A primary school in Manchester, UK is piloting a program in which students as young as four years old use fingerprints rather than library cards to check out books from the school library. The new program is meeting some opposition, according to a Popular Science article, in the form of concerned parents and privacy advocating groups.
The school insists that each child’s biometric data will be converted from an image into a digital code and if parents still take issue with the program, it is entirely voluntary for the child to join. Despite the assurances of data protection by the school, privacy advocates worry that such programs introducing children to biometric technology at a young age will lead to a trivializing of their own biometric data and a perspective that it is not something that needs to be personally protected.
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