Bio-metric scanners for school meals.

A UK school is using biometric scanners to log what kids are eating now. For those who are unaware, the UK has had a lot of bad press over school dinners being unhealthy and they are trying different schemes to improve this.

A school in West Yorkshire is using biometric scanners to allow parents to check if their children are choosing healthy options at lunchtime.
Pupils at Ossett School in Wakefield place their index finger on the scanner as they arrive at the canteen.

The scanner reading tells school staff how much each child can spend on their meal and records what food they choose.

Source: Scanners for school meals

Does this mean they'd have to have the kids fingerprints for this system to work?

If so, where else keeps a record of these kids fingerprints? This system is being used in many libraries here too. Thats a lot of people giving biometric data.

Good thing or not?

CX.

I think it's a step too far. I personally think it would be better to have a wide range of choices available for lunch, this in addition to better teaching of nutrition in schools. This means if the child has enough information on nutrition and dieting they will be able to make a educated desicion on what they will and won't eat. Showing them the way is better then forcing them, which is what this method would lead to.

What... why fingerprints?!

Why would they bother with fingerprints? Why not just have the kid write down what he ate? Or just have the cafeteria staff keep track of what they've made versus what has been eaten?

Why the heck would you want to make it so complex?

Biometric scanning is not fingerprinting. In this case, it is the measurement of the geometry of the finger, not the actual print.

It does seem a little excessive. I don't see what's wrong with the good old charge card method... a rechargeable lunch card the parents just put money on. That way you don't have hundreds of kids all sticking their snot laden fingers onto the same little pad one after the other.

BAD thing!!!
This is the slippery slope.And we in the UK are on it.Our next potential labour prime minister is Gordon "bilderberg" Brown who positivley salivates when he speaks about bio metrics,finger print ID and the like.Great.
And Don Camerone the tory boy has gone very quiet about the ID card scheme.....secretly we all know he loves the idea even though he origionally denounced it as a foolish waste of money that would not stop terrorists.
Poor kids in that school,if i was a parent their my kid would be outta there!

Degrading treatment-"submit to the computer for ID before you can eat children!"

"How can you have your pudding if you haven`t eaten your meat?"-Pink floyd springs to mind for some reason.

My school uses a fingerscanner to help with automatic payments of school meals. My parents pay for my lunches a month or so at a time, I put my finger on the scanner, and voila. You guys are incredibly paranoid. Maybe I'm just naive, but this is an innocent thing that's centered around convience, nothing else.

Indeed biometric data is pretty useless outside of where it is being used. The probability of two people having identical biometric measurements is low in an isolated group, like at a school or library. But the larger the test group grows the higher the chance of having a duplicate. And you can't gain fingerprint info from a biometric scan, nor can you gain biometric info from a fingerprint scan. So it would be unreliable to attempt to "track" people using their biometrics.

And as I implied in my previous post, this does just seem like a great way for illness to spread quickly between students. Kids already get most of their sicknesses from fellow students... strep throat and the flu, etc. If every student in the entire school is touching the same object, and one of them just hacked up a lung all over their bare hands prior to the scan, then every single student after them will be exposed. All right before handling and eating food.

I've always been against any type of biometric ID for anything on the basis that you should have the freedom to go where you like and eat what you like(in the case of schools) without someone knowing exactly what you are doing/eating etc.

Theres nothing wrong with good old fashioned paper money and coins.

SeekTruth would you really sacrifice your privacy just for a little convenience? In the end that is what it boils down to.

edit:

Biometric:

biometric: Any specific and uniquely identifiable physical human characteristic, e.g., of the retina, iris, acoustic spectrum of the voice (i.e., voiceprint), fingerprint(s), handwriting, pattern of finger lengths, etc., that may be used to validate the identity of an individual. Note: Biometrics provide a highly secure means of identification, for purposes of security involving, e.g., Internet communications and cryptosystems.

apc do you have some info that says they only use "the measurement of the geometry of the finger,"?

[edit on 15-10-2006 by Edn]

Seek truth:

In the near future technology will exist which will enter in your info into the goverment mainframe.In your particular case what you had to eat each day would be recorded.
On its own this information does not have an impact on you today,and i can understand why some may say we are being paranoid.
However ,what is to say that in the future you have to scan for doctors appointments,shopping,work,basically everything we do.Soon the government have a tool to make very detailed profiles of everyone in the country.
Now if i believed our government were corruption free,honourable people who had our best intersests at heart,unpressured by outside forces,i would have no problem with this database of information.
Unfortunatley i do not have much faith in those who are trying to force this system upon us.And i do believe the potential for abuse of the database system is massive.
Finally i believe that you should only have to give your fingerprints,or any other details like Iris scan,DNA to one group of people:the police,and only if you have been arrested for a crime.Not for queing for your chips(excuse the pun).
To me,we are no longer free when we have to have all our movements and purchases tracked and put into a central database.

Originally posted by Edn
apc do you have some info that says they only use "the measurement of the geometry of the finger,"?

You have the same information on this specific school's usage as I do. But, when the term "biometric scan" is used, it means taking a rapid measurement of a specific set of physical characteristics. Fingerprints do fit that definition, in the same sense that a square is also a rectangle. Fingerprint scanning, however, is more expensive and time consuming than biometric scanning.

Here's the wikipedia on biometrics... it also goes in to why biometric information is not useful outside the applicable group.
en.wikipedia.org...

And I'd like to point out that children have no right to freedom or privacy. If the parents want to know how many sips of water and number of french fries their kids eat at lunch, they have every right to that knowledge. Exaggeration obviously...