UK: Children as Young as Five to be Fingerprinted in Schools

August 6th, 2007

Via: Daily Mail:

Schools have been given the go-ahead to take fingerprints from children as young as five – without asking their parents first.

Ministers issued guidance allowing heads to collect pupils’ biometric data to use when taking the register, paying for lunch or using the library.

Schools can also take retina and iris scans and record children’s voices, face shapes, hand measurements, handwriting and typing patterns.

Civil liberties campaigners are concerned that the data could be given to police or the Government without parents’ knowledge – or stolen by identity thieves.

The advice, contained in official guidance published, has infuriated parents’ groups.

2 Responses to “UK: Children as Young as Five to be Fingerprinted in Schools”

  1. pai mei says:

    It’s for their safety
    What government person who is paid with my money would dare to do such a thing ?
    Good thing I am not from UK

  2. goritsas says:

    @pai mei,

    Well, hold on to your hat. If your from any Anglo-centric country such initiatives will be making their way to a school near you. What government has ever been concerned with the source of its revenue even while imposing itself upon the citizenry? You have an apparently childlike perspective. Regardless of where these technologies are initially deployed, they flow from place to place and become ubiquitous, at least insofar as industrialised nations are concerned.

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