Schools Use Fingerprint IDs

Updated:10:35, Tuesday July 23, 2002

Schools have been slammed for fingerprinting students with technology used in US prisons and the German military.

The high-tech thumb-scanning device is used in some 350 UK schools and was introduced to cut costs and replace the need for library cards.

But debate is now raging after the practice was condemned as a breach of children's human rights.

Fingerprinted

The controversy emerged after a mother discovered her 11-year-old son had been fingerprinted without her consent at the Sacred Heart School in Ruislip, west London.

She contacted the international human rights watchdog, Privacy International, and child's advocacy group Action on Rights for Children in Education.

Both organisations have called for the technology to be removed from the school, while the child's parents have demanded the removal of their son's prints from the library computer system.

Privacy International says as many as 200,000 primary and secondary school children have been fingerprinted, often without their parents' consent.

'Dangerous'

Director Simon Davies labelled the practise "dangerous, illegal and unnecessary".

He said: "The Department for Education and Skills should not have allowed this practice to spread without consultation with parents or children."

Mr Davies added that the practice was in violation of the Human Rights Act and Data Protection Act: "The law states that privacy invasion must be proportionate to the threat.

"A few lost library cards do not warrant mass fingerprinting," he said.