London Tube Cleaners Don't Want Fingerprint Clock-in 351
Bismillah writes "Biometrics is hot stuff, not just for Apple but cleaning companies like the UK division of Denmark's IIS which tidies the London Underground railway network. However, the cleaners aren't happy about having to clock in and out with biometric fingerprint sensors, and are taking industrial action to stop the practice."
BFD (Score:2)
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
Just be happy you have a job.
This is exactly what the slavemasters want you to think.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Funny)
I've really had it with these slavemasters since the era of the IDE hardware bus.
Re:BFD (Score:4, Funny)
+5 Insightful?
So then. It is just not you that has no clue what a slave is.
Fry: "You know the worst thing about being a slave? They make you work but they don't pay you or let you go..."
Leela: "That's the only thing about being a slave.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When I worked in a NOC for a major bank, we had full hand scanners, explosives sniffers and video records to endure when we clocked in. That was fifteen years ago.
Just be happy we didn't install exploding sniffers. You know? To increase the efficiency of the firing/dismissal procedure.
FTFY
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
How about instead "Just be thankful you have workers"?
What's more important: human beings or the profit of corporations?
I think the best way to promote a positive evolution of morality, for the sake of mankind, is to deal with each individual according to their answer to that question... As a form of preliminary screening.
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
well the reason they don't want the scanners is that then they can't as easily sell their job when they move on - or have their cousin cover for them on a sick day.
unfortunately england is chock full of people who would take the job. for this same reason there's factories in china and latin america where the attendance of the workers is 99.9%(that is: no sickdays taken ever). sure, you can't be sure that it's always the same guy but you can be sure the family arranges someone to cover because that one worker feeds 10 people.
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well the reason they don't want the scanners is that then they can't as easily sell their job when they move on - or have their cousin cover for them on a sick day.
Or just not turn up for work and have a colleague claim that they're present but you can't see them now because they're out on some obscure bit of track.
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Or just not turn up for work and have a colleague claim that they're present but you can't see them now because they're out on some obscure bit of track.
The cleaners clean trains and stations, not the track.
Either system doesn't prevent someone clocking in and then not doing their job, whether they saty at the station/depot or not.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For reasons that should be blatantly obvious...
Mole-people kidnappings?
Re:BFD (Score:5, Interesting)
Possibly, but another very good reason they don't want scanners is that it's demeaning and insulting.
Unless there are significant problems (and not just "significant bending of the rules", but "significant extra expense or reduction in quality"), there is no reason to treat people like criminals.
And if there are significant problems, there's a better solution: Hire people you trust, and then trust the people you hire; and don't judge them by stupid metrics like "has been physically present exactly N hours?", but by metrics like, "Is the area they were responsible for clean?" If it would take an average person working at a reasonable rate 8 hours to clean a certain area, and because of me the area is now clean, then pay me for 8 hours worth of work, whether it took me 8 hours or three hours.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BFD (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, we as society could stop demeaning people for doing good work and making the world a better place. Do you want to be able to take a subway without the place reeking of shit and puke? Then be thankful for the people cleaning it up; give them respect, good working conditions, and a living wage. Anyone who is creating value for society deserves that much, whether they're designing the next iPhone or washing the piss smell of a public lavatory. And if you don't give them any of that, don't be surprised if they don't deliver very much value to you.
If the card is exactly the same, then why go through the expense of the fancy new equipment?
If the fingerprint system really is cheaper / more robust / maintainable / whatever, then it may make sense to upgrade. If, as I suspect, it is is more expensive, and they're doing it not to reduce costs and increase efficiency of processing but to have more control over people. Either that's not necessary, in which case it's demeaning, or it is necessary, in which case (it seems to me) they're doing something else really wrong.
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Yes, sadly it is, particularly on the weekends when people are out "living their life to the fullest". It's their life so what do they care about the mess they leave behind?
Witness what happens in New York City parks [nytimes.com] on weekends.
Re:BFD (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting. At what level of career achievement does someone stop being a subhuman deserving of debasement, in your eyes?
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How about instead "Just be thankful you have workers"?
What's more important: human beings or the profit of corporations?
What I think is the problem here is the implicit assumption that there's some sort of zero sum game between the two. But it's quite possible to interfere with the employment relationship in a way that is detrimental to both human beings and the profit of private enterprise (not just "corporations") and that this is routinely done throughout the developed world.
Re:BFD (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't blame 'em. (Score:4, Funny)
Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else. This is how unions get a bad name. Bio-metrics are used for time card validation on many places and it is neither "draconian" nor "an attack on civil liberties".
The article then goes on to talk about biometric authentication on mobile devices which has nothing to do with biometric time card sign ins. This is another sensationalistic piece which brings together unrelated information in an attempt to make a big splash.
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a well oiled system in place for trading clock ins. If they implement this new technology it will throw a wrench in the works.
-IANALTC
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a bunch of problems with "clocking in as someone else"
1) If there's a disaster and they need to know "who are we searching for", time card records are a good source
2) There are wage and hour laws designed to prevent employer abuse of employees (e.g. overtime rules). Allowing one person to clock in as another opens the door to abuse: (you take my shift or I'll report that you were doing drugs in the restroom on break) (I don't care if you've got to get home, and I'm not paying overtime, clock in as J
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else. This is how unions get a bad name. Bio-metrics are used for time card validation on many places and it is neither "draconian" nor "an attack on civil liberties".
This is The Peter Principle [amazon.com] at work.
It's pretty easy to show up, put your hand on the scanner, and half-ass it all day long. Do you want clean tubes? Or do you want employees who make sure to put their hand on the scanner at the right time? When you figure that out, design your checks and metrics accordingly.
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This is evaluating input, not output.
It's pretty easy to show up, put your hand on the scanner, and half-ass it all day long. Do you want clean tubes? Or do you want employees who make sure to put their hand on the scanner at the right time? When you figure that out, design your checks and metrics accordingly.
Funny you often don't get an output without input. Efficiency is a hard target to nail, actually getting people to turn up to work and stop screwing the payroll system is a low hanging fruit.
When people show up, then we can talk about the
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Just because someone is magically efficient doesn't mean they get to knock off an hour early and have a friend sign them out.
Why not? Are they paying for time? Or clean tubes? Is the guy that's there all day, maybe doing a shitty job, more valuable than the guy who gets the job done quickly?
The job being done well is the metric that needs to be evaluated, not the time spent hanging out at work. It's just easier to evaluate numbers (the computer said everyone was there all day), than to evaluate the actual job. Hey, I checked it out, and the tubes are clean.
Re:Peter Principle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Peter Principle (Score:5, Funny)
Uhm, no. This is the Peter Principle:...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
Cute.
He quotes the actual book.
You contradict him citing the Wikipedia article summary about the book.
It is a sad world when people treat Wikipedia (a tertiary source) as more authoritative than the primary source.
Re: Peter Principle (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is about having the fingerprint data. Business promise things to worker all the time, but their promises are so often just lies (and recently, at least in the US, told to lie by no such agency).
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Fingerprints for this purpose are usually hashed. I.e. you are not able to reverse it back to a picture of their fingerprint.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fingerprints for this purpose are usually hashed. I.e. you are not able to reverse it back to a picture of their fingerprint.
For some definitions of "reverse." By "hashed" what you really mean is a list of minutiae - x,y coordinates of significant features like ridges, ridge splits, whorls, loops, etc. The list of minutiae isn't enough to reconstruct the entire fingerprint, but it is enough to make a fake print that will scan and pass as the original print.
So it won't stand up against a human doing a forensic examination (at least not a human who takes their job seriously) but it will pass an automated system with flying colors
Duplication (Score:3)
Care to cite any studies or article where this has happened? Otherwise it is pure conjecture on your part.
Re:Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
As in the significant features are hashed. With you know, a hashing function. Non-reversible.
Re: (Score:2)
if hash == true...
Unless they are salted, because everyone does that in 2013...
Stop me if you're laughing too hard to continue.
Re:Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
Then they wanted me to do a fingerprint for the building I worked in so I can get in after 5:30. As is my legal right, I opted out and they have to provide an alternative means for me to gain entry. Of course, they didn't actually do that, so now if it is after 5:30 and I happen to be outside, I just go home.
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The fingerprint data was sent to facilitate the background check. The Underground is not doing that.
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As is my legal right, I opted out
Where is that codified?
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Whatever happened to the concept of unalienable rights? That is, we aren't granted "rights" by the government; rather, we allow the government to infringe upon those rights for the purpose of maintaining a working society. I know it's an American notion and this is a story about workers in Great Britain, but it distresses me to see an increasing belief that it is a government that determines whether or not we are allowed certain rights. It's an attitude that grants them too much power because any rights no
Re: (Score:3)
What is the issue with having a mathematical representation of one's fingerprint stored by the company? It is not the actual fingerprint on file and there are many different algorithms to encode them. Different company's machines xcan not compre fingerprints and sometimes different versions of the same machine can not. What promise is there to break? Show up, log in correctly and we will pay you? What other promise is there to break?
Re: (Score:2)
Do some research on fingerprint scanners and get back to me. I did the research.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I work with it, depends of the sensor type used... simple resistive capture just generate low quality images (think on fax like) but common used scanners found in banks or by HR sofware like ours, provide better quality images of the finger prints than can be saved and procesed with unrelated SDKs for biometrics. The hardware vendor librarys use propietary data structures for the minutiae obtained from the images... but unrelated more expensive SDKs exist (focused massive or bach server processing) that sup
Re: (Score:3)
The issue is about having the fingerprint data.
They could offer to implement smartcards with integrated fingerprint readers. The smartcard verifies the print and the reader verifies the smartcard's attestation.
Then we'd know whether the tubemasters want the fingerprint data and/or the workers want to trade shifts off the books.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is about having the fingerprint data.
I wouldn't be so quick to leap to that conclusion. All I see in the story is that the move has been attacked as "an attack on civil liberties." This probably means the liberty to get your mate to clock on for you when you're going to be ten minutes late.
Re: (Score:2)
The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else.
How about the privacy of their fingerprints. Their employer does not need a record of their fingerprints.
Another problem with using biometrics for authentication, is one they are compromised, they are compromised forever.
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A picture of the fingerprint is not stored but only a mathematical representation that are not comparable between machines. It is only compromised until the next encoding algorithm is used.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Posting AC because I work at a company involved with fingerprint biometrics.
Depending on the type of sensors used and how much of the processing is done at the sensor, the range of usable data that can be retrieved is;
1. can reconstruct a fingerprint-like pattern that will emulate you sufficiently for that particular sensor model, though it looks nothing like a human fingerprint
2. can get reasonably close to a fingerprint-like pattern that can fool sensors using similar physical techniques and detection alg
Re: (Score:2)
How about the privacy of the physical representation of themselves. The employer needs no record of what an employee looks like. The employer should just blindly accept the word of the employee that the employee came to work.
Re:Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else.
Well, that... and it lets them share the prints with law enforcement, cross check the fingerprints with cases and what not, and subject them to all kinds of harrassment.
I object to being fingerprinted for any reason, short of with a judge issued warrant. And I object to routine finger printing of individuals who are released without being charged, nevermind individuals who are acquitted.
I'm certainly not going to hand over my fingerprints just to prove I'm doing a menial job I'm being paid to do. If my employer is concerned the job isn't being done properly, inspect the work being performed -- biometrics showing I clocked in on time don't mean a damned thing.
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Yet another person who does not know how fingerprint scanners work but feels competent to comment. Fingerprint scanners store a mathematical representation of the fingerprint and not a picture. The representations are not comparable between companies and sometime models from the same company.
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Fingerprint scanners store a mathematical representation of the fingerprint and not a picture.
And they can be defeated using a known fingerprint and a gummy candy. So what?
Both sides have their own goals, and both can be met with an alternate solution. The whole problem can be avoided entirely by competent management, but I'm sure they are hiring supervisors at the minimum wage so competence probably isn't a thing they expect.
The company probably wants the fingerprint scanners for convenience. It is unlikely (although certainly possible) that they are trying to get the fingerprint data for nefario
Re: (Score:2)
On the point of incompetent management. The London Underground is spread out all over London. Workers are spread out all over London. It would take hundreds of supervisors running around station to station all day checking on people to ensure they are actually there doing their job. The London Underground is not a factory floor.
Most people only have ten fingerprints, it can only be compromised so many times before it is a nasty problem for the individual.
Sorry but that is overstating the issue. Fingerprint scanner information is not transferable between systems. It is a mathematical representation specific to the company and sometime
Re: (Score:3)
The fingerprint scanners I've worked with are also perfectly capable of giving you an actual image of the fingerprint. How is the employee to know that the police haven't asked London Underground to also capture all the images they get and send it to them for a fishing expedition? They can't.
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Care to cite the make and model numbers of these scanners?
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Yet another person who does not know how fingerprint scanners work but feels competent to comment.
Yet another person who assumes that all fingerprint scanners work in exactly the same way. How do you know this system doesn't store a full scan when the print is taken, even if it's not actually used for verification?
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Because I have done the research and have not found one. This could also be a point of compromise for the union to stipulate that the readers do not have image capability.
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Because I have done the research and have not found one.
Is that research as in Research, or research as in Googling?
Fingerprint Image data is stored as a raw image (compatible with ISO/IEC 19794-4:2005(E)) [google.com]
Captures an un-distorted raw fingerprint image into PC in 100ms [bayometric.com]
Just because there is a way something should be done, doesn't mean everyone's going to do it that way.
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Just because there is a way something can be done, doesn't mean everyone's going to do it that way.
FTFY. It could be negotiated in the union contract that no images are stored or transmitted from the readers with significant penalties for breaking the contract. One of the stipulation would be that the union has the ability to vet the devices to ensure compliance.
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The only "civil liberty" it attacks is the ability to fraudulently sign in for someone else.
Is this sort of fraud currently a problem? If not, then why are they wasting the money on this system? If it is a problem, how do they know this system won't be easy to circumvent? Do they scan a full ten-print (really unlikely) or just the forefinger in which case how hard is it going to be for someone to wear gummy-bear copies [slashdot.org] of their buddies' prints on their other 9 fingers and fraudulently clock them in?
Bio-metrics are used for time card validation on many places and it is neither "draconian" nor "an attack on civil liberties".
Treating people like criminals should always be a last resort and if you do it, you better be pre
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Fraud is only one issue. Costs are another. It takes money and introduces transcription errors to process paper time sheets. Card system also cost more to implement due to issuing initial and lost cards.
Whether that qualifies under the rubric of civil liberties, I don't know, but it is a socially destructive path to take.
Then why have any time sheets at all? Why not just pay everyone for the shifts they are scheduled to work? We have been on that path since the industrial revolution. Why is it now a problem? The issue is that there are criminals in the system and to stop them from exploiting the system everyone has to go thr
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So what "civil liberty" do you think is being attacked? I see you as a "useful idiot" for the union.
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Hourly wage earners have their hours tracked world over. It is human nature to want to screw the system. This system just happens to be much harder to screw.
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Hourly wage earners have their hours tracked world over. It is human nature to want to screw the system. This system just happens to be much harder to screw.
Not really... if workers realize that it is more important to clock in and out at the appropriate time than to do a good job, then that is probably what you are going to get. So it might be harder to appear to be there when you aren't, but it doesn't mean the system won't be screwed. Especially if they don't like it. I'm not saying it's right, but people who want to screw the system will, and this does nothing to stop that.
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Punch machines have been used for decades. The worker takes a card, punched it through the machine and replaces it. This is no different. Being at work 5 minutes early/late is not a hardship.
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It is actually a point of negotiation between the employee and the company. Some employees choose to hire a representative to do that negotiation and pays a one time fee for that negotiation. Others do it themselves. Others turn the negotiation over to someone they have never met that claims to have the employee's best interest at heart and only asks for a "small" cut of the employees earnings for the rest of the employees life.
Why do you say that only the last option is valid?
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Punch machines work well if there is one entrance and one exit. The Underground is spread all over London. A cleaner is usually assigned a station or stations to clean. There would need to be a punch card at each station for every employee. That is not a viable system. Should they have to punch in at a central location rather than just going to their assigned location in the first place? What a waste of time.
It would appear that it is the union's job to decide that, not yours.
As a thinking human being I can make judgement calls. In my judgement up to ten minutes a day is no
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As a thinking human being I can make judgement calls. In my judgement up to ten minutes a day is no hardship. I have shown up early and stayed late at most of my jobs and it hasn't killed me yet.
10 extra minutes a day, equates to an hour a week. Working an extra hour and still getting payed for the smaller amount of time -- of course is a drop in earning power; it equates to a decrease in average compensation.
There's a difference between you making a choice to show up early or leave late Versus yo
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Wrong issue. This is time card validation not security access.
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Nothing is perfect but decreasing fraud is a valid goal.
Re: (Score:2)
A few things about your examples. The Brazillian Doctor was caught so it was not successful Here is a quote from the Australian article;
"Whether it can be hacked depends on how clever the device is. If it is a reasonable quality, it will look for blood flow and heat, but entry-level models do not."
Mabe they will use devices better than entry level. The gummie bear issue was from a paper written 11 years ago and there may have been some advancements to counter that threat. I am not saying it is impossible but it is much more difficult than handing a card to a co-worker.
You are blaming the complainer, and you claim that because "everybody is doing it" it must therefore be just and righteous.
I am "blaming" no one. They are stating a conclusion with no supporting explanation. For me to agr
Not the Only Problem With the Tube. (Score:2)
The tube cleaners are refusing to go down in the tub station at midnight (because it's so dangerous).
On the fence. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, They have really failed to outline how their civil liberties are being attacked. To what extent can someones thumbprint be abused and how will this affect workers and their rights. None of that was even attempted to be explained.
To anyone saying that the workers just want to fraudulently sign in for someone else and abuse the system needs to try again and come up with a real argument. The assumption that workers just want to screw over employers is elitist and is a part of the same poor logic of "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about." It completely side steps the real issues and disguises the technology as only hurting the bad people. While I don't deny that fraud probably happens, there is no way that fraud is the sole reason for rejection of biometrics. Give real reasons for it, not made up reasons for why the are against it.
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When you lose a RFID card or a password, you can get a new one. When someone hacks into a system and steals your fingerprints, that's it for you. They're compromised for the rest of your life. No system using them as a means of authentication will ever be safe for you, ever again.
Using biometrics for trivial purposes like this is fucking idiotic. The business is putting its employees security at risk for their entire lives, in order to squeeze a few more man-hours a month out of them.
I don't see how any
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Read up on how fingerprint scanners work. They do not store the actual fingerprint.
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It's extremely unlikely the fingerprint scanner device itself does any mathematical transform, much more likely an image is sent to whatever the fingerprint reader is connected to, and code running on this system does the actual work (it makes for a cheaper embedded system if you can use a less powerful microcontroller and offload the work to the server that must be present for the system to work). Compromise the server and you can get the images as they come off the scanner. Or the police can request to ma
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Both of these issues can be negotiated in the contract with penalties for breaking said contract. The issue with police is moot because the police could just request one's time card to take finger prints from.
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Fraud is one of the reasons but not the only one. Sorry but I have seen too many people sign in for others to blithely dismiss the fraud aspect. There are also other benefits to the bio-metric system;
- Automatic data entry of exact times of work. With paper systems there needs to be people to transcribe the sign in sheets.
- Faster log ins. All the worker has to do is swipe a thumb, wait for the beep and done. It is much faster than finding you card, signing it and putting it back.
Here are the issues with ca
Re:On the fence. (Score:5, Insightful)
i know its dependant on the card system but last time I had one the alternative to swiping the card was to punch in the last four digits. This I did on a regular basis because like you said it takes longer to swipe.
rfid cards are used a lot for door access which has the issue that if you forgot that card then you might not be able to open the door.
There are positives to using a finger print scanner, you can't forget the card, you can log fairly accurately who was where at a particular time. However logging out is a bit more hit and miss. Too be fair the London Underground has been a terrorist target before now and will be again,although the last time it was suicide bombers among the passengers. It might make sense to use this system for all the employees of the London underground but to single out the cleaners makes no sense if they are the only group using it there is no security advantage.
The primary objection to use of fingerprints instead of any of the alternatives is fundamentally an issue of trust.
The main group of people who have fingerprints taken are criminals, are the cleaners criminals?
As a subset of workers being targeted for this particular type of identification it seems to send the message that they are particularly untrustworthy, how much of a slap in the face is that. There is always a supervisor/ team leader in charge of a particular crew who knows the people working for him and who is on shift and who isn't in any job. Isn't that enough?
Even if the use of finger print scanners was universal, it wouldn't stop a terrorist, if they need a finger to gain access then they may as well take a finger its just one more casualty. The underground is not secure and cannot be secure and thousands of graffiti tagged trains illustrate that daily.
It is demoralising for the workforce and the system advantages soon start to fall apart when there is a need for agency workers to fill in for absent employees, it is a lot easier to issue a swipe card than to register a temporary worker on a fingerprint based system.
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The main group of people who have fingerprints taken are criminals, are the cleaners criminals?
Many other classes of people are finger printed. In some instances it is require for background checks. Taking the image of one finger and storing a mathematical representation is very different that imaging all ten digits and putting it in a criminal database.
There is always a supervisor/ team leader in charge of a particular crew who knows the people working for him and who is on shift and who isn't in any job. Isn't that enough?
Are you sure about that? It could also be one or two workers patrolling a station dealing with issues with no supervisor is present. The London Underground is very spread out.
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The initial hardware for card based systems is far far cheaper though. The cost difference will probably buy an awful lot of cards. The London Underground also has a huge existing network of card readers too, so it's likely they get a very good bulk discount on RFID readers. Millions of commuters manage to find their card while walking to and from a tube train, workers can manage it too (the RFID cards will work through a wallet, you don't even need to get the card out).
Re: (Score:2)
RFID cards can be passed along to a mate to fake being there. That is much harder with fingerprints.
Re:On the fence. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is pretty certain is that somebody worked and that somebody is attached to a number that should get paid.
There is a simple scam that gets around paper systems. You tell you mate that you are going to be late so he leaves a blank line on the sign in sheet above his name. When you get there you sign in on the blank line and no one will be the wiser.
The other issue with paper systems is that they have to be transcribed by a person into the payroll system. That introduces mistakes and higher costs.
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What is pretty certain is that somebody worked and that somebody is attached to a number that should get paid.
There is a simple scam that gets around paper systems. You tell you mate that you are going to be late so he leaves a blank line on the sign in sheet above his name. When you get there you sign in on the blank line and no one will be the wiser.
The other issue with paper systems is that they have to be transcribed by a person into the payroll system. That introduces mistakes and higher costs.
I'd +1 this a million times if I had mod points.
Paper systems are so easy to exploit. I'm surprised that the majority of posters here on Slashdot have trouble understanding the motive behind these scanners.Yes, it's to keep better track of their workers in the "If you say you are present, you really are present".
Re: (Score:2)
Half the comments on this story are yours. Do you work for TfL or something?
If so, do you know for certain that the existing system is paper based? The article suggests it's computerised and terminal or phone-based, which makes pretty much everything you've posted irrelevant.
"taking industrial action" (Score:2)
AKA "Going on strike"..........
Re:"taking industrial action" (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not necessarily. They might adopt a strict work-to-rule regime where workers do absolutely nothing that is not by-the-book, no staying 10 minutes over time to finish a job, no doing a job without that is not covered explicitly in their work agreements, taking every minute of meal breaks, reporting every little maintenance task they find in glorious detail, etc.
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No, not necessarily. They might adopt a strict work-to-rule regime where workers do absolutely nothing that is not by-the-book, no staying 10 minutes over time to finish a job, no doing a job without that is not covered explicitly in their work agreements, taking every minute of meal breaks, reporting every little maintenance task they find in glorious detail, etc.
Otherwise known as a "slow down". Everything checked and double checked, not an I left undotted or T left uncrossed... No matter how long it takes.
Re: (Score:2)
"Work to rule" is the common name for this in the UK.
I see,
In Oz it's called a "slow down" or "go slow".
Re:"taking industrial action" (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, work-to-rule and slowdown are 2 different but similar actions:
- In work-to-rule, union members follow all procedures perfectly, including the stupidly contradicting ones as a way of slowing up the works. This is the least risky union tactic, because any time management calls union members on it they can point out that they are correctly and diligently following the procedures that management put in place, and that if there's a problem it's with the procedures rather than the workers following them.
- In a slowdown, union members simply work more slowly (letting some of the product get ruined if needed). This is obviously a bit more risky, but it is a common escalation if a work-to-rule doesn't solve the union's problem.
Both tactics can wreak havoc with productivity, but are significantly less messy than a all-out strike.
Slippery Slope (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Glad you admitted the "slippery slope" basis. Like all "slipper slope" [wikipedia.org] arguments this one is an informal fallacy. You last statement would be considered a "red herring", another informal fallacy, as the TSA has nothing to do with Underground cleaner time sheets.
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It is now 20 out of 96 and almost all of them in a thread I started. I enjoy discussions rather than making an empty comment as AC and walking away. By the way, I never post AC; If I say something I stand by it.(Unlike other people)
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The failure if slipper slope arguments is that no matter what is proposed there is a possible bad outcome after a number of future steps. Nothing would get done. If something is wrong now the stop it. If something is going wrong in the future stop it then. Don't stop a good thing now because something bad may happen in the future. The point is that slippery slope arguments assume inevitability and nothing except death and taxes is inevitable.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
Their data is obviously 100% secure so I don't really see any problems. Cleaning companies are famous for their rigid IT infrastructure, since their operational margin is huge and they have tons of cash to spend. There is also no market for hundreds (thousands?) of fingerprints with matching names and other personal data on a black market. So what could possibly go wrong?
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So what could ou use this for?
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How is this a violation of civil liberties? (Score:3)
Thief (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be wimps. Get the model number of the equipment, research how it works, and circumvent. The hard part is keeping the circumvention from management, unless they are participants. I enjoy modern tech. Old school tech like video cameras are tricky. It always raises suspicion when employees are clocking in wearing gorilla masks. One position I had used special encrypted key chain tokens to open the doors, which also clocked you in. Nice, but after a few weeks of trials I found the encryption was not so tough. I could copy other IDs as they walked by in the pub. It was as difficult as those smart cards they use instead of quarters at the laundry. I had $2,000 on my laundry card to make sure it didn't run out.
Just because it's easy to steal doesn't mean it's okay.
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These people do actual work with their hands, they are not chair faggots sitting in an office sipping Nespressos. Their fingerprints must be full of cracks and chemical burns anyways, how can you be sure it'll work?
The point for the FP scanners is not if they works or not. For the "chair faggots sitting in an office sipping Nespressos", the point in installing the FP is to make sure the workers aren't paid if they aren't detected as present on the job (isn't this the very purpose of clocking-in?).
Now, consider what you describe in the context of the above stated purpose: if a worker is not recognized by the FP scanner (but potentially s/he works anyway), is there any problem?. Maybe there is one, but... not for the ma