High-Tech School Buses to Track Kids

March 18, 2004 -- For kids in the Pinellas County of Florida, getting on and off any one of the district's 750 school buses will soon require a pass that even elementary kids won't forget — their finger.

The local school board last week passed over $2 million in funding to outfit its fleet of yellow buses with new high-tech gear — digital fingerprint scanners and global positioning system, or GPS, satellite locators — to track drivers and their young passengers.

The technology, believed the first of its kind to be implemented in the United Sates, has sparked concerns among parents and civil liberty groups who fear the proposed system could threaten student privacy.

But school board officials say the system will help ensure that the kids get on and off the right buses, as well as to monitor drivers' routes for efficiency and safety.

Riders Give Drivers the Finger

Once installed by LaidLaw International, an Illinois-based transportation giant, the high-tech system will act mostly like a digital manifest for each of the county's 750 buses.

Before the start of school this fall, parents who opt in for the program will allow the county to register their child's fingerprint into an electronic database using an electronic scanner.

The device won't capture an exact image of the fingerprint, a school official told wire services. But it will measure enough "points" to create a unique code for each child.

Each student's ID code, which will be protected by multiple layers of passwords, will be loaded into computers on the appropriate bus that serves that child's area of the county.

When they board, children press their finger into a reader and the computer checks each child's fingerprint against its digital list of passengers. If the computer doesn't find a matching code for a child's print, the system alerts the driver that the child most likely doesn't belong on that particular bus route.

Meanwhile, GPS receivers will monitor the exact location of each bus. The information can be sent back to district headquarters so officials will be able to track each bus and know where students are along each route.

Big Bucks, Not Big Brother?

County school board officials told local reporters using such a system will offer many advantages.

In addition to ensuring their charges are on the right buses, the GPS information will allow officials to watch for unsafe driving habits such as speeding.

And the tracking data will also help officials analyze and streamline routes for efficiency. Trimming route driving times by a few minutes each day, officials estimate, could save the county from $500,000 to $900,000 each year.

While officials stress the benevolent intention of the program, the board also has opted to make the program completely voluntary.

Grooming a Surveillance Generation

Still, privacy advocates are concerned the proposed system has grave implications.

While it may seem reasonable to fingerprint kids for safety reasons, "Fingerprinting comes with a social stigma and that should not be imposed on children," says Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "School officials and parents need to ask, 'What is the long-term effect?' "

She and other privacy advocates worry using high-tech fingerprints, as opposed to ordinary ID cards or other less personally-intrusive means, will also lead to a generation accustomed to being under official scrutiny.

"Fingerprinting kids gets them accustomed to being surveilled. What a terrible lesson to impose on children," says Givens. "Will they become risk-averse because they've become internalized with [the idea of] being monitored, followed and watched? Do kids these days even consider [being fingerprinted] a social stigma? Maybe it's [already] getting diluted as time goes on?"

And others still doubt such a high-tech system, even if devoid of privacy concerns, would be able to deliver huge gains of efficiency or cost-cutting.

"For a county bus system, the routes are pretty set," says Deborah Pierce, executive director of Privacy Activism in San Francisco. "How will fingerprinting kids get them from Point A to Point B more efficiently? I just don't see it."

Adds Pierce: "I think people really need to think about the problem they are trying to solve. I think it kind of seems that someone hasn't really thought about this one."