Times Editorial : Lunch, too?

Technology is great, except when it's not

By Northwest Arkansas Times

Posted: July 30, 2009 at 6:52 a.m.

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FAYETTEVILLE — Agood deal of modern literature - and, in recent years, front pages around the world - have focused on the slow, steadyencroachment of government into our lives. One example is former President Bush's top secret efforts to spy on people his administration considered terror suspects here in the United States.

On its face, using technology to protect civilians sounds like a common-sense use of resources. Critics were quick to point out, however, that the list of figures qualifying as "threats to national security" written by Dick Cheney may look very different than a ranking put together by Democrats on Capitol Hill. In other words, by giving Uncle Sam a green light, how can anyone be sure they aren't the target of Uncle Sam's watching eye?

It's worth wondering about the extent to which our increasingly interconnected world may thwart individual expectations of privacy. Never in the history of the world have public and private entities been a part of our lives to the extent to which they are today. And you can bet the push to continue these trends will keep pace so long as the technologies continue to evolve.

We wouldn't have thought so before this week, but apparently even our kids have cause for concern.

For example, the West Fork School Board is talking about purchasing a finger scanner that would enable students to simply authorize payment of their lunches with a swipe of their finger, with its unique characteristics. The school district currently scans meal cards, but is thinking this new way of doing things would do away with little annoyances like young people losing their cards. West Fork High School Principal John Karnes said recently that he thinks such a tool could cut down on long lines in the cafeteria, not to mention students sharing their code numbers with one another.

The company behind this technology says it has taken privacy concerns into consideration, and for that reason fingerprint images won't be shared or stored. By scanning only the ridge line of the finger, as opposed to a full fingerprint, the Meal Tracker Fingerprint Reader is a nonforensic application. Such devices are already being employed by a handful of Arkansas public schools.

Now, it could be that putting this "nonforensic" tool to use is working out quite nicely. Perhaps use of such devices will spread in the years to come - perhaps to West Fork, possibly elsewhere in Northwest Arkansas. At that point, we can just as easily imagine capabilities developing that scan a student's finger to open lockers, or even to get through the front door. For security purposes, the public would undoubtedly be told.

Just so, it's entirely understandable that such technological wonders would prompt some to imagine a slippery slope argument about how invasive we want a simple thing like buying a lunch to become. Granted, in this instance, a lunchtime finger swipe wouldn't seem to invade one's privacy. But such practices during the course of lunch every day of the week would sure seem to condition our children into going along with the idea that giving the authorities instantaneous access to such a private part of ourselves isn't that big a deal. With the implementation of such tools, young kids would grow up with the assumption that fingerprint scanners are perfectly ordinary devices. Except we're not sure we want our children thinking that.

We love big screen TVs, the Internet and iPhones. We're thrilled with practically all the tools the U.S. government deploys every day of the week to protect us from villains and schemes some of us can hardly imagine. It's great how technology is shrinking our big world in so many ways.

Having said that, it's clear that the development of new technology presses the issue of what we can do vs. what we should do. One doesn't have to be irrationally fearful of "Big Brother" to possess concerns in this arena. The erosion of personal privacy, of deciding what information to share with government officials and when, has generally happened in small steps rather than in sweeping revolutions. The biggest threat to personal liberties is that we will freely give them away in small doses for good reasons until they're just about gone.

It's worth thinking about.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 07/30/2009

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