U.K. Privacy Groups Give Thumbs-Down
to Storing Library Users’ Fingerprints
A new school-library circulation system that involves fingerprint recognition has drawn outrage from privacy groups in Britain. Micro Librarian Systems (MLS) says that its IdentiKit system, some 1,000 of which have been sold to schools in the U.K. and elsewhere, is more efficient and less vulnerable to abuse than library cards. But Simon Davies of the watchdog group Privacy International told the July 22 BBC News Online the practice is “dangerous, illegal, and unnecessary,” adding that it “has the effect of softening children up for such initiatives as ID cards and DNA testing.”
MLS Technology Director Stephen Phillips stressed that “the system does not store the actual fingerprint, but a map of it which takes in the print’s key features.” Noting that only two parents had complained to the company, Phillips asked, “People who have nothing to hide, why would they worry?”
The introduction of biometric technology into British schools became public knowledge after the London mother of an 11-year-old told Privacy International that her child’s fingerprints were scanned into the Sacred Heart School’s library computer without her knowledge, according to the July 22 London Register. The next day, Sacred Heart officials told the Associated Press that children’s digital records would be deleted at their parents’ request.
Similar technology is already in use in the United States: Ultra Scan Corporation introduced its Touch and Go system at the Buffalo and Erie County (N.Y.) Public Library last November.
Posted July 29, 2002.
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