In one Brighton tanning salon, the growing use of biometric technology has taken an even more ridiculous step.
As reported by the Brighton Argus, the system is apparently designed to stop people tanning more than once in 24 hours (because obviously the only way to stop that is to fingerprint all your customers). The fingerprint scanners are now in place, with the only way of opting-out to write a letter to the company’s head office.
This is a tanning shop, not a maximum security spy base. It is an absurd use of technology that is intended to track people’s behaviour.
While useful from a security point, it is largely irrelevant whether you can re-make a fingerprint image from the initial scan. The scheme, like many others using biometrics, has nothing to do with security and everything to do with collecting more data about us – and then accurately matching that data to our identity.
With schools, hospitals and businesses turning more and more to biometric technologies as a way of recording what people are doing, often under the guise of security or convinience, Big Brother Watch will continue to highlight the real intention behind these schemes and the serious privacy issues these technologies entail.
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2012/04/scan-before-you-tan.html#.T42SnfJgfUI
As reported by the Brighton Argus, the system is apparently designed to stop people tanning more than once in 24 hours (because obviously the only way to stop that is to fingerprint all your customers). The fingerprint scanners are now in place, with the only way of opting-out to write a letter to the company’s head office.
This is a tanning shop, not a maximum security spy base. It is an absurd use of technology that is intended to track people’s behaviour.
While useful from a security point, it is largely irrelevant whether you can re-make a fingerprint image from the initial scan. The scheme, like many others using biometrics, has nothing to do with security and everything to do with collecting more data about us – and then accurately matching that data to our identity.
With schools, hospitals and businesses turning more and more to biometric technologies as a way of recording what people are doing, often under the guise of security or convinience, Big Brother Watch will continue to highlight the real intention behind these schemes and the serious privacy issues these technologies entail.
http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2012/04/scan-before-you-tan.html#.T42SnfJgfUI
