Florida School District Draws Ire Over Student Retina Scans

TV News is reporting that both Democrats and Republicans in Florida supported this.
It's an invasion of privacy ... tracking people like this .... it'll follow them forever ....
I'm sure some will think it's progressive and there is nothing wrong with it.
Maybe it's just my age showing .... but I find this spooky, and since they tried
to sneak it through, (and made excuses about the sneaking it through),
I find that troubling as well.

Florida School District Draws Ire Over Student Retina Scans

Parents are up in arms in Polk County, Florida, because their children were subject to an iris scan without getting acceptable parental permission. The iris scans are part of a new security program being put in place in an elementary school, grade school and high school by Stanley Convergent Security Systems, reports Reuters’ Mike Blake.

Daniel Jenkins Academy, Bephune Academy and Davenport School of the Arts parents received a letter in the mail informing them of the new EyeSwipe-Nano Program. The letter stated that if parents would prefer their child not be a part of the program they should contact the child’s principal.

- The letter was sent out AFTER the scans started.
- The scans are like fingerprinting. Every iris scan is unique to that person.
- After the parents found out, a lot were upset. So SUPPOSEDLY the iris scan program has been stopped and the information taken from the children has been destroyed.

Information from Michele Malkin - yes she's right wing but she had good info on it

I don't understand how retina scanning works myself, my eyes seem to change looks just by what I eat. I have been observing how different foods effect the looks of my eyes. Certain foods change their looks if I eat them for any amount of time. Iodine and magnesium make them more reflective. Copper easily clouds the eye and makes them look flat looking and more hazel than green..

reply to post by FlyersFan

"Draws ire", you think?

Once again, our overseas empire is the testing ground.

In Iraq, theyve subjected everyone to iris scans and door to door gun confiscations. Not even Saddam did that.

Coming soon to be a neighborhood near you.

Originally posted by rickymouse
I don't understand how retina scanning works myself, my eyes seem to change looks just by what I eat. I have been observing how different foods effect the looks of my eyes. Certain foods change their looks if I eat them for any amount of time. Iodine and magnesium make them more reflective. Copper easily clouds the eye and makes them look flat looking and more hazel than green..

You: Iris
Scan: Retina (blood vessel pattern)

Hmmm... Well technology is changing soon you won't carry money, and all security codes will be based on your DNA, but not giving appropriate notice is alarming given all my police state worries.

I would also have concerns about my kids personal info being used as a beta test.

I guess we'll see where all this is going it's not like we can stop it, maybe one of those countries with a republic that protects freedoms, and has democracy.

Finger prints, dna, retinal scans. Next thing will be anal probing!

Originally posted by FlyersFan

- After the parents found out, a lot were upset. So SUPPOSEDLY the iris scan program has been stopped and the information taken from the children has been destroyed.

Yeh. Remember when they assured us that the "naked" airport scanner data would never be stored and could never be viewed again? And then the stored data was leaked online? Sorta like that?

I wouldn't really worry about the school having the children's retinal images. For one thing retinal scans are actually not that reliable a method of security.

They can often be thrown off using a broadcast attack by simply showing them a decent resolution print out (or low resolution) in some cases of the article they're looking for. At $6500 price point perhaps they do have some good solutions and algorithms for the camera to distinguish reality, but last time I played with these types of devices in 2007 they were (IMO) less reliable than a swipe card or simple key. I mean you don't take pictures of your keys and upload them to facebook every day like you do with your face and eyes.

The system combines facial recognition with 'retinal' scanning, so maybe they're just banking on you not being able to fake both at once.

And of course the other thing is, if your child has a facebook everyone has a picture of their retina already.

How is it an invasion of privacy any more than taking a photograph and using that on say an ID badge?

We all have our picture taken for divers license or passport and some schools have them on a student ID.

Biometric security is very good and hard to bypass. It would certainly be great for school security.

I don't trust eyeball scanning.

First, the technology can be defective and the eye is not to be messed with, especially with children with their lives ahead of them. You don't know the long term effects of 12 years of eye scans using invisible light beams. What if they get eye cancer?

Second, the analysis programs of tomorrow could be prejudicial with the biometrics they get from the eye patterns. They could write crazy eyeball-psychology books and start putting on more manipulative medical practices for eyeball type 6 disorders or whatever.

Third, not every kid has eyes, that's not fair that the blind kid gets past this but the other kids have to be controlled like that.

Fourth, I never had to deal with that invasive technology when I was a kid, and my school relied on more humane and intellectual ways of managing children, like asking them their name instead of labeling them eyeball 1234.

Fifth, considering the future and subliminal downloads, we don't know what sort of optical circuits those scanners might be downloading into the optic nerves of those people, one day. It might be a blip but that blip goes all the way into their brain through a sensitive channel. It's sneaky, it's invasive, it's a precursor to more bio-invasive practices, like mind reading (as if they don't have it already, they do with where eyes dart in stores on names of products, giving clues to our subconscious thoughts, watch yourself sometime)

Sixth, first they came for the first graders, but I was in junior high... this could spread to everybody. I don't appreciate the concept of being ruled by computer systems.

I just got my picture taken fro my license. They do a facial scan now.

This is just hte reality of living in a civilized society. They have to identify us.

The problem is if our leadership is bad or our society becomes even more authoritarian then all of this information will be used to take more and more of our freedoms away.

It all starts with fear. People are so afraid. They take our freedoms away to give us security. The people believe because they want to be secure. But there's that quote....

Benjamin Franklin.

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

This quote always confuses me somewhat, though. The reason is because any freedom is a responsibility and sometimes that responsibility is too much. For example, I wouldn't want kids to have guns because I don't think they're old enough to understand the responsibility of owning a gun. But some people might think that allowing kids to have guns is an unalienable freedom? Should a person who doesn't own a gun license have the freedom to own and use a gun?

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
Biometric security is very good and hard to bypass. It would certainly be great for school security.

Biometric security can refer to anything from face recognition to DNA, palm prints, movement, iris, voice, typing or even scent. There are a number of biometric scanners that I wouldn't let look after someone else's loose change because they're about as reliable as an Australian politician's travel budget.

One of the biggest issues with this type of security is that the manufacturers (and government) can be very lip sealed about how it's actually doing what it's doing. This can appear to be clever to begin with but one manufacturers penetration test may find issues that another doesn't; this leaves gaping holes in each manufacturer's hardware that aren't going to be resolved. Yes being open about it leads to more attacks being developed, but being silent about it leads to a day zero exploit being used out in the wild for malicious purposes that no one is actively preventing. When these exploits do occur, the police, security companies, and the customer themselves think it's something that needs to be kept massively secret.

This gives private contracting hardware companies the constant excuse of 'national security' to keep selling hardware that's about as sophisticated as a Playstation EyeToy™ whilst sweeping any major breaches under a rug claiming the security of oh-so important client is at stake.

There have been some major advances in recognizing broadcast attacks and recognizing the difference between natural and broadcast images in the last six years, but I wouldn't say that the days of the most very basic breaches are at all over. I haven't worked with the EyeLock hardware, but if this technology was leading guaranteed results it would be more widely available. Not having to print cards and physical keys saves money from staff and physical resources over time ...

The fact that the products on sale from said supplier can have other algorithms plugged into it seems to be a frank admission of what I'm saying really, and an admission that perhaps even their own customers may have better signal processing abilities.

I suspect the idea that biometric security is amazing or advanced arises from what's called the 'CSI effect'; the constant barrage of films and television shows that show high tech security systems may raise our confidence in what these devices are capable of and how expensive they are. Ultimately, it's just cameras and maths though. (There have been some algorithms and methods tested which have 90 - 98% success at recognizing these types of attacks, but it's common in image forensics to have large success percentages using known data sets and dramatically worse results out in the wild for a great many reasons, one being that it's hard and time consuming to build large comprehensive data sets.)

Perhaps in ten or so years we will have the elastic band CSI effect which is happening in some forensic fields just now - where things that are thought to be 'funny' or futuristic are now entirely possible ... but I think biometric security has quite a way to go yet.

Apologies if this seems like 'jumping' on you, I'd be quite eager to be proven wrong if I haven't been keeping up with current trends and news. I just haven't been aware of any particular advances in this area that suggest non-intrusive biometrics have (or should) become trusted.

reply to post by Pinke

And of course the other thing is, if your child has a facebook everyone has a picture of their retina already.

I think you are confusing iris scanning with retinal scanning.

A retinal scan, commonly confused with the more appropriately named "iris scanner", is a biometric technique that uses the unique patterns on a person's retina to identify them. It is not to be confused with another ocular-based technology, iris recognition. The biometric use of this scan is used to examine the pattern of blood vessels at the back of the eye.

source

Retinal scanning has been around and in use for over 30 years now.

As for your claims that biometrics like retinal scanning is some secret process that governments keep to themselves its no secret how it works.

A biometric identifier known as a retinal scan is used to map the unique patterns of a person's retina. The blood vessels within the retina absorb light more readily than the surrounding tissue and are easily identified with appropriate lighting. A retinal scan is performed by casting an unperceived beam of low-energy infrared light into a person’s eye as they look through the scanner's eyepiece. This beam of light traces a standardized path on the retina. Because retinal blood vessels are more absorbent of this light than the rest of the eye, the amount of reflection varies during the scan. The pattern of variations is converted to computer code and stored in a database

Its just an authentication method that can be bolted onto existing security protocols that have been in place for years.

Your claims of hacking and 0day exploits are pretty much redundant in a closed system ie something that is not hooked up to the internet. Either way the machine that does the authentication is only part of a computer system and is not really effected by hacking. At the end of the day its super difficult to beat biometrics , even more difficult on a closed system and a very practical security method for something like schools.

reply to post by FlyersFan


Sadly this is not end of this program, yes the parents were able to stop it now, but by 2017 the goal of the federal government is to have the smart IDs, Retina, face recognition and DNA for the planned Global data base of individuals, this endeavor already started with the licenses smart ID, the opposition will be done with by 2017 when the government expect all states to be enforcing smart ID.

Did government has asked the population permission for this? no in a million years is all for your good and the littler children, in my books this is nothing but the works of a tyrannic corporate government, after all the possible profits to be made in order to run such a data base.

reply to post by PhoenixOD


I imagine that you will be very willing to give away your new born baby to be DNA swapped while an Rchip is implanted on their forehead as soon the head is out of the womb.

all in the name of for the good of society and security.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

I imagine that you will be very willing to give away your new born baby to be DNA swapped while an Rchip is implanted on their forehead as soon the head is out of the womb.

all in the name of for the good of society and security.

To go from an internal security system (which basically works like comparing a picture to a stored photograph) in a school designed to keep potentially dangerous strangers out and children safe to big brother enforced RFID chip implants in a new born baby's foreheads is a huge leap in comparison. That's what we call a strawman argument , it is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

A surprisingly weak argument strategy and a very cheap shot from someone with over 35000 posts.

Originally posted by Magister
Finger prints, dna, retinal scans. Next thing will be anal probing!

They'll never do that, it would ruin the alien tourism industry. When aliens come here, they want to know they're probing a fresh anus, not one the government has already been rummaging through!

Good, the future is arriving sooner than I hoped.