Rome City Schools in Rome, GA is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their lunch money accounts. In the past, students had to punch in a PIN numbers.* Students like it because they don’t have to, y’know, remember a number or anything hard like that. Some parents are uneasy about having their children’s fingerprints scanned.
“It may be perfectly secure, but my daughter is a minor and I understand that supposedly the kids have the option to not have their prints scanned, but that’s not being articulated to my daughter,” said Hal Storey, who’s [sic] daughter is a 10th grader at Rome High.
Quite aside from the question of how well the information is secured, there’s the larger issue of getting kids used to surrendering personal information for minor transactions. Anonymity is getting harder as means of tracking individuals become more sophisticated. I’m not sure the potential “security” is worth the risk of abuse.
*I realize that “PIN number” actually translates to “personal identification number number,” but it looks funny without it so let’s move on.