'Bullying' Aussie high school stops fingerprinting kids
Pressganged into submission
Posted in Law, 3rd April 2008 20:47 GMT
Join our expert panel in discussing application security
An Australian high school has stopped fingerprinting its children, on receiving a caning from the country’s press.
Ku-ring-gai High, in Sydney’s prosperous North Shore, is accused of bullying its charges into scanning their fingerprints for an attendance monitoring system it is trialing.
Under New South Wales rules, parents must be told in advance if their children are to be fingerprinted. Also, schools must not ID children whose parents object by way of a letter of exemption.
But Ku-ring-gai interpreted the rules liberally: one parent told The Australian that his daughter “could not leave an exam room until she provided her fingerprint".
Another claimed her two children were “intimidated” into getting their fingerprints scanned despite presenting exemption letters.
Ku-ring-gai High may have breached procedural and privacy guidelines, education officials say. But the school could return to fingerprinting, when it gets its house in order, according to local news reports. ®


The future of SaaS and IT infrastructure management
Solving on-premise email challenges with on-demand services
The business case for application security
Reducing messaging and web security costs with managed services

Win a Samsung C6625!
Is your cameraphone an oxymoron?
Reg Mobile and Wireless newsletter is go! go! go!
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter