Plans by Western Australian high schools to use fingerprint and other biometric authentication methods for library loaning and attendance have been criticised by privacy advocates.Churchlands Senior High School plans to install biometrics finger scanning for library book withdrawals this year and Byford Secondary College and Atwell College have used biometrics to monitor student attendance since 2014.The plans have been described as “overkill” by Biometrics Institute privacy expert group chairman Terry Aulich.”Do you really need, in a school, to have kids identify themselves by a finger scan or hand or facial geometry if they're borrowing a library book? That is overkill,” he said, reported The West Australian.In 2014, Florida's governor Rick Scott signed a biometric ban that prohibited schools from collecting the palm scans, iris scans or fingerprints of its students. The law not only banned the collection of students' biometric information, but also mandated that parents and students be notified annually of their rights regarding education records.Despite the privacy concerns, officials have stressed the programmes do not store fingerprints but instead creates a template of the unique fingerprint characteristics.

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