Why schools should abandon biometrics

'Friends don't spy,' wrote Stephen King, 'true friendship is about privacy, too.'

According to news reports yesterday, pupils at a leading independent British prep school are being finger-printed as part of a new payment system for the school dining room. This has reportedly happened without the specific consent of parents.

Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' school took its pupils out of lessons to have their thumbprints recorded. In future, students will press their thumbs against an electronic scanner each time they buy lunch or a snack. The price will be charged to their account.

Parents have complained that they knew nothing about the procedure. The school claims that many other schools have already taken the biometric route when it comes to student data.

The issue of parental consent is, of course, a hugely important one. Parents should bear the ultimate responsibility for deciding on appropriate levels of privacy for their children. How else are they to be held responsible if their children fail to respect the privacy of others?

In the case of schools fingerprinting or using other biometric data, however, there is another issue of equal concern. By extracting biometric information from its young charges, the school is encouraging them to believe that surrendering such information is a normal part of life.

This is an especially important issue in the age of cyber-bullying, easy access to online pornography and the increasing use of data-mining tools by marketers eager to pitch products to the young.

Twenty-five percent of British young people, aged 16-25, say that they are 'addicted' to their mobile phones. They also admit to feeling 'separation anxiety' when their phones are removed.

For the young, this dependency on phones - particularly smart phones - means that the online experience plays an important role in establishing personal identity.

Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook, famously said, 'Privacy is dead - get over it.' His statement sounds shocking to many, yet it reflects the mindset of many of his peers and, perhaps more so, the next generation.

The younger end of the Millennial generation and the generation following them (Gen Z?) both appear more relaxed than older cohorts when it comes to yielding personal information online. In the process, they often overlook the fact that strangers can access this information.

They also forget that what goes digital usually stays digital - either because we simply forget to remove it or, more often, because you can't completely expunge a digital echo.

Many people, including the not-so-young, frequently upload personal data which they might later find embarrassing - or even damaging to their job prospects. In doing so, they also unwittingly open themselves to very personalised and intrusive online advertising.

Though it carries benefits, digital identity also carries a sometimes heavy price tag.

For example, cyber-bullying is a growing problem in many countries within the developed world. In the UK, says the NSPCC, 38 percent of young people have been affected by cyber-bullying. In the US, 52 percent of teens say that they've experienced cyber-bullying; in Australia, the figure is 25 percent.

Cyber-bullying is particularly insidious because it circumvents the normal protections children might expect when they come home and close the front door. In the age of fully wired homes and 3G and 4G mobile technologies, cyber-bullies can seem ubiquitous.

Cyber-bullying can also involve more than one perpetrator, taking on a viral impact, as young copy-cats - who may not even know the victim - jump on the bandwagon. To make matters worse, cyber-bullies often hide their identities behind fake social networking avatars.

Meanwhile, paedophiles and child-pornographers use social networking sites to trawl for potential victims. They prey upon young people who have not yet learned that naiveté is unhelpful online or that privacy is a currency which must be dispensed very sparingly.

Schools will, of course, want to do all in their power to protect their students from bullying, pornography, paedophilia and the like. But encouraging a low respect for personal privacy among young people is in itself, if not dangerous, at least troublesome.

As human beings, our respect for privacy is in many ways a reflection of the esteem in which we hold our own individuality. The exceptionality of a human fingerprint or iris print represents a powerful symbol of the uniqueness of the person to whom they belong.

We should guard jealously what privacy is left us - and encourage the young to do likewise. Fingerprinting and the use of biometrics generally in schools should be abandoned. There are other options for streamlining their processes. Swipe or RFID cards would be cheaper and represent far less of a threat to young minds and their attitudes to privacy.

True friends of children will recognise that Stephen King is right and behave accordingly.