Couldn't Happen Here...

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City council leader Carl Minns has criticised Hull Trinity House School for installing a biometric fingerprint system for pupils to get their school meals.
Oh my god!

Councillor Minns says it goes against guidance issued to schools by the council.

He believes there is a significant security risk and does not want the data of children to be held in this manner.

The school, in Princes Dock Street, city centre, started using the system this week.

Cllr Minns told the Mail: "My principal objection is on the grounds of information security.

"At some point the school will have to store a child's data on a computer and if it is subject to hacking or proper security is not there, then once the data is out there, it is out there for life and you can't get it back.

"In terms of paying for school meals with this system, given the risks it entails, is it worth it for paying for a meal?"
No!

No one at the school was available to comment.
No surprise there then!

From the comments its clear that the Councillor is not well liked, so Hull is very similar to Barrow when it comes to opinions of councillors, but some of these comments took my breath away or am I just paranoid?

This system is nothing new - at the primary school my children attend they operate the library book borrowing service by thumb print recognition. A know a lot of schools use this principle for school meals which is fine. I have no objections whatsoever. I thought it helped to avoid pupils' lunch money being "stolen". Councillor Minns needs to get a grip.

The school my son goes to uses this system. At no time did I have any concerns about data security. In fact it is a great system as he has no need to carry any money. This reduces the risk of bullying. It seems the Councillor wants to complain before asking those that want to use system.

When I was at secondary school in County Durham between 1997 and 2002 our school library did exactly this (for allowing us to take out books but essentially the same system) and as far as I know - still do. It has never in all those years caused any sort of problem. No data has been leaked, no one has hacked the system, nothing. Maybe if this wasn't published in the HDM no one would have known and therefore looked for the info in the first place!

They've have the same system at my sons school South Hunsley for a few years now. It's brilliant and it means parents can pay money into the Childrens accounts so they don't have to carry money around. Cllr Minns is a fool.

Another case of do as i say, not do as i do from a local government! Theyre happy to want to know everything about us on their stupid databases and put out I.D's at risk on an almost daily basis but heaven forbid anyone dares do it!

Weve had years of the council snooping, collating personal data and disregarding our rights to privacy - so whats different with this? Ohhh thats right, theres an election coming up.....

Nope I'm not paranoid.
I cannot for the life of me understand why people who will happily hand over any sort of data on their children to the state just to hopefully prevent a bully from possibly taking some money from their children when in the care of the same flipping state!
No doubt all these people don't ever send their children to school with money in their pockets to get themselves a little something from the local shops on their way home. But the last comment sums it up for me.
There are obviously large numbers of people who will simply roll over and accept any sort of state meddling in the way they conduct their and their families daily lives simply because "it has always been like that"!

I did go to the schools website but unbelievably its worse than MC2's effort as it hasn't had its copyright updated since 2005 and many pages are either empty or coming soon!
There was also no mention of the introduction of biometric data collection either