experts warn that a biometric system can lead parents, students and school administrators down a slippery slope. For the sake of convenience, the privacy of every individual student is surrendered when they give up their biometric ID. This information can easily be intercepted for identity theft, monitoring of students, or targeting of individuals.

School administrators routinely spy on students online to track illicit student activity

By default, biometric collection technology gives school administrators more authority, and school becomes more like a surveillance state. By gaining access to student biometrics, administrators can work with local police to enforce compliance to school rules. For example, I have heard from several students and angry parents from the Effingham Unit 40 High School, that administrators there use social media accounts to track student activity outside of school to bust students for things like alcohol use. As school administrators gain access to new personal information, including biometrics, they can more readily target students they don't like.

For this reason, students' individual privacy is more important than the convenience of these biometric scanners. Parents should be standing up and saying enough is enough.

Civil rights experts with the ACLU are warning parents about the dangers associated with this technology. Speaking to the Daily Herald, ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said that biometric scanners send the wrong message to students about protecting their privacy. "I think in this age, when so much is available and so much is accessible online about us and there is all this information that floats out there, to begin to include in this one's biometrics, it really does raise some legitimate concerns," Yohnka said.

Yohnka said that law enforcement could subpoena students' personal data right from PushCoin's database in an effort to track down students who may merely be suspected of criminal activity, whether inside or outside of school.

"We're getting so used to giving up data about ourselves," said University of Washington psychology professor Laura Kastner. She told the Daily Herald, "At some point, Big Brother is going to have a lot of information on us and where is that going to go? And that's just for parents to consider. But from a kid point of view, they have no idea what they're giving up and, once again, the slippery slope in what's called habituation."

Church ministries also collecting children's biometrics

Even church-based ministries use biometric fingerprint scanners to check students into their facilities. Fellowship One, part of the Active network, services over 4,000 churches in the U.S. The biometric and personal information of adults and children, once entered into the Fellowship One database, can be shared with third-party affiliates, including governments and corporations. All privacy and liberty is lost for some false sense of security.

Individuals who have been abused and targeted without warrant, or who have been harassed for their beliefs or their lifestyle, understand that maintaining privacy is essential to maintaining liberty.

(Photo credit: SOTT.net)

Sources include:

SOTT.net