Some parents decry new Carroll schools' palm scanner (Scan For Lunch)

The Baltimore Sun ^ | 10/2/12 | Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

[RobertClark]

Instead of paying for their lunches with crumpled dollar bills and loose change, students in Carroll County schools are having their palms scanned in a new check-out system — raising concerns from some parents that their children's privacy is being violated.

The county is one of the first localities in Maryland to use the PalmSecure system, in which children from kindergarten to 12th grade place their hands above an infrared scanner. It identifies unique palm and vein patterns, and converts the image into an encrypted numeric algorithm that records a sale.

[RobertClark]

I’m thinking any sort of card reader will have that information. I bet those kids have a library card with all that info on it. So the school has their name, address and stuff. So just put in how much money they have on account and subtract it. They don’t need personal history. I’m thinking that there’s too much hype about ID stuff. You have it in just about everything. So you stop one thing, but there’s so much more about you on all sorts of cards. I think the parents are over reacting.

It is not about stopping just one thing. You're right, there is far too much information out there - on almost everyone. I think everyone needs to be aware of who has that information and how it is protected. Just because your library requests the print or scan doesn't mean that they are protecting it. I write code as a hobby and am a white hat hacker - trust me, accessing data is frighteningly easy on far too many networks.

As more and more locations begin to collect this information, the risk grows exponentially. It is not acceptable just because it is becoming commonplace.

[SkyDancer]

But at that school,they already have all that information in the kids’ records. All they’re doing is tying a scanner to those records. What other ‘invasion of privacy’ are those parents talking about?

[Girlene]

It is not acceptable just because it is becoming commonplace.

Bingo. What happens if your biometric data is compromised? You can't get a new palm.

[RobertClark]

But at that school,they already have all that information in the kids’ records. All they’re doing is tying a scanner to those records. What other ‘invasion of privacy’ are those parents talking about?

The palm scan itself is the identifying data. The additional information is the scan - in order to be recognized by the system, a scan has to be stored to be later compared by the algorithms that process the scans each day. Why is this difficult to recognize?

[LegendHasIt]

Yeah, Yeah; It’s all fun and games until some poor kid cuts off some rich kid’s hand and uses it to get a free lunch.

[RobertClark]

Bingo. What happens if your biometric data is compromised? You can't get a new palm.

I'm glad that you get it - some people just don't. As biometric data is utilized in more and more ways, any access to it is potentially a violation of your privacy. Whether it gives a thief or hacker access to medical records, financial data, or lunch menus, it is a large net that can be pieced together by intelligent criminals and people with less than honorable intentions.

Anyone with a reasonable set of skills can take a fingerprint or palm print and reproduce them using latex, silicon or other materials. Apply that replica to their hands, and boom, now they are you! It's not Sci-Fi or only worthy of a James Bond movie anymore. It is easily accomplished.

[GeronL]

training for slavery

wait until you get scanned again after proving you ate your veggies

[SkyDancer]

The idea that the scan has to have certain information to pass the person being scanned. Somewhere the palm print is on file. How they do that I don’t know but all the scanner is doing is comparing the images.

[LegendHasIt]

I dunno... It would take quite a high level skill set to reproduce finger pritnts, palm prints in silicon.

Oh, you meant SiliconE.

Nevermind

;-)

[TheBattman]

Just before I left teaching in the public school - the cafeteria has moved to a similar system - but using a thumb print. This is not new.

[RobertClark]

I dunno... It would take quite a high level skill set to reproduce finger pritnts, palm prints in silicon.

Oh, you meant SiliconE.

Details, details. Yes, I did mean silicone. Silicon would require a hell of a lot of heat.

Proofreading - maybe I should try it!

[RitaOK]

If you can do this on defenseless throw away children, used as lab rats, at the mercy of public schools while unbeknownst to the parents, and in a “conservative” county, we have lost both the country and the next generation.

These grinning, friendly, extroverts running schools are usually popular with parents, while turning our children into rote little Marxists.

Will we ever get this reversed?

[rawcatslyentist]

Hold the Red Star friendly high in hand. ~N Peart

[bravo whiskey]

why don’t we just tatoo a bar code on them. as i gert older i become less enthralled with technology and i am a technical illustrator.

[ex91B10]

Wanna' bet that this info will wind up in the hands of law enforcement: It'll be "for the children" you know, under the guise of "quickly identifying lost children" or some such rubbish.

Suprised they haven't gotten samples of all the kid's DNA yet through the school nurse under some pretense.

The Kenyan must go.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Maryland “Freak Surveillance State” PING!

[RedMDer]

Wow. We used to live in Carroll County. I'm really surprised that Carroll is the first.

[RedMDer]

[Abundy]

not to me...there's a pet judge in Carroll County signing search warrants on stale data for the MSP firearms unit that is targeting all the 'red' counties...especially western maryland (by using ammunition purchase data from WalMart to obtain search warrants for anyone that purchases ammo but has a criminal record and using the supposition that they must be in possession of a weapon if they are purchasing ammunition)

OweMalley and the rest of the statists know who everyone is in the blue counties...they need to be able to put the boot down hard on the red ones this is evidence that they are implementing long term and short term strategies for their total control agenda