Newly updated on the use of biometric technology systems in Scottish schools serves as a critical document for education authorities that emphasizes the potential of biometric technologies while also underscoring significant privacy and civil rights concerns. Biometric systems are being considered for various school applications in Scotland, including managing attendance, enabling , and automating library services. However, their implementation raises profound ethical, legal, and social questions that must be carefully addressed, the updated guidance says. Central to the debate over biometric systems in schools is the . These technologies process highly sensitive personal data, referred to as “special category data” under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). This data includes unique identifiers that, if misused or compromised, could have severe implications for the affected individuals. The guidance defines biometric data as any personal data derived from physical or behavioral traits that uniquely identify a person. This sensitivity necessitates stringent compliance with data protection laws, particularly the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR. The collection and processing of such sensitive data inherently carries risks. The potential for misuse, data breaches, or unauthorized surveillance poses significant threats to students’ privacy. Biometric systems, by design, collect and store information that is immutable – unlike a password or ID card, fingerprints or facial patterns cannot be changed if they are stolen or improperly accessed. This permanence intensifies the responsibility of education authorities to implement robust security measures, including encryption and strict access controls. Any failure to safeguard this data not only undermines trust but also exposes students to lifelong vulnerabilities. A crucial aspect of implementing biometric systems is ensuring the fairness and transparency of these processes, the updated guidance highlights, noting that schools must justify why they are adopting such intrusive technologies and assess whether less invasive alternatives, like smart cards, could achieve the same objectives. The principle of proportionality is central: biometric systems should only be used where the benefits significantly outweigh the privacy costs. For example, while a fingerprint-based system might streamline lunch payments, it raises the question of whether such convenience justifies the collection of sensitive biometric data. The guidance stresses the importance of conducting thorough assessments of necessity, ensuring that these systems are implemented only when absolutely required. The civil rights implications of biometric technology extend beyond privacy. The use of such systems must align with broader human rights frameworks, including the Human Rights Act 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These frameworks emphasize the importance of protecting children from undue intrusion and ensuring their autonomy and dignity are respected. The guidance emphasizes that transparency is a key component of fairness. Schools must clearly communicate with students and parents about how biometric data will be used, stored, and protected. This includes providing detailed privacy notices and ensuring that the information is accessible and comprehensible to all stakeholders, particularly children. Consent is another critical element in the implementation of biometric systems. Under the UK GDPR, consent must be freely given, informed, and specific. For students under the age of 12 or those deemed unable to provide informed consent, parental consent is required. However, the guidance also acknowledges the evolving capacity of children, stating that students aged 12 or older are presumed capable of exercising their data protection rights unless proven otherwise. Even with parental consent, schools must ensure that students are aware of their rights and can withdraw their consent at any time. The opt-out provisions for biometric systems are essential in safeguarding civil liberties. Students and parents who object to the use of biometric data must be offered alternative systems that provide equal access to school services. These alternatives, such as smart cards, must not disadvantage those who opt out, ensuring inclusivity and preventing discrimination. The guidance stresses that opting out must be a genuine choice, free from coercion or negative repercussions. Another significant issue is the potential for discriminatory outcomes stemming from the use of biometric technology. Schools must ensure that these systems do not inadvertently exclude or stigmatize students based on disabilities or other characteristics. For instance, students who cannot provide biometric data due to physical disabilities must have access to alternative systems that are equally efficient and non-intrusive. The Equality Act 2010 mandates that schools accommodate such needs, reinforcing the principle that no student should face discrimination in accessing educational services. The Equality Act 2010 is a UK law that protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in society. It replaced several anti-discrimination laws with a single act, making the law easier to understand and strengthening protection. The guidance also touches on broader societal concerns, particularly the normalization of surveillance. Introducing biometric systems in schools risks acclimating children to intrusive monitoring from an early age, potentially eroding their expectations of privacy. This concern is amplified when considering systems like facial recognition, which have been criticized as disproportionately intrusive and unnecessary in educational contexts. The guidance advises against the use of facial recognition for routine school activities, citing its potential for overreach and the heightened risks it poses to students’ rights. To address these privacy and civil rights issues, the guidance outlines a rigorous framework for evaluating and implementing biometric systems. Education authorities are required to conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) to identify and mitigate risks associated with the processing of biometric data. DPIAs are crucial tools for ensuring accountability and demonstrating that the adoption of biometric systems aligns with data protection laws and ethical standards. If a DPIA reveals high risks that cannot be mitigated, schools must consult with the Information Commissioner’s Office before proceeding. The role of Data Protection Officers (DPOs) is also emphasized in the guidance. DPOs play a critical role in monitoring compliance, advising on data protection obligations, and acting as a point of contact for students, parents, and regulatory authorities. Their involvement is essential in ensuring that biometric systems are deployed responsibly and in compliance with legal and ethical standards. Ultimately, the guidance on biometric systems in schools serves as both a roadmap and a cautionary tale. While these technologies offer undeniable benefits in terms of efficiency and convenience, they also pose significant challenges to privacy, inclusivity, and civil rights. The decision to implement biometric systems requires a careful balancing of the potential benefits against the risks and a commitment to protecting the rights and freedoms of students. In an era where digital technologies increasingly permeate every aspect of life, the introduction of biometric systems in schools serves as a litmus test for society’s commitment to upholding privacy and civil liberties. Schools and education authorities must navigate this complex landscape with transparency, accountability, and a focus on the best interests of the students they serve. The guidance provides a strong foundation for this effort, reminding all stakeholders that technological progress must never come at the expense of fundamental rights. | | | | | | | | |Tedmos Launches Its New Line Of Rechargeable Puck Lights, Picture Frame Lights And Ceiling Lights. A Perfect Blend Of Technology And Design For Modern Homes
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, in this interview with select journalists, made his views known about the economy, the 2025 national budget proposal presently with the National Assembly and other sundry issues What do you make of the finance minister statement about the country’s borrowings? I always wish there will be a good day for Nigeria but it is not a good day when the finance minister believes the day he goes borrowing in London is a good day. A good day for Nigeria is when Nigeria goes overseas to give investments in the capital market from the excess production that we have. No minister that we had in the past will say the day we went borrowing will be a good day. America borrows too, what’s your view on that? America borrows from within. You borrow from your own currency. I am not quarrelling with them borrowing the currency they issued. When you are borrowing Euro bond, borrowing currency of other people in other capitals of the world, it’s a sign of crisis. Yes, you can do it but you don’t say it’s a good day for you. If you are anaemic and your neighbour comes to donate blood to you, you should be grateful but you don’t say that’s the best day of your life because you are not supposed to be anaemic in the first place. They need to run the economy in such a way that we can generate capital for ourselves. Fundamentally, I think they are uncoordinated even though he is supposed to be the coordinator of the economy. He is not coordinated. The thinking isn’t coordinated but if they coordinate well and work with us as a population, we should be able generate wealth for the country . You once said the Tinubu government is suffering from economic illiteracy. What do you make of the parameters of the 2025 budget given the $75 per barrel oil benchmark? The parameters they have are a bit basic and elementary. Even in those basic elementary parameters, they are not sincere about them. They don’t want to meet them because they are not realistic. The exchange rate they fixed is unrealistic. Given the other measures they have taken, I think it’s lack of coordination that concerns me. I wish for the Tinubu 2025 budget to work. I want them to succeed. I want investors to come to Nigeria. I plead with anyone to have confidence in the economy of Nigeria. That is my desire even though I am in the opposition. However, they are self contradictory as these contradictions would at the end of the day prove themselves. For example, you are working towards, in their mind, if they are able to succeed, they are working towards 15% inflation, any basic microeconomist knows that you must never have double digit inflation. It is one thing to have a high BP, amd the doctor says to you he will only give you medium BP, the doctor wants to kill you because his job is to return your BP to normal. The objective they set, even if they succeed is a failure on its own. What about the saying that a thousand miles start with a step? This idea of a thousand miles is not Usain Bolt winning the gold medal all the time. That’s not the philosophy of people who wants to win. I saw the minister and I heard him and I understood the philosophy. I am not against him in person. I like him as a finance person who can manage your asset like merchant banker. There are two things you need to do with the type of our size of our development. First, the fiscal and budgetary housekeeping. That’s the first. The government budgets for itself in the first part of the budget. Then, the second part of the budget signals to the rest of the economy and creates a stimulus for areas they want to emphasize and then use other incentives to encourage others to do investments. They are sending wrong signals. First, in their own housekeeping, they are wrong in the way they are going about it. You cannot say to anybody especially who understands basic microeconomics that your inflation rates cannot be of your unemployment rate. You cannot do it. You have already got it upside down. If you have a 15% inflation rate, definitely, your unemployment cannot go below 15% because of the way you run the economy. If you listen to the gentleman again, he painstakingly celebrated the idea that they have 25 million households that they are trying to give little money to. Why don’t you have 25 million households from whom you are going to give employment? So you have social register to people you want to give money but you don’t have register of unemployment that you can give jobs. What sense does it make? The idea that you are going to imagine manufacturing by thinking that if you give N50,000 to any enterprise, whether small or medium micro invisible, N50,000? If the person comes to your office to collect the money, he will spend about that on transportation. If you say you want to grow the economy by bringing investors, don’t you understand that borrowing money in the bank is just one of the factors of production. Loan capital, for example, won’t you realize that there are other papers expenditure like labour cost, infrastructure cost and other costs. If you are driving those costs above sustainability, there is no way you can generate employment or capital in the economy. The Ghanaian electoral chairman says he learnt some lessons from Nigeria in the just concluded general election. What do you make of his statement? Yes, they took a lot of lesson not to be like Nigeria. That is what it can mean logically because the INEC chairman is a professor because he must be speaking in some sound way because what Ghana has done is exactly the opposite of what we did. They tried to make their own credible. We tried to make ours not credible even though we invested more in terms of technology, quality of manpower. You don’t go to other countries and find professor emeritus, dean of faculties, vice-chancellors coming to be returning officers. You talked about credibility. It’s one thing to talk about problems, it’s another to talk of solution. What can Nigeria do to have credible elections in terms of voter participation? Everybody involved knows what to do. The question is if they have the attitude to do it. Three things you must have for a good elections. You must go to an election with attitude of winning or losing honestly. You shouldn’t be desperate. Secondly, those who participate in it must know that it is constitutional duty that goes beyond putting government in place. It is a duty they owe the society as a whole, so they do it with integrity. Thirdly, they should not expect personal gain from it. Those who come to vote should not expect to sell their votes. Those who administer election should not collect bribe to administer election. Journalists who carry the news should be truthful to the country and the judiciary when asked to come and look at the some of the errors. They should try their best Now about what you said about the judiciary, will it ever get to that stage where we would not need the judiciary to decide out elections? Left to me, we can get there today. What we need and I have advocated it all the time, is that you take mainstream judiciary away from election for the sake of the country and the judiciary itself. Then, you must have a constitutional court that you set up, not from the regularly judiciary, may be retired justices, people who are no longer in a promotion or anything like that. You bring them together. When you bring them together, they do three things — the election is not finalised until that constitutional court has looked into it. Two, the person who files a complaint against the election doesn’t have to prove anything. All he has to say is that I don’t agree with the election. It is the burden of proof that the election was in order, should be on INEC because INEC knew where the bodies were buried. You cannot tell somebody who didn’t conduct the election,’ I give you 21 days tell me everything that is wrong with the election. Thirdly, people should not assume that because you lost an election, it is automatically rigged. That should not be the attitude. There should be fewer petitions based on merit. When you say there is a low approval rating of INEC from Nigerians, what do you mean by politicians putting more challenges on INEC by trying to circumvent the rules? No doubt, the problems of Nigeria are traceable to the political class. When I addressed the forum of House of Representative recently that Nigeria needs to rehabilitate the political class because when you have a decent political class, people full of integrity, many of the problems associated with politics or politicians will be removed. INEC itself has a bit of challenge whether for the sustainability of their appointment or people have discovered that they can get rich by taking advantage of the desperation of politicians. Most of the problems of election didn’t arise from INEC. They arise from the political parties. More political parties commit crimes in their primaries than they accuse INEC of. So, whatever error INEC commits, they even commit more. People bribes delegate for elections. Party chairmen and secretaries switch names like the game of domino. So, political class is guilty. I agree with that. But INEC is supposed to be a professional class. In that case, they should not collaborate with the politicians. The Ghanaian electoral boss says in Ghana, rarely do you see people cross carpet. But here in Nigeria, you can say PDP is APC and you won’t be wrong. Take it further, there appears to be no opposition in Nigeria, it’s like dead, including your party, is that correct? The issue is this, let’s start with INEC. The problem in Nigeria is that everybody is an expert in other people’s business. It is not the duty of the INEC chairman to teach politicians how to politik. His job is to administer election. Leave them to cross-carpet, that is outside your power. What you should do is to conduct credible elections and monitor your staff to see that you don’t switch elections, you don’t switch off the servers, you don’t do nonsense that is associated with electioneering. Once you have clean your own Augean table, you can have the moral standing to now pontificate for others. With respect to the opposition you talked about, opposition in our system of government is opposition of ideas, not opposition on the streets. The problem people have with opposition is that Labour Party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Congress (APC) are all of the same philosophy. What about your party, the SDP? We have a different philosophy. How is yours different from them? We are left of the centre and our policies are different. If you listen to us during the campaign, you juxtapose our policies with that of former Governor Peter Obi, President Bola Tinubu and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. You will think they were written from the same script. They are in different parties but they believe in the same thing, economic theory. If Peter Obi was in power, he will find another person, not Wale Edun, one who sounds like him. On cross carpeting, it is not a major problem. It is bad. But the important thing is that you must have definition of ideas. If somebody crosses from PDP to APC, he hasn’t really crossed. It’s like one moving from one room to another within the same bungalow. It is when somebody crosses from an ideological divide. So, they are parties of the same ilk. What Nigerians need now is to invest the attention, belief and time in alternative thinking. And to say there is no opposition, the job I am doing now is constructive opposition. What do you make of rotational presidency? Rotation is at two levels. You must rotate according to geopolitical zone for peace among the elite. But you must rotate from the elite to the people for growth and justice to happen in Nigeria. If you are rotating from north to south and all of that and rotating about the same wasteful elite who have no idea, you will be rotating poverty, insecurity and others. But if you rotate from them, in terms of inter generational from the old people to the young ones and from ideological rotation from those who follow IMF-World Bank to those who have indigenous ideas and authentic pro-Nigeria ideas, you would have some progress for the country.
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