Children face ‘Big Brother’ at school

Fingerprinting of schoolchildren needs proper privacy impact assessment, and parents must have free choice about whether to allow their children to be caught up in the technology, CLA says.

Children in danger of Big Brother surveillance

Fingerprint scanning being introduced into schools is the thin edge of a wedge, Civil Liberties Australia said today.

“We support proper use of new technology, but this development has inherent dangers which should be evaluated by schools, their governing bodies, and parents,” Civil Liberties Australia’s CEO Bill Rowlings said today.

“There’s an urgent need for proper privacy impact statements, starting with assessing whether the technology is appropriate in the first place. Schools and education authorities must put robust rules in place for how technology is used and administered, and the data safeguarded.

“Boosters are selling the technology in to schools as a way to check who is turning up: but a scan on arrival just tells you who passed through the school gates on the way in.

“The only way to ensure a child is at school all day is to fingerprint the student every half hour. So pretty soon children will be scanned into every classroom, every separate facility within the school grounds. If that is done, suddenly schools will become mini-surveillance states, where children are taught by example that they have no privacy, no personal space. They are a cipher, not a flesh and blood human being.

“I’m not sure these are the primary lessons we should be teaching children. Learning about two-way responsibility and trust are far more important lessons at school age than learning how to cope with surveillance,” Mr Rowlings said.

He said no data storage system had so far proved secure – even those of the National Security Agency in the USA had been breached, and millions of files stolen.

“With fingerprints and biometrics increasingly being used to access computer and other systems, a school’s fingerprint database is an enticing honey pot for criminals who want to create stolen IDs.

“Most school security consists of flimsy locked plywood doors. Fingerprint and biometric data needs much better safeguarding than that,” he said.

Civil Liberties Australia is calling on school authorities throughout Australia to undertake proper privacy and security assessments. They should develop proposed policies and consult with parents before introducing fingerprinting scanning.

“Individual families should be able to opt out of mass school surveillance without penalty to their children if they have privacy concerns,” Mr Rowlings said.