Kid's Pay for Lunch by ScanningTue Sep 5, 2006 16:58
Scan your fingerprint, buy a school lunch
Biometric ID device worries some parents
The Associated Press
BOARDMAN, Ore. - Instead of using a meal card to pay for lunch, students at Morrow County schools will be using something a little more futuristic - a finger scanner.
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Kid's Pay for Lunch by Scanning
The "Touch n' Go" device reads students' fingerprints with an optical sensor and relays the information to a computer, where students' accounts are charged.
Such biometric technology, which measures physical characteristics and uses them as a form of identification, are being used at a growing number of school districts. Some use finger scans to dispense medicine, take attendance, check out books in the library or ensure that bus-riding students get off at the right stop.
Morrow County put the high-tech service in place to speed up lunch lines.
While many of the parents welcome the change or are ambivalent, a few are resisting the move. Alberta Akers, who has grandchildren at Sam Boardman Elementary School, is one of them.
"Our fingerprints are just like our Social Security numbers," she said, before seeing a demonstration of the service. "That's how people steal identities."
She said she knows other parents who object to the scanning for religious and privacy reasons.
Food Service Director Linda Kenny held an open house recently to allay concerns about the new program, demonstrating the scanning process and answering questions about how it works.
Kenny is aware of some concerns but thinks many are unfounded.
The system doesn't use actual fingerprints, she said, only finger scans that measure points on the print. The actual fingerprint is never stored in the centralized database, she said.
"It's gone - it's discarded," she said. "What's left is converted to a mathematical equation in the computer."
The machine converts the finger scans into algorithms, essentially a batch of numbers that is compared with later finger scans.
'Can't be stolen'
She showed Akers how the computer analyzes three touches of a finger to a pad. With each touch, the computer developed a grid of intersection points from the swirls and arc of the scanned finger. Each time, a partial fingerprint appeared, then faded away.
"That's the last time you'll see any sign of a fingerprint," she said. "It can't be replicated - it can't be stolen."
The Echo School District will start using finger scanning in its cafeterias this year.
"We just got it set up," said Tera Longhorn, the district's food service director. "We'll start running the kids through Monday."
Longhorn said some parents were tentative at first, but seemed to relax after they heard more about the process. She is ecstatic about the new system.
"It's so much faster and more accurate," she said.
Previously, staff at some schools manually checked off students on a list, then keyed the information to computer files later. In other schools, the students found their cards on a rack, then handed them over to cafeteria workers who re-alphabetized them on the rack.
"This will speed up the process and reduce labor costs," she said. "It should save taxpayers money in the long run."
Parents can opt to not have their children participate. Numerous areas that have used the technology said they also found some resistance from parents but only a handful chose not to allow their children to participate.
At the Morrow County demonstration, Akers lost a little of her previous fervor as she watched Kenny touch the keys, though she still objected.
"It looks like it could be a good thing," she said, "but I still see it as a fingerprint, a type of identification, the same as a Social Security card or a birth certificate."
Some Kids cought picking ass hole then scanning finger...
HA HA HA HA !!!!
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GEORGE W. BUSH USHERING IN 'THE MARK OF THE BEAST'?
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." ~ Revelation 13:16-18
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