Blindly Fingerprinting Children

The brilliant new documentary about privacy by David Bond, Erasing David, has a telling scene in Chipping Campden School, Gloucestershire, where the headteacher shows off a new fingerprinting system that allows pupils to register and take their meals by pressing a pad.

The headteacher, Annette France, demonstrates the £25,000 system in front of a classroom of kids, most of whom look pretty underwhelmed. Possibly France was put off by the camera and the kids smirking behind her back but I sensed a shiftiness in her attitude, as though she was beginning to realise that collecting biometrics from children and dismissing parents' concerns was actually rather weird behaviour.

In south Devon, the kids and parents are made from sterner stuff. Students at Kingsbridge community college have rebelled against this pernicious practice of taking fingerprints and have won the support of the Totnes MP Anthony Steen, who has written to schools secretary Ed Balls. At St King Edward Vl community college, also in Devon, parents have protested about a similar system.'

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