An elementary school library in Manchester, England has begun using a new system developed by Microsoft where kids use their thumbprints to check-out and return books.
The head of the school, Lesley Isherwood, praises the system for its efficiency and notes that no image of the fingerprints are ever stored. The system is also entirely voluntary.
Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID, a privacy campaign group is highly skeptical of the program. “For such a trivial issue as taking out of library books the taking of fingerprints is way over the top and wrong…It conditions children to hand over sensitive personal information.”says Booth. “The money for such a system could be spent on actual school resources. How about some more books for the library instead?”
Something about “biometric recognition system” and elementary school in the same breath leaves me a little queasy.
Article in the Telegraph, Children, 4, ‘to be fingerprinted to borrow school books from library’