2008 Woodie Awards
Welcome to Oceania!
Catherine Conley
Issue date: 10/30/07 Section: Opinions
We're a little behind schedule, but we finally made it. Twenty-three years after the predicted police-state era we are finally putting George Orwell's worst nightmares into action. In Stayton, Ore., MealTime, a biometric vendor, has sold a finger scanning device to, of all places, a middle school. The whole idea of this new technology was to speed up lunch lines. Is that small benefit really worth the risk now at stake?
Many parents have caused an uproar over the new system because they were not asked permission first. Britta Hamshar, the parent of a 10-year-old student at Stayton Middle School, was unaware of the technology until her daughter came home one afternoon and informed her that she had already been fingerprinted. Should minors have their fingerprints on record at all? Many of the parents are concerned that the fingerprints could be misplaced or stolen.
But, according to MealTime's marketing director, Steve Moon, the anger caused by the new lunch system is mostly based on misinformation. Jack Adams, superintendent of North Santiam School District (the district to which Stayton Middle School belongs) said that the actual fingerprint is discarded after the information is gathered. He explained that the information the cafeteria uses consists of three mathematical points taken from the student's finger and that no print could be recreated from those points.
However Lillie Coney, associate director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center said, "All biometrics are mathematical points. Now we're seeing schools use the language of marketers who sell this type of technology to convince parents there's nothing to worry about. Schools should be skeptical of an industry that creates this technology and which then says the data can't be used in other ways."
So the question is, even if this technology is harmless now, will that argument still hold true in the future? Whoever thought that technological advances in camera quality would one day be used for speed traps? Sure, these "fingerprint" scans may not be useful to the government or to identity hackers now, but does that ensure their harmlessness in the future? With the rapid speed at which technological advances are being released it seems possible that those three plot points could be used to recreate a fingerprint in the future.
The school has assured parents that this information, however "benign," is safe by stating that the data is kept on a self-contained database inside the school system's district office. Coney also has issues with the storage method. She said, "In the final analysis, the print information collected from these students is only as secure as the database in which that information is stored and no database is immune from attackers."
To my great relief I saw that the school did allow students to opt out of the new lunch program. We aren't a police state yet but it does feel as though people are getting more and more accustomed to the idea. People marvel at new technological advances but don't ever stop to think about the consequences. How much is too much? How far are we away from being under constant surveillance? It may seem a little rash to jump from middle school lunch to Oceania but the line has to be drawn somewhere.
Many parents have caused an uproar over the new system because they were not asked permission first. Britta Hamshar, the parent of a 10-year-old student at Stayton Middle School, was unaware of the technology until her daughter came home one afternoon and informed her that she had already been fingerprinted. Should minors have their fingerprints on record at all? Many of the parents are concerned that the fingerprints could be misplaced or stolen.
But, according to MealTime's marketing director, Steve Moon, the anger caused by the new lunch system is mostly based on misinformation. Jack Adams, superintendent of North Santiam School District (the district to which Stayton Middle School belongs) said that the actual fingerprint is discarded after the information is gathered. He explained that the information the cafeteria uses consists of three mathematical points taken from the student's finger and that no print could be recreated from those points.
However Lillie Coney, associate director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center said, "All biometrics are mathematical points. Now we're seeing schools use the language of marketers who sell this type of technology to convince parents there's nothing to worry about. Schools should be skeptical of an industry that creates this technology and which then says the data can't be used in other ways."
So the question is, even if this technology is harmless now, will that argument still hold true in the future? Whoever thought that technological advances in camera quality would one day be used for speed traps? Sure, these "fingerprint" scans may not be useful to the government or to identity hackers now, but does that ensure their harmlessness in the future? With the rapid speed at which technological advances are being released it seems possible that those three plot points could be used to recreate a fingerprint in the future.
The school has assured parents that this information, however "benign," is safe by stating that the data is kept on a self-contained database inside the school system's district office. Coney also has issues with the storage method. She said, "In the final analysis, the print information collected from these students is only as secure as the database in which that information is stored and no database is immune from attackers."
To my great relief I saw that the school did allow students to opt out of the new lunch program. We aren't a police state yet but it does feel as though people are getting more and more accustomed to the idea. People marvel at new technological advances but don't ever stop to think about the consequences. How much is too much? How far are we away from being under constant surveillance? It may seem a little rash to jump from middle school lunch to Oceania but the line has to be drawn somewhere.
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