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Education Privacy

School Lunch Program Scans Student Thumbprints For 'Tracking Purposes' 141

Posted by Soulskill from the there-ain't-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch dept.
schwit1 writes with news that a school district in Pennsylvania is providing free lunches to schoolchildren as part of an initiative to improve nutrition. Instead of providing the lunches to all students without question, they made the program opt-in. Since not all students get the lunches, they needed a way to track who was getting them. Officials decided the best way to do so would be to invest in biometric software that scans students's thumbprints every time they pick up lunch. The data collected by these scanners goes not just to the school district, but to the federal government as well.
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School Lunch Program Scans Student Thumbprints For 'Tracking Purposes' More

School Lunch Program Scans Student Thumbprints For 'Tracking Purposes'

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  • Frosty (Score:3)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @09:37AM (#49951671) Homepage Journal

    Does it also report what they eat? Mine's a supersized FROSTY!!!!!

    • Re:Frosty (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:29AM (#49951903)

      I'm sure it will soon. There are some potential benefits: noticing that a diabetic student is buying a frosty milkshake everyday, or that a child with seafood allergies is buying fish sticks every week, or that a morbidly obese student or builimic student are buying 5 servings of ice cream every day might all be useful to the parents and the school. And the usefulness of such information can be used to justify monitoring _all_ students.

      I recently encountered this sort of thing at a university where the IT department implemented extremely detailed tracking of wifi use. They would report to the parents, without notification to the student, where a student's laptop was last detected and what wifi access points they normally used at certain times of day. The nominal reason was "so the parents could contact the student". I was quite surprised, though not shocked, at their casual approach to privacy, especially since the same system monitored staff, visitors, campus police cell phones, and the personnel at the ROTC and military research facilities on their campus

      • I'm sure it will soon. There are some potential benefits: noticing that a diabetic student is buying a frosty milkshake everyday, or that a child with seafood allergies is buying fish sticks every week, or that a morbidly obese student or builimic student are buying 5 servings of ice cream every day might all be useful to the parents and the school. And the usefulness of such information can be used to justify monitoring _all_ students.

        Is it really the school's or government's responsibility to protect kids from these things? In addition, since only poor kids will qualify for free lunches, is this simply a way for the government to add to a fingerprint database to track these kids as adults? When biometrics are used for security at a place of work, you as an individual can choose to work there or not. When used at a public institution, you don't have the ability to refuse.

        • Is it really the school's or government's responsibility to protect kids from these things?

          Absolutely not, but it would be kind of nice to see parents start to take a little responsibility.

        • > Is it really the school's or government's responsibility to protect kids from these things?

          For all students, and especially with medical issues, a school has considerable legal authority and responsibility for that child's care. They are _expected_ to support the physician's and parent's decisions about medical care: Failing to do so could kill the child, especially one with such clearly diet linked medical requirements. And failing to demonstrate that the school has done their best to cooperate with t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hizonner ( 38491 )

        When describing verifiable wrongdoing, there is no reason not to name names and every reason to name them. Especially when the nature of the described wrongdoing basically guarantees that thousands of people must know about it.

        What university?

        • > there is no reason not to name names and every reason to name them.

          They're already dealing with the issue. Mine was meant to be a cautionary tale: they are already dealing with the issues, including some personnel changes, so _nothing_ would be served by naming names at this point.

          And no, the nature of the wrongdoing is such that very few people were aware of it, because very few people paid attention. The students and staff sign various agreements agreeing to monitoring "as deemed necessary" for secu

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hizonner ( 38491 )

            OK, I agree that having dealt with the problem is a good reason not to name them. Thank you for explaining.

            But if they were systematically giving this information out to parents, how could the parents not have known about it?

            If a university offered to give me that information on my kid, I'd suggest that my kid make their lives hell over it, and offer to fund the project.

            • Ahh. They weren't "systematically giving this out", and they weren't "offering" it. It was presented on request, typically when parents expressed concern about the location and safety of the student. The capacity, and the ease of obtaining the records, wasn't broadly advertised. Parents are often paying quite a lot for a student's education. and make demands based on that and on their concern for their children.

              The "magic words" to most easily obtain the records was expressing concern about possible suicid

      • Control freak much?

  • Scare quotes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guises ( 2423402 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @09:37AM (#49951673)
    What's with the scare quotes? Of course the thumb prints are for tracking purposes. What else could they possibly be good for? A collage?
    • Fingerprints have traditionally been used as a form of identification rather than as a monitoring tool. Tracking is when you combine that information with other information so you learn John doesn't eat healthy food.

      • "Sorry, Timmy... we see here that you were eating unhealthy food in 3rd grade which, even if we didn't know it at the time, was later determined to be a primary cause of hepatic liver failure 35 years later; under the provisions of the ACA 17.3, we're sadly going to have to deny you that new liver. If only you'd eaten the lime, instead of the cherry jello..."

    • Re:Scare quotes? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:15AM (#49951845)

      What's with the scare quotes? Of course the thumb prints are for tracking purposes. What else could they possibly be good for? A collage?

      And how many more Snowden events need to go down before you realize those quotes are pretty valid today?

      When it comes to collecting data today...ANY fucking data, you can rest assured it's being used for more than the "advertised" purpose.

      Don't be ignorant about it. It's how we got here.

      • Mod the fuck up.

      • Either you're confused or I am.

        Snowden exposed that things were being used for tracking purposes. So why put scare quotes around tracking purposes? It's the exact nefarious thing you're talking about. They are advertising the purpose.

        What is the NSA going to do with fingerprints that's worse than the advertised tracking purposes? Sorcery?

        If you're going to think it's a government conspiracy, the scare quotes belong around a statement that the tracking will be limited. You say it like this: the trackin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Altrag ( 195300 )

          I think the issue is that the NSA is getting them at all.

          NSA tracking >> school tracking on the scary scale. Especially since the school is doing it in public and likely has to have some sort of expiration plan after the student leaves the school, while the NSA will keep that shit as long as they can fund the disk space.

      • Snowden exposed data collection for tracking purposes. So does that mean by putting quotes around 'tracking purposes' we are no longer actually using them for tracking and are just using them to deliver lunch?

        Think about it grammatically for a second. When you put scare quotes around a scary word, does it mean it's not being used for scary purposes? This has nothing to do with Snowden and everything to do with piss poor choice of text.

    • clearly, tracking students based on their thumbprint, rather than by their student ID, which is exactly as linked to them, personally, is a bad thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altrag ( 195300 )

        The student ID isn't "exactly" as linked to them. If your fingerprints makes it into a federal database, you can be looked up for ages. If your student ID makes it into a federal database, you can only be looked up as long as you're flashing your student ID.

        Fingerprints can't be discarded like an ID card can.

  • It just occurred to me that this kind of thing would provide useful data to fast food companies, if used in the general population. Imagine something like "Google Lunch", which would provide a free meal to people who swipe their thumb. One would think that the data on where, what, and when people prefer to eat would be worth some serious money to those companies.

    • Why swipe your thumb for free food when they can allow you to pay with your phone and have not only the receipt of what you purchased but time and location, friends in your contact info who are near you and so on without making anything free. Hell, you will end up paying them to do it.

      But I suppose there's a difference between private companies and government.

    • The kid is getting an entire lunch. They aren't scanning junior's thumbprint for each bag of Fritos that he grabs off the cart. He's going to get whatever the US Department of Agriculture has found sitting in a warehouse until just before the product's third expiration date (the one that they really mean).

      This info is going to be pretty much useless to anybody except some flunky in the School Lunch administration.

      Geez you guys. What the hell did they feed you all in school? Methamphetamine laced Doritos

      • Dude, no. What I'm suggesting is that Google could partner with a bunch of restaurants, where Google would pay for the orders made by people, and collect the data. Then the companies could subscribe to the entire data pool from google, and get valuable consumer information. Kids get free lunches, companies get data, and google gets revenue.
    • Yeah, that would work too. I don't see any use case where biometrics are necessary, if it isn't essential that exactly that particular kid and nobody else is to use a service. But this is elementary school, so I'm sure the kindergarten teacher or whoever will be able to vouch for a kid if the lunch lady decides to go to defcon 2 because the kid has no arms or something.
      • Ok, maybe I should have taken my vitamins this morning. What I meant to say was: I agree that there's no use case for biometrics in my proposal or in the original arrangement. The rest of it was in reference to the original arrangement, where I think biometrics are overkill.

  • Oh no, (Score:3)

    by Lumpio- ( 986581 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @09:48AM (#49951733)
    The school and the federal government might find out which students are getting a healthy and nutritious meal and when. This is unacceptable. I get that this is a bit silly but I don't exactly see the privacy concern.

    • Re:Oh no, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:58AM (#49952011)
      OK, here is the privacy concern: The company sponsoring this now has thumbprints of all the students in the program on record. With the thumbprints, the student can then be impersonated at other establishments that use fingerprints for authentication. Get it? If not, see slashdot articles about fingerprint readers at Disneyland.

      A simple magstripe card would have provided the same information, and it's unlikely that it would be used anywhere else.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lumpio- ( 986581 )
        This is why yoú shouldn't use fingerprints as a form of strong ID. School lunch, Disneyland, impersonation is unlikely to be a problem in any significant scale. I wouldn't secure my bank account with it though.
      • You leave your fingerprints everywhere you go, it would be easy for anyone to get it. Of course this way the taxpayers pay for the collection instead of the corporation.

      • No they aren't. Fingerprint readers don't work like that. You get a hash function that is related to ridge pattern (or whatever they happen to be scanning). You can't print out an FBI approved thumb to share with anyone else.

        And yes, they don't need to use the thumb, you could well do the same thing with a mag stripe card. Except that the junior bozo would have to remember to bring the card with them. The thumb, not so much.

      • A simple magstripe card would have provided the same information, and it's unlikely that it would be used anywhere else.

        Why is the solution to identity theft using biometric data, identify theft using something orders of magnitude easier to replicate?

        I don't follow your argument at all. If you're worried about a company using this data then surely you'd want to pick the hardest metric to duplicate.

    • I simply don't want the government having my child's fingerprints in any form. Unless a judge or the law says they have to give them up. It is my job to protect them. And that includes from dumb asses that don't know what could happen with that information.

  • Devils advocate here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chewbacon ( 797801 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @09:55AM (#49951751)

    Perhaps they use thumbprints as opposed to swipe cards that students lose? When I was in elementary school we had the cards for our cash accounts and a friend lost his almost every week. Yes, thumbprints sound a little scary, but even if they gave them ID cards they would still be tracking them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      That's what lanyards are for. No reason to introduce biometrics when a $0.50 string will do.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Perhaps they use thumbprints as opposed to swipe cards that students lose?

      Perhaps you should read the article?

      Apparently to avoid the stigma of being labelled poor, and that some poor kids' parents don't read & therefore don't sign up for the free lunch program, they decided to provide free lunch to everybody.

      Since everybody is eligible, there is no need to verify eligibility, and no need to spend millions on this biometric tracking system.

      And that's even ignoring the privacy implications - are school d

      • This was my first thought too. Forget the privacy concerns, how much money are they wasting?

        • How much are they wasting? Probably none.

          The company providing this is making a profit. Selling students identity, and/or shaving that extra 5% off whatever food substance they sell. The administrators, errr.... school district gets a teeny kickback off that extra profit.
    • is the thought that a large organization (public schools) could potentially have finger prints for every single person in the country with the exception of a few rich kids who go to private schools where room and board are included in the crazy, crazy fees.

      Couldn't we just stop being petty bastards and just give out free food to kids at school? Food is not expensive in America. All this bitching about budgetary constraints is just another example of the middle class and poor at each other's throats...

      • Couldn't we just stop being petty bastards and just give out free food to kids at school? Food is not expensive in America. All this bitching about budgetary constraints is just another example of the middle class and poor at each other's throats...

        Because by having a separate program for the kids who need free lunches, we can be sure everyone knows who they are. Even more importantly we can also make sure that they know who they are and that they feel properly ostracized from good, proper and polite society.

      • Ever been born in the hospital? They take your footprint and it could just as easily be put on government record if they can't get through your foil hat. Beside, even giving something away requires inventory tracking on some level.

    • Student's who cannot keep track of a single card deserve to miss a meal or two as punishment for not being responsible enough for a simple little card. It's literally your MEAL TICKET.... Don't lose it!

    • Perhaps they use thumbprints as opposed to swipe cards that students lose? When I was in elementary school we had the cards for our cash accounts and a friend lost his almost every week.

      A little privation does wonders for a kids tendency to "lose" things...

      Just sayin'.

    • It's also much harder for the school bully to swipe your lunch money. Now he has to actually make you get stuff for him.
  • Get the children used to this type of tracking technology and life will become easier for the communists, ahem...Democrats, who want to take over our government.

  • On the whole, not a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cantankerous Cur ( 3435207 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:02AM (#49951771)

    First, there's only one aspect to that is really objectionable--that the federal government gets the data with no limitations. A fingerprint scanner isn't a bad idea for something needing low security where you're dealing with forgetful preteens. They're inexpensive although the software/system isn't.

    To be honest, I don't really understand the objection to being tracked in the first place. It's just an extension of tracking food stamps. The government makes no secret that if you're going to be the recipient of funds, you're going to be tracked (unless you're a multinational corporation). All that needs to be done is explicitly state that the data will be anonymized (which is likely to be done anyway as this involves minors) and there's minimal issue here.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The data being "anonymized" is just a foot in the door persuasion technique to get people to accept the tracking as "normal".

      Erosion of Privacy Stages
      1) We have practical reasons for wanting features of a myopic dystopia AND "we will mitigate/placate concerns by promising to anonymize the metadata"
      2) Living in environment where features of a myopic dystopia are an "every day thing"(until those features have become commonly accepted as the new normal)
      3) "Solutions providers" looking to capitalize on the fina

  • I don't have thumbs, you insenstive clod!

  • DICE, Please fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by itsenrique ( 846636 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:06AM (#49951795)
    -The icons overlapping the title -The lack of 'Read more' or 'View comments'

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      -The icons overlapping the title
      -The lack of 'Read more' or 'View comments'

      They're trying to boil the frog, to slowly implement Beta... It never went away they're trying to fo

      • They're trying to boil the frog, to slowly implement Beta... It never went away they're trying to fo

        [ NO CARRIER ]

    • The read more is gone on purpose. Notice that it's been very carefully replaced with "Share" in a farmville-esque play to get more views. $$

      M$? Nah. $lashdot.

  • What most people overlook... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:09AM (#49951811)
    The school systems are often the first entry point for the prison industrial complex. Some schools already have metal detectors and armed security guards that treat students as prisoners and/or future criminals. After passing thumbprints into the federal database, don't be surprised if full prints and DNA samples are next. The sooner that the government identifies a future criminal, the sooner someone can get them into the prison pipeline to make money off of them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Oh please, the government isn't putting nearly as much criminals away as necessary. If we had a bit harder punishments for actual crimes and less 'soft' punishments (rap sheets that follow you for the rest of your life), we wouldn't have nearly as much problems. These days the courts and prisons are simply a revolving door that create better criminals while locking away civilians that need help and/or made a simple mistake. You get more time in prison for drinking a bit too much and walking in the street th

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Oh please, the government isn't putting nearly as much criminals away as necessary.

        If you're referring to corrupt politicians, white collar crime, and war criminals, then no, we aren't putting enough people away. If you're referring to poor and blue collar crime, you're a moron, as the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the population.

        Almost all of which is made up of poor and blue collar offenders.

        • Reminds me of the old saying: 'Steal a thousand dollars, go to prison. Steal a million dollars, get probation and community service. Steal a billion dollars, get put on the cover of TIME Magazine as the next great business innovator.'

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          WTH is poor or blue collar crime. I have been both on and off since childhood, I don't need to turn to criminality to make a buck. The US has the largest numbers of prisoners because the US is putting away alcoholics and smokers of weed over drug dealers and violent criminals.

          Being drunk is a felony with in some cases 6 months of prison time and 3 years probation, some states even have minimum prison sentences. Vandalism is a misdemeanor with a maximum 1 year probationary. I'd rather have a drunk vomiting o

  • Vectors! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Good way to load up on other kids' germs just before eating. Would you like some hepatitis with that?

  • Because nobody told me and I've been leaving it literally everywhere I go.

    And boy do I feel like an idiot -- I had a cup of coffee the other day (without my tinfoil gloves) in the breakroom and left a good looking print on the shiny mug. Then I realized that I didn't wipe clean my thumbprint off my shiny car! And I definitely read the newspaper at the park the other day and just left it there for the next reader instead of securely incinerating it! To make matters worse, I let a nice lady borrow my pen and

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 20, 2015 @10:41AM (#49951953)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • ... that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

      The philosophy with these "free" lunches is puzzling in any case.

      Are WIC, plus food stamps, plus ADC/TANF/FIP/whatever they are calling it now, combined, not enough to provide food for kids to brown bag it?

      If they are designed to be enough, that is, to include lunch. then why can't the parents just, you know, send lunch?

      Or is the premise here that poor parents must also be abusive and not willing to feed their children?

      And before you get mad at me, I didn't design all these programs. I'm just asking a logic

  • ISTR a few years ago some other school tried this (for similar reasons: the kids won't get beat up for their lunch money if they aren't carrying any, "ease of use", blah blah). The parents told them to fuck off and spend the money on important shit like textbooks and classroom supplies.

  • Suppose you had been at the place of crime just before the crime happened, and suppose your fingerprints are in the government's database. They find you using the database and you have to prove you are not the criminal. Maybe you succeed at that, maybe not. But I can guarantee you, in such a situation, you would wish your fingerprints were not in that database.

  • This is unacceptable. Not only because the Fed should have nothing to do with this. And not only because the gov really shouldn't need to track which people are participating or even possibly what they are eating. But because the gov should not have fingerprint registration data (which will be horribly abused) .

    Stand up for your rights, people... and the rights of your children. Once you give this data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or la

  • Let's play devil's advocate here. I've given up my fingerprints to Japan upon entry as a tourist. I did the same for the USA. Oh well. Fingerprinting is so routine nowadays that anyone who travels internationally will fall foul of it eventually. Like it or not, sooner or later it'll happen to you. Does it have to be bad?

    This sort of scheme has been done in the UK too, for secondary schools. The biometric systems replace ID cards which get lost, stolen and so on. There is another argument that biometrics hid

  • They should have expected this. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
  • My children have to enter a PIN when they buy there lunch. Extra charges are always showing up on our account because other kids can't remember their pin or mis-type it and there's no check. This way, with the biometrics, the charges (OK, the article is talking about free lunches...) would end up on the correct account.

  • We signed a sheet of paper with our names for reduced price lunch. The school lunch person who stood there got to know the kids with reduced price lunch and knew that if suddenly some kid that she never saw before put his/her name down, they would check another sheet of paper to make sure they were on the list.

    Not sure what's changed in the lunchroom since then that requires such elaborate identification methods.

  • The little beggars are going to grow up to be criminals so we might as well fingerprint them, get them in the "system," and start tracking them now.
  • The linked article is pretty vague about what kind of data is being stored and tracked. Most-likely the system is a simple gatekeeper and doesn't have the ability to monitor what a child is getting at lunch. Also, the data sent to the government is not defined, it likely has no personally identifiable data, just usage statistics (124 kids got lunch on Wednesday), but I'd like to see the data sent. It could very well be sending private information in plain-text across the internet, by design or incompeten

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