India: Using biometrics to protect vulnerable children

Aadhaar goes to orphanages, joins war on child trafficking (Bangalore Mirror)

Aadhaar's comprehensive database that comprises iris (retina scan) and biometric (fingerprint) information is hoped to aid enforcement agencies find missing children, curb human trafficking and check illegal adoptions. Aadhaar enrolments have begun in Karnataka for children in child care institutes run by the state government's Department of Women and Child Development. Nearly 4,000 kids and youngsters are in care of state homes and will get identity cards.

A couple of notes:

Aadhaar means "foundation." An alternate name for the Aadhaar Project is the UID Project for Universal ID.

In the quoted passage above, "child care institutes" are orphanages rather than the child care centers some readers may be more familiar with.

Data privacy in schools is about much more than biometrics

As we've often said before, if schools can't be trusted with private information, biometrics aren't the problem. It's nice to see that education professionals take a broad view of student privacy issues.

State Lawmakers Ramp Up Attention to Data Privacy (Education Week)

As the appetite for educational data on students has grown across the K-12 sector, so has the stated desire among many state lawmakers to try to protect the privacy and security of sensitive student information.

Spurred by concerns that the rise of education technology and the increasing prevalence of new assessments will place student data in unreliable hands or be put to nefarious uses, lawmakers in dozens of states have acted this year to clarify who has what access to student data and to specify the best practices for shielding that data.

Biometrics gets an undue amount of attention where child privacy issues are concerned and they are mentioned quite a few times in the article. The article, however, is written for the education insider so it is missing the "passion" one often finds in the techy press and political news stories.

Mississippi: Fingerprint verification for subsidized services, finally

Mississippi implements finger scan system for daycare (The Commercial Appeal - Memphis, TN)

Under the system being implemented by the state Department of Human Services, parents must use a finger scanner to sign their children in and out. Proponents say it will save money and cause parents to visit preschools more often, but opponents argue the system is intrusive and creates technical headaches.

About 18,000 children will be affected by the move.

You have to read between the lines, but this is at least partly a ghost-busting mission within government-subsidized child care.

We first commented on this deployment in September of last year in Biometric deployment winners and losers. Follow the links for great examples of arguments made in opposition to tightening up ID management.

More here.

Not only does a fingerprint biometric raise the burden of proof that subsidized services are actually being provided, it makes it harder for unauthorized individuals to remove a child from a child care facility.

Biometrics for newborns in hospital maternity units?

Maha govt asks hospitals to ensure biometric ID of infants (IBN Live)

In order to prevent thefts of babies from hospitals, the Maharashtra government has asked state-run medical centres to ensure biometric identification of infants within two hours of birth.

As far as I know, it's easier to apply biometric identity management techniques to the adults who have a right remove a baby from a hospital than it is to biometrically account for the identity of each infant. Face recognition doesn't work very well on infants and newborns aren't going to be able to help with the more participatory biometric modalities like iris and finger even if the algorithms are applicable to infant morphology (and I'm not sure that they are).

Footprints have been collected from newborns for a long time, but even though human experts can match properly executed paper and ink footprints, I'm not aware of any matching algorithms for the foot to automate that process.

So that leaves biometrics for the adults that are allowed in the maternity ward including parents/soon-to-be parents and a special category for individuals that are allowed to remove a newborn from hospital property: new parents exclusively.

Granted, that won't prevent baby mix-ups, but it can go a long way to making baby theft much more difficult.

In a more passive approach, SecurLinx has experience providing facial recognition capabilities to monitor a watch list of individuals restrained from approaching a maternity wing.

If anyone out there has any information on biometric algorithms intended for use on newborns, please send it along.

Biometrics in school busses

Kidtrack biometric system keeps track of kids on school buses (gizmag)

A lot of parents worry when their kids first start taking the school bus by themselves. What if they’re snatched from the bus stop? What if they get off at the wrong stop? What if the bus is hijacked? Well, while the Kidtrack system can’t keep any of those things from happening, it can at least keep track of which children are on which buses, and where.

Keeping school lunch biometrics in perspective

Maryland: Bill from Carroll senator would ban collection of students' biometric data (Baltimore Sun)

Earlier this school year, Carroll County Public Schools had biometric scanners in place in about 10 school cafeterias, where they were used to help expedite the process of paying for school meals. Officials said the scanners would be more efficient than processing cash transactions or using a PIN keypad system.

But officials fielded complaints from some parents who felt the scanners were an invasion of privacy.

If you think biometrics for school lunch payment are bad, you're not going to like this:

Joy Pullmann: Data mining kids crosses line (Orange County Register)

The U.S. Department of Education is investigating how public schools can collect information on "non-cognitive" student attributes, after granting itself the power to share student data across agencies without parents' knowledge.

The feds want to use schools to catalogue "attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes and intrapersonal resources – independent of intellectual ability," according to a February DOE report, all under the guise of education.

Read the whole thing.

Like we've said before, "If schools are unable to keep data secure, biometric template information is the last thing that should concern parents." "Secure" doesn't really apply in the situation described above but the observation that schools already possess very detailed information about students stands.

For the curious: This is an actual biometric template created using one finger, an off-the-shelf fingerprint reader and their freely-circulated software development kit (SDK). It consists of 800 hexadecimal characters.

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

Something similar could be used instead of a PIN number for lunch purchases in Maryland schools unless the state bans the technology.

Now which is more risky to student privacy, those 800 characters which I've freely put online and made public, or other types of records schools routinely and uncontroversially* keep?





*Ms. Pullmann seems to find the potential sharing of information without parental knowledge and the chipping away of existing privacy protections that prevented sharing of non-academic information (including biometric information) more problematic than the fact that schools know a lot of non-cognitive details about students.

On another note the mention of "a biometric wrap on kids' wrists" caught my eye. Within the large and growing list of biometric modalities, I've never heard of wrist biometrics. I suspect that this is another example of confusion that arises when "biometrics" and "biostatistics" are needlessly lumped together, a subject we have covered in some detail.

At least the kids can't vote twice - Ghana edition

Image accompanies this article in Ghana's Daily Guide

Minors Captured In Biometric Voter Register A Big Challenge For EC – Dr Afari-Gyan (Ghana.gov)

He said the biometric verification machine cannot determine who is a minor or a foreigner and that examination of images of those captured during the biometric registration shows that minors were registered all over the country.

This brings up several ID issues.

Since there is no precise physiological indication of age, it is important to register children when they are born.

Some non-trivial proportion of the world's individuals don't actually know how old they are.

What policies were in place during the voter registration process?

It's almost impossible to conceive that the enrollment software didn't in some way note the electoral worker responsible for each enrollment. Is there any correlation between the registrants that seem obviously to be around twelve years old and the worker responsible for the registration?

On the positive side, with a well-functioning biometric voter system at least the kids can't vote twice.

See:
At Least the Kids Can't Vote Twice in ARMM, Philippines
Biometrics "Fix" Identity

Baby Biometrics

Special squad to trace babies stolen from hospitals (Times of India)

The court even suggested use of biometric identification for newborns and matching tags for the kid and the mother. The guidelines were issued after a baby was stolen from the civic-run Sion hospital.

Biometrics are especially useful for identifying people who can't identify themselves.

Hop on the Bus, Gus. Drop off the Key, Lee.

Biometric Technology Gets on the School Bus (Press Release via Benzinga) When children board or exit the bus the BlinkSpot iris scanning technology recognizes the child and sends real time reports to the school along with an individual email to each parent verifying the time and location of their child.

The effort combines Verizon, Eye-D, and 3M Cogent capabilities.

I'm curious to see how this works out. An application that provides real-time information on children's interactions with the school bus system is, obviously, highly desirable.

Will the technology fit the deployment? How well will it work? How passive is the use model (i.e. must the children actively engage the system?). How much training will drivers and children require? How long does each transaction take? Will that cause traffic jams? What are the costs in money and time?

These are the questions that would-be customers and system developers need to ask, answer, and agree upon.

Thinking this one through, my hunch is that from a pure utility point of view, this is a finger app. But in the real world other considerations may apply. If some tech companies want to test their technology, their ability to work together, product design and feasibility, and they find a willing and supportive test environment — in this case a school and community — then that's what will happen. Lessons will be learned and the state of the art will have been advanced.

Perfect; Good; Tech.; People; etc. It's a fun landscape in which to participate.

Child centers turn to biometrics (USA Today)

When the day care center in Sartell, Minn., where Jessica Ward takes her two children installed a fingerprint ID entry system last year, she thought it was a great idea.

secure.me: Includes a Facial Recognition Tool for Parents of Facebook Users

German secure.me offers parents more control over children's Facebook accounts (Yahoo! News)

Among the features offered is photo monitoring which uses biometric face recognition to scan the social network for pictures of the target profile, even if not tagged. The service offers privacy setting suggestions and informs about unsafe links popping up in friend network. Interactions between friends can also be monitored, as well as apps and pretty much all activity from new friends, to liked pages or check-ins. Past data and events can be compiled and analyzed if needed.

Biometric technologies can be protective or corrosive of privacy.

What I find interesting about this story is that secure.me seems to be a nearly identical use of facial recognition technology to the one that has been attracting a lot of negative attention to facebook.

The difference is in who controls the information gathered with the help of the technology.

It's not the tech; it's the people.

UK Headteachers condemn new biometrics legislation

Heads’ anger at ‘backward step’ on fingerprints (Liverpool Daily Post)

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) warned the move will cost the education system between £20m and £45m a year.

It is thought that around 30% of secondary schools use finger or face recognition for a number of reasons, such as allowing pupils to check out library books, pay for lunch in the school canteen or access certain school buildings.

Evidence suggests that in these schools that have so-called biometric systems, 99.8% of parents have no objection to it, the ASCL said.

Fingerprint systems that store only an algorithm-generated template rather than an image of a fingerprint pose little-or-no threat to a person's biometric privacy.

On the positive side: for the student, fingerprint biometrics offer increased privacy* and safety**; the school achieves higher data integrity and increased operational efficiency. These benefits are not simply confined to the schools themselves. All taxpayers have a stake in the efficient use of educational resources.

If schools are unable to keep data secure, biometric template information is the last thing that should concern parents or civil liberties campaigners.

Schools also keep academic records, behavioral records, medical records & counseling notes which are much more sensitive than a string of binary gibberish that cannot be used to learn anything about a student.

*Privacy: If everyone uses a finger to buy lunch, no one knows who receives need-based subsidized or free lunches.
**Safety: No lunch money, no bullying to steal lunch money.

Desert Sands, CA may test biometric school bus rider tracking

A fingerprint scan may keep track of students on school buses (MyDesert.com)

Students participating in the test would swipe a finger across a scanner on the bus every time they board and exit.

An alarm would trigger if a student tried to get on or off at the wrong stop.

“It's definitely a wonderful safety component,” Superintendent Sharon McGehee said.

In 2007, three first-graders from Desert Sands were mistakenly dropped off at the wrong location early in the school year and rescued by neighbors.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn just how challenging a school's identity management environment really is.

First, school is compulsory; most parents really don't have much of a choice about whether or not to send their child to school. The compulsory nature of school attendance places an extraordinary burden on schools to ensure student safety. The added fact that children are legally recognized to be unable to take responsibility for themselves necessarily increases the responsibility schools have regarding child safety.

Given these responsibilities, can anyone be surprised that schools are among the vanguard of biometric solution adoption? It would be strange if they weren't.

Biological changes may put UID out of bounds for kids

EconomicTimes.com (India)

Children up to 15 years do not have sharp patterns of fingerprints, the metric used to uniquely identify each one of them and more importantly, for authentication. The iris — the coloured portion of the eye — that is to be used to issue a unique identity number, too, does not fully develop before seven years.

“The iris starts achieving 90% stability in size only after six years of age. A normal iris starts assuming stability only by eight years,” said Dr Rakesh Gupta, consultant eye surgeon at Max Balaji Hospital in New Delhi.

Fingerprint patterns assume stability at an even later stage, around 16 years, said Dr V Khanna, a South Delhi-based skin specialist. “Fingerprints are very feeble in children and difficult to capture,” he said.

A few posts here have dealt with the use of biometric identifiers for children.

From ghost workers (yesterday's post) to "fake babies"...

A case in point is the Janani Suraksha Yojana, which hands out incentives to mothers. Earlier this week, a fake babies scam was unearthed in Bihar where 300 women claimed to have delivered up to five babies in a span of 60 days to avail an incentive of Rs 1,000 for each baby.

India, in building a comprehensive biometric identity management system in the world's second-most-populated country, is attempting something that has never been attempted before. It is the identity management moon-shot. It is worth keeping an eye on.