The National Curriculum: reading, writing and … biometrics

Thursday April 8, 2010

Schools are not under a legal duty to consult parents before collecting biometric data, writes Karen McTigue, which means your child could be fingerprinted or iris-scanned without your knowledge

One may be under the illusion that our personal data is not available on demand, and may also assume that data collected from our children follows the same rules. Many of us may be entirely unaware that this is not the case. The government guidelines do not specify a requirement for schools to let us know that they are taking photographs, or fingerprints for future recognition.

Hank Roberts, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, addressed the union’s annual conference in Manchester last week. “Parental consent should be compulsory. It is outrageous that children’s fingerprints can be taken without parental consent. He added: “There has been a severe diminution of civil liberties and freedoms in this country and we face the danger of more and worse to come.” Unfortunately Mr Roberts was defeated last week on his motion to oppose the use of biometric data.

Consult

Schools are not under a legal duty to consult parents before collecting biometric data, although the Government ‘advises’ them to do so. The issue was highlighted over a year ago by Yvonne Singh who wrote in the Guardian: “As voters express concern about surveillance technology, is it becoming second nature to the Facebook generation – used to publishing intimate details of their private lives on the worldwide web – who, in later life, may be less vociferous in their opposition to such schemes?”

Our national database is now one of the largest in the world, with over four million ‘people-files’, over a quarter of which are those of children. A campaigning group set up to highlight the issue of fingerprinting in schools Leave them Kids Alone quotes the following from Terry Thomas Professor of Criminal Justice Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University:

“A whole generation of children not involved with any criminal behaviour may be growing up thinking fingerprinting is just a ‘normal’ way of being identified, and an innocuous phrase like school ‘kiddy-printing’ only further minimises what is going on. At worst children are being inducted into the world of the ‘surveillance society’ without really knowing what it means.”

Concern

Clearly, this is a major concern, that once we allow the next generation to blindly accept the notion that they are a by-product of the state, one’s availability to be bar-coded and swiped is surely only a small step away. Simple geotagging will then allow us to be monitored at any time, undoubtedly, for our own good.

And therein lies the problem, how to stop the tide of acceptance, to overcome the apathy of the electorate; the teachers who were at the ATL meeting; parents who (even once aware that their child has been fingerprinted) do not demand that those data files are erased, and to be appalled that being treated as a criminal at the age of three or four is not, actually, ‘normal’ in a free society.

In guidance, the Information Commissioner’s Office states: “There is nothing explicit in the [Data Protection] Act to require schools to seek consent from all parents before implementing a fingerprinting application. However, unless schools can be certain that all children understand the implications of giving their fingerprints, they must fully involve parents in order to ensure that the information is obtained fairly.”

Therefore to ensure your child fully understands these implications of being fingerprinted, or iris-scanned, on their return to school, before rushing to buy new uniform, or lunchbox during the Easter holidays, take a trip to the library (one without biometric systems, preferably) and borrow a copy of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for them. Job done.