Fingerprint scan lets Norfolk students check out books

The Virginian Pilot
Dec. 13, 2005

NORFOLK — Checking out library books isn’t always simple when you’re in elementary school.

If you have a card, it can get crumpled. If the card information is taped to a frozen treat stick, you can lose it. And for the librarian to look your name up on a computer, you have to know how to spell it.

But at Chesterfield Academy of Math, Science and Technology, these problems no longer exist. All you need is your finger when you go to the library.

The school’s media center is the first in South Hampton Roads public schools to install a scanning system that uses biometrics, a technology that recognizes people through identifiers such as fingerprints and eye scans. The system was launched this fall.

Internationally, school districts have used biometrics to monitor students getting on buses, to identify parents picking up their children, to take attendance, to log into computers and to pay for meals in the cafeteria. Locally, some grocery stores have started using fingertip-recognition devices in checkout lines.

Chesterfield’s principal, Sterling A. White Jr. , said he learned of the biometrics system from an advertisement, and he wanted it because his school focuses on technology.

“I fell in love,” White said. “We should have the latest technology that’s available.”

With the scanner, which cost $995, a semi-conductor measures the positive and negative impulses that comprise the ridges and swirls of the child’s fingerprint, said Bob Engen, president of Educational Biometrics Technology. The computer program then converts the measurements to a set of numbers that are listed in a database with the child’s name.

Students checking out library materials press their fingers to a pad, and the measurements of their fingerprints are matched to the database.

Images of the fingerprints aren’t stored, Engen said, and at this time, there is no software that would allow someone to use the database to identify an existing fingerprint.

Attempting to re-create the fingerprints would be like trying to rewrite the page of a novel, knowing only the first letter of each word, Engen said.

“You’re not looking at numbers,” Engen said. “You’re not looking at things that can be lost, stolen or reproduced.”

Nonetheless, privacy watchdog groups caution against allowing such information to be collected, saying it is hard to predict how it could be used in the future.

In Iowa, schools recently were forced to stop using a biometrics system because of a state law that forbids government entities from fingerprinting children.

“That’s another piece of personal identification information that these young people no longer have control of,” said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.

White sent permission letters announcing the program to the parents of his 580 students. Three parents opted out, he said.

Kenneth Vaughan, 28, said he initially had reservations about allowing his pre-kindergarten daughter to participate. He changed his mind after learning that images of the prints weren’t stored.

“Technology is going to be shifting toward fingerprints,” Vaughan, a Chesterfield math resource teacher, said. “They need this exposure now.”

White said he hopes to install a biometrics system in the cafeteria at some point.

In the media center, students were fascinated by the neon-blue scanner that’s no bigger than half a stick of butter.

They used to check out library books with information taped to a frozen treat stick, but no longer.

“It’s much more easier than trying to carry your stick,” said Michaella Wright, 8, a third-grader. “You have your thumbprint already ready.”