"Big Brother" iris scanning program to be implemented in schools will track when a student boards a bus and more
Haines City, FL - A new program designed to track students using iris scanners backfired for the Polk County School District.
The uproar from parents started when their kids came home and told them someone was scanning their eyes.
"I thought it was kind of creepy, it's kind of like big brother looking after your kids," said Emily Palmer, who has a son that attends Bethune Academy, one of the three schools in the Haines City area that is part of the pilot program.
It's called the Eyelock Iris Identity Management made by Stanley Security Solutions. A video on the company's website shows how the biometric screening system works.
“It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual,” Rob Davis, the school board’s senior director of support services, wrote home to parents in a letter dated May 23.
“With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students.
The EyeSwipe-Nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card,” he added.
The district decided to try it out on a trial basis on about 17 buses at Bethune Academy, Daniel Jenkins Academy, and Davenport School of the Arts.
Parents would get text alerts when their child gets on and off a bus.
The problem is no one explained it to parents.
"She came home from school and said they were doing eye scans on the bus and I thought that was a little unusual since nobody notified us," said Dennis Delaney, who has a daughter in the fifth grade.
"There was no note, no letter, nothing."
One parent, Jennifer Thompson, wrote The Ledger this week about her concerns. "These people sent out an opt-out form to watch the presidential address, but they can't notify the parents of children when they are acquiring extremely personal information about minors?" she wrote in an email. "Companies that house this type of information are notorious for selling the data to other companies or even turning it over to the government. This is all a bit ‘Big Brother' and parents should be quite disturbed."
The district planned to send out a letter that explains how it works and gives the option for parents to opt-out if they don't feel comfortable.
But the staff mistakenly forgot to send it.
"I would have had the same questions, so I apologize to those families because that was not our intent. The intent was not to cause chaos or confusion with the parents," said Rob Davis, Senior Director of Support Services for Polk Schools.
He said the district is working to ensure the company destroys all the initial iris scans of students.
The program is now on hold so the district can make sure the mix-up is straightened out.
Davis said they still hope to get the go ahead with the pilot program by the start of next school year, but this time every parent will receive a letter and will have ample time to opt out.
"There's not a day that goes by that we don't have a parent that is frantic about, 'hey my child was supposed to be home by three o'clock, and I just got off work. It's five o'clock and they're nowhere to be found'," he said.
"This was never supposed to be forced on anyone. It was an option for parents."
“It seems like they are mostly focused on this program, like the program was the problem. It’s not, it’s the invasion of my family’s Constitutional right to privacy that is the problem, as well as the school allowing a private company access to my child without my consent or permission,” one concerned parent wrote in a Facebook post that has since been shared hundreds of times.
“This is stolen information, and we cannot retrieve it.”
“I am outraged and sickened by this blatant disregard for my son’s constitutional right to privacy and my parental rights over my son,” Serrano told me this week. Another affected mom, Connie Turlington, also publicly challenged the school district on local TV station WFLA: “This is a fingerprint of my child. Where does this information live? Who has a hold of it? ... My question is: How is it deleted, and how can we be assured as parents that it’s gone?”
School districts across the country are contracting with private tracking firms to monitor students. Some are using radio frequency tracking technology (RFID) to log movements. Khaliah Barnes, the open government counsel with the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), spelled out the chilling implications for freedom of speech, religion and association in a recent CBN interview: “Imagine for example a student being dissuaded from attending a political interest group because she fears that the tracking technology will alert the principal or other administrators where her political affiliations lie.”
Now, add the threat that the nationalized Common Core student databases pose to students and families. As I’ve reported previously, the feds are constructing an unprecedented nationwide student tracking system to aggregate massive amounts of personal data — including health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status and even blood types and homework completion.
http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_polk/haines_city/new-iris-scanning-program-to-keep-track-of-kids-at-school-sparks-outrage-among-parents
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2336020/Parents-angered-schools-conduct-Minority-Report-like-iris-scans-students-young-asking-permission.html
http://www.theledger.com/article/20130530/NEWSCHIEF/130539989?tc=cr
http://rt.com/usa/school-scan-iris-students-023/
http://cherokeetribune.com/view/full_story/22765877/article-Who%E2%80%99s-tracking-your-children-?instance=special%20_coverage_right_column
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