News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

Proposed Arizona legislation aims at protecting biometrics of school children

Monday, March 31, 2008

A proposed bill in the Arizona legislature would allow families to keep children’s biometric information away from schools in the form of lunchroom fingerprint programs and facial and iris recognition programs. Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, is sponsoring Senate Bill 1216, which originally called for a ban but now would require schools to obtain parental consent if they wish to collect fingerprints, retinal or iris scans, voice or facial recognition samples or hand geometry from students.

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Northland Pioneer College in Holbrook, Arizona has selected Higher One to help electronically distribute Financial Aid and scholarship refund disbursements to students.

Currently, students can only receive their refunds by a paper check, which means administrations spend long hours printing, stuffing, and organizing checks while students wait even longer to receive them.

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A number of campaigns have been set out to improve school meals and the health of our nation’s school children. And Innovate’s Derek Lubner firmly suggests that the cashless card is critical in the whole piece, and pushing this campaign further.

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The New Canaan Public School District in Connecticut is in planning to participate in a “technology experiment,” which would utilize RFID technology to track students, staff and school property, according to local news report.

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A primary school in Manchester, UK is piloting a program in which students as young as four years old use fingerprints rather than library cards to check out books from the school library. The new program is meeting some opposition, according to a Popular Science article, in the form of concerned parents and privacy advocating groups.

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Bright Way College in Jankipuram in India has implemented a system developed by biometrics developer GI Biometric Solutions in hopes of better protecting its students from being sent home with people that are not supposed to be picking up the children, such as kidnappers, according to a Times of India article.

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The Palos Heights School District 128 in Chicago is using GPS technology to track its students allowing the district to keep up with the student–when he or she first entered the school bus and when the student exited the district’s care.

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