TRI In The News

School Plans Fingerprint Scans to Monitor Kids in Lunch Lines

From OneNewsNow
By Bob Kellogg

Massachusetts parents are upset that their school plans to scan their children's fingerprints before they go through the lunch line.

North Adams Public Schools say they're implementing the scans in order to speed up lunch lines and enable parents to track their children's eating habits. Some parents, howver, see it as an unnecessary invasion of privacy. John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, suggests those parents are correct to oppose this measure.

“As you know the government is downloading everything electronically today,” he says. “So your child’s fingerprints, if they’re going through biometric lunch lines, are going to be property of the government, essentially.”

According to the attorney, parents in other states have successfully fought back against biometric scans. Rutherford has assisted parents in a couple of similar situations.

“... We helped a school in Maryland that didn’t want this – well, the school did, but a group of parents didn’t,” he tells OneNewsNow. “We backed them, they fought it, and actually the school backed off from the system. A couple years ago, there was another school that was for putting ID chips around kids’ necks. There was an uproar. The Rutherford Institute got involved, and the school backed off of that.”

School officials are insisting that the bio scanning will actually be good for student's privacy but they haven't really explained how.