A Sydney high school’s decision to install fingerprint scanners at the entrance to toilets to track student movements and prevent vandalism has been criticised as “unreasonable and disproportionate” by a privacy expert.
Moorebank high school moved to install the scanners in term three, with the school’s principal, Vally Grego, telling parents it was a measure intended to reduce vandalism.
“The system will roll out in term three for the external student toilets only,” she wrote in a letter to parents earlier this year.
“We are introducing this system to monitor students’ movement during class time and to reduce the incidents of vandalism. We will then investigate the upgrade to the toilets.”
Students were asked to provide their fingerprint information for the system, with almost all of the 1,000 having already done so.
The system was introduced after two years of consultation with the school’s community focus group, and does not actually record a fingerprint. Instead, an alphanumeric representation of the fingerprint is created, with the information stored off site.
The system is not compulsory, with students able to access the toilets during class time by obtaining an access card from the office.
Samantha Floreani, the program lead at Digital Rights Watch, said preventing vandalism was not a good enough justification for what she calls an invasion of privacy.
“Students should have the right to go to the bathroom without having their biometric information collected, and [their] movements constantly monitored,” she said.
Floreani warned the risks posed by the system far outweigh any potential benefits.
“If there were to be a data breach, for example – if the information was to be accessed by someone who’s not authorised, or if there was a leak, or if there was a hack – then suddenly you’ve got a student fingerprint being accessed by people who shouldn’t have access to that information.
“And then that creates all kinds of risks for those students, for example, identity fraud, or it could potentially be linked with all kinds of other information.”
She said the move set a dangerous precedent for other schools, and “contributes to the normalisation of surveillance”.
A spokesperson for NSW Education said the school’s parent community was notified and consulted about the scanners “via a community focus group”.
“The decision to install the mechanism was ratified by this group on more than one occasion.
“All parents were notified. The information was disseminated to parents via school newsletters and the minutes of community focus group meetings were also emailed to all parents.”
