Presumably because the issue is not robustness of the system or even how
integrated the school is with the wider national systems. I think the
school will have chosen to go with this because it speeds up dinner
time. The similarity in the notion of a unique number is a little
inaccurate. The UPN has only very rudementary modulus integrity checks
and I wouldn't want to use that for authenticating a student - its too
easy to guess.
The fingerprint number I would suspect is generated as a result of a
one-way hashing algorithm which is designed not to be decrypted. These
are actually not unique - there is a very small possibility that two
distinct inputs would cause the same number to be generated. This is so
minutely small that it would not be a worry for one single school. It
is fairly standard practice in systems like this to do this as you only
store the hash, not the number. You only need run the algorithm again
when your pupil returns the next day and if the result is the same as
the one you stored, you give them lunch. Generally this would be done
for passwords so that the password is not stored and cannot be reverse
engineered from the hash. Less of an issue here as the number is no use
anyway and that itself is the result of some maths on a picture, which
is very lossy indeed in terms of the amount of data that is discarded in
capture.
The above paragraph of course is largely irrelevant to users. I suspect
they've been told this as it sounds fancy and will allay their fears of
being cloned.
Regarding the cost of fingerprinting, I'm sure there is a case for
reducing the staff time in administering such things and I would quite
strongly argue that pressing your finger on a plate is a lot quicker and
less error-prone (and therefore quicker) than asking 9 year olds for a
13 digit number which the staff then type in somewhere.
Ian
-----Original Message-----
From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scourfield, Brenda
Sent: 19 January 2007 09:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [data-protection] School fingerprinting: Warning: likely to
raise blood pressur e
I'm not in the education sector but why don't they use the UPRN (Unique
Pupil Record Number) that will stay with the child for the length of
his/her education. Saves the cost of fingerprinting.
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