Fingerprinting Kids Unpopular in U.S.

Although the fingerprinting of children in some U.K. school libraries has raised important privacy concerns, the trend hasn't taken off here. Indeed, a number of American vendors now offer electronic fingerprinting scanners to public and school libraries, but several tests have shown that the technology is still unreliable.

While such scanning devices work well with adult fingerprints, they have trouble reading the prints of small children. The Northumberland Public Library in Heathsville, VA, has been using Softlink's fingerprint-scanning software since June, "but kids would press and press, 10 times or more, without getting a good reading," says Alice Hershiser, the library's acting director. Oakwood (TX) High School librarian Frances Hague says she still plans to install a fingerprint-based circulation system this fall, despite the fact that the system had trouble recognizing the fingerprints of several students trying to check out books. Oakwood will require that all its 150 students register their fingerprints in the system.

Privacy is another reason why the fingerprinting technology isn't popular in the U.S. Keith Halasy, head of marketing for the automation company Sagebrush, says a few parents contacted their state representatives to protest the fingerprinting of their children in school libraries. Halasy is quick to point out, however, that the scanner doesn't make an exact copy of a fingerprint. It simply converts a fingerprint into a mathematical template that works like an identification card. The company recently removed the finger scanner from its U-Check self-checkout system because it wasn't reading kids' smaller fingers accurately.

Meanwhile, in the U.K., Privacy International, a London-based privacy organization, has launched a campaign to investigate the implications of fingerprinting children in some school library systems. Privacy International claims "tens of thousands of U.K. school children are being fingerprinted by schools, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents."