Finger scanners to keep tabs on librarians

Librarians are used to scanning books, but the librarians themselves may be getting scanned if a local council in suburban Melbourne has its way. The AM program has revealed that the City of Monash in Melbourne's south-east is planning to introduce vein scanning technology to track employees' work hours.

Governments and companies already use biometric technology to check the identities of their staff and protect sensitive information, and supermarket giant Woolworths uses fingerprint scanners to clock staff work hours.
The vein scanners are made by Japanese company Hitachi, which has installed tens of thousands of them at ATMs in Japan.
The technology captures the vein patterns in a person's fingers and stores them as a template for future scans.
Victoria's privacy commissioner Helen Versey says she is surprised that a local council would use such technology.
Another issue is where the biometric material will be stored and how secure it would be.

Security experts like Stephen Wilson from Lockstep Consulting warned there are risks. "The risk is that you need a master copy, like a master scan, against which people are compared when they're coming and going. And the security of that master scan is absolutely critical," he said. "The weakest link in any security system is usually a person - a database administrator holding the keys with access to these master copies is actually in a position of great power and influence and potentially is corruptible."

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Ummm.... so basically what you are saying is who need's the RFID chip when we now have bio-scanners? I'm not sure about that... all I can say is that I do love watching as all this "star-trek-nology" continues to be invented and hit the market... does "bio-scanner" sound a little bit like "tri-corder" to anybody else?

reply to post by Kicking2bears

That's an interesting question. Have you ever noticed how routinely tricorders are abused in the Star Trek franchise TV series? We've become so unconsciously accustomed to them (tricorders on TV) that you don't realize someone is invading someone else's privacy until the subject complains. This is what I fear most. That people will become so inured to biometrics and bioscanning that they won't even notice what a vile invasion of privacy they are....

We use the fingerprint scanners on the timeclock at work.

What is funny is there is a woman with some type of cleaning OCD who has worn off her fingerprints. We had to use a finger of hers that had a scar on it to allow her to be processed in the system.

Also, I don't know if this is common, but we had a set of brothers who were not identical twins who could clock each other in and out. It makes me doubt the accuracy of such a system.

I am sure that these problems will be eliminated. Which is a travesty,.

reply to post by Ex_CT2


I agree. Sure it's one thing to use it for emergency situations, perhaps on ambulances or fire trucks but it's another for "big brother" to use it for tracking purposes. As far as librarian's are concerned if you can't trust your employees you may need to hire new employees.

On a similar note I saw that nasa has a mission scheduled for (i think) 2012 where they expect to make just a few orbits around the moon and accurately determine it's composition from "crust to core". If they can do that with the moon what's to stop them from installing that in satelites or the space station and useing it on the earth? More specifically us.

(Maybe our atmosphere? I don't know. NASA didn't explain how they were going to get that info about the moon. I am just guessing it's a high tech version of the scanners they use at the airports nowadays.)

I had the thought that this could be to compile a fingerprint database for comparison to fingerprints found at crime scenes, if they take this further and require people to say rent a book or as in japan use an ATM, pretty soon everybody will have there fingerprints on file, maybe even require people to provide prints to get a license or welfare.
They could have a disclosure clause written in that provides the database to law enforcement when requested as most company's already have this, could be a way to circumvent the law allowing the collection of fingerprints?
Purely speculation of course

In March 2007, the British government was considering fingerprinting all children aged 11 to 15 and adding the prints to a government database as part of a new passport and ID card scheme and disallowing opposition for privacy concerns. All fingerprints taken would be cross-checked against prints from 900,000 unsolved crimes. Shadow Home secretary David Davis called the plan "sinister".[73] An Early Day Motion which called on the UK Government to conduct a full and open consultation with stakeholders about the use of biometrics in schools, secured the support of 85 Members of Parliament (Early Day Motion 686).[78] Following the establishment in the United Kingdom of a Conservative and Liberal Democratic coalition government in May 2010, the ID card scheme was scrapped.[79]

Originally posted by Freedom_is_Slavery
pretty soon everybody will have there fingerprints on file, maybe even require people to provide prints to get a license or welfare.

In NYC you have to give your digital fingerprint to get your license and welfare.

If you get arrested in NYC you have to give your digital fingerprints, palm print AND submit to a retinal scan, look it up.