Florida’s Governor signed off on Bill 188, prohibiting the collection of student biometric data in schools. The road to this broad sweeping decision has been a long one, and despite resistance from organizations like the International Biometric and Identity Association (IBIA), technophobia seems to have prevailed over the promise of safety, efficiency and security.

“a piece of legislation has passed both the House and the Senate in the state of Florida that prohibits the collection of biometric information from students or their parents. It is not confined to any specific application; it is a broad and very general prohibition of the technology. It is a very unfortunate circumstance,” stated Walter Hamilton, vice-chairman of the International Biometric and Identity Association (IBIA)

Hamilton continued, “This is an example of what I like to call “techno panic” where people overreact to privacy concerns related to technology. Last year, the American Legislative Exchange Council published a white paper on biometrics and privacy which said that “there are real benefits to using biometrics. [Legislators] must use great care to craft privacy policies that guard against the drawbacks without jeopardizing the benefits of new technologies”. In the case of Florida, the extreme legislative action we are now faced with was prompted by an unfortunate incident in Polk County last year where a school set up a pilot test of iris recognition to ensure that school children got on the right bus. The problem was that there was no parental notice or informed consent and the superintendent of the school district had not been consulted in advance. So it was understandable that there was fear and negative reaction. Rather than ban the technology completely, IBIA urged the Florida legislators to adopt reasonable privacy protective measures such as public and parental notice, written parental consent, limited disclosure, data protection, limited access to biometric data, eventual data destruction and notification to parents in the event of a data breach. These are all reasonable policies that IBIA supports. Unfortunately, the legislators didn’t listen to logic and instead responded to political pressure from groups that were lumping biometrics into a broader issue related to parental rights and government intrusion on student privacy.”