Irish college deploys fingerprint scanners

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Tuesday May 31, 2005 21:31

by The Register

It was with a little fanfare of trumpets that St Andrew's College in Dublin today announced it has rolled out a biometric student registering solution which allows the reading of kids' fingerprints without physically storing an image of same.

The TruancyGuard system - deployed by thrustingly-monikered Adrenalin - is being tested on one unfortunate class from the second year. School head Arthur Godsil explained the rationale: "Every morning it is the responsibility of the form teacher to register all pupils. This is a time consuming but necessary process as for safety reasons we need to know the whereabouts of our students at all times. However, if we can place the responsibility of registration directly on the pupils, this will free the individual form teachers' time to provide greater pastoral care to the students at that time."

Hmmm. We suspect the individual form teachers will use the precious extra minutes to fire up a quick cigarette and quaff another instant coffee. Can't say we blame 'em.

Back out in the corridors, meanwhile, pupils will be pressing their grubby fingers against a scanner which apparently uses a code to identify the digit's owner. Adrenalin MD, John Beckett, explained: "Some people hold reservations about allowing their biometric information to be stored. Accordingly, we have worked hard to ensure this problem is dealt with adequately in our software.

"Rather than storing fingerprint information on file, the fingerprint verification is conducted through specific points on the print, what is termed the 'minutae points'. This method has the same secure results as full fingerprint storage but protects the individuals' privacy through the non recording of their unique finger prints."

So, this encryption algorithm* approach to protecting personal data neatly side-steps the possibility of students and parents whining about their personal liberties. At the same time, though, TruancyGuard "administrators (managers or parents or staff) can monitor attendance in real time via a secure website. As, for example, the student logs in, this information will be immediately visible to parents online or by automated telephone system which uses 'Press 1 for latest attendance statistics' type menus."

Yup, the days of nipping off to the nearest shopping centre for a couple of hours to drink cider are well and truly over. And don't even think about turning up at school and saying "I can't register today cos the dog bit my finger off" - TruancyGuard features a smart-card back-up for those instances where "a pupil cannot physically scan his or her finger". ®

Technical note
*Their words, not ours. Thanks to those readers who have written in to say that Adrenalin's claims as to how the technology works are, ahem, suspect. We're staying out of this pending more info.

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Comments (4 of 4)

Lazy and unnnecesary

by david o'keeffe

Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:14

davidsadress at hotmail dot com

i dont agree at all with the new finger print scanners because.......
The students will still have to go te registration to find out any news that is important to that form i.e if someone in the form has to return a book to the school library the form teacher tells the student in registration that. The scool fees in S.t andrews are enough as it is and have risen by 9% this year to almost 5000euro. The finger scanner is an unnecesary annoyance to the every student who will have to queue to sign in when the previous arrangment of going to registration was working fine. Most of the time registration doesnt take more than 5 minutes so the claim that registration is wasting "valuable" time is nonsense considering after registration students have a few minutes to wander the halls and then when they have to go to class the teacher is late most of the time. Plus someone could have a virus or something and put their finger in and then the machine would be contaminated.

Mixed-Up Priorities

by Frank

Sun Aug 28, 2005 13:47

velvetleonard at hotmail dot com

0863571677

I agree entirely with david o'keefe's comments regarding the new finger printing procedure in our college, it's is ridiculous to think that such large increases can be made to our fees each year, and matters such as a leaking roofs in many classrooms seem to be simply overlooked, perhaps the priority should be to fix these more urgent problems, than to simply create more problems. people who don't attend our school cant possibly understand what kind of problems this new idea is going to cause, in my personal opinion, i dont think that it is too much to ask for a few minutes of a teachers time to call a roll, when that is one of very few procedures that runs smoothly in our college currently.
This finger printing scheme will hopefully just be a phase, and as other schools wait to see how this project fairs in st.andrews college, i know that they will surely learn from our mistake, it is just a shame that our parents have to pay for the cost of this imminant failure.

2 things

by Al

Sun Aug 28, 2005 15:33

All this system does is speed up the process of identifying people that are sick. Im neither with it or against it because I dont really see the problem in the first place however theres 2 things that strike me.

1. What type of visuses? Surely this comment is a joke.

2. The parents can afford the additional cost or they wouldnt be sending their cherished kiddies to the school in the first place. This school is for the very 'poor little rich kids' that so many people have an attitude against.

Re: 1. What type of visuses? Surely this comment is a joke.

by Ray McInerney

Sun Aug 28, 2005 15:41

Read yesterdays Indo.

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Irish college deploys fingerprint scanners

Comments (4 of 4)