US storing UK students fingerprints
PUPILS fighting a plan to digitally fingerprint them for cashless canteen payments have discovered the company employed by the school to store the data is the same one used by the American security services.
The secondary school students are worried that the biometric data could fall into the hands of identity thieves and compromise them for life.
Vericool, which supplied the software to Kingsbridge Community College in Devon, is owned by US company Anteon, used by many US government departments including security and counter terrorism. The system used at the school copies the unique contour of each youngster’s fingerprint, but head teacher Roger Pope insists it is impossible for the digital record to be used to recreate a complete fingerprint.
