Florida lawmakers to probe biometric scans of school children

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Florida lawmakers on Tuesday will begin tackling questions of privacy that arise when technology catches up with science fiction. Florida is considering legislation to sharply regulate the use of fingerprint, palm print, iris scans and other biometric identification systems once found only in futuristic thrillers such as "Mission: Impossible" and "Minority Report." The issue is being taken up after parents were outraged in 2013 to find students' eyes were being scanned as a condition of boarding school buses in central Florida's Polk County School District. Stanley Convergent Security Solutions, a part of Connecticut-based Stanley Black & Decker, captured the iris images of 750 students in a pilot project before it was stopped, according to the local Lakeland Ledger newspaper. The Florida Senate's education committee will take up a bill on Tuesday that would require school districts choosing to use biometrics to establish strict policies on the public disclosure, use and maintenance of the stored data, and require parents to choose to participate in the program before their children's data is taken.



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