Finger scanners to keep tabs on librarians

AM

By Sue Lannin

Updated September 08, 2011 12:03:13

Librarians are used to scanning books, but the librarians themselves may be getting scanned if a local council in suburban Melbourne has its way.

The AM program has revealed that the City of Monash in Melbourne's south-east is planning to introduce vein scanning technology to track employees' work hours.

The council says it is still considering the plan and has made no definite decision yet, but the Australian Services Union says the council has confirmed it is planning to introduce the scanners in its libraries next month.

The union's assistant branch secretary Igor Grattan says members are concerned about the invasion of their privacy.

"They're concerned about where this information is going to be stored, what will happen with the information when they leave council, who owns the information, what's the legal ramifications," he said.

"What about staff who are under 18 years, what about their rights?"

Biometric technology like iris, fingerprint and vein scanning is big in the movies and it is set to come to a workplace near you soon.

Governments and companies already use biometric technology to check the identities of their staff and protect sensitive information, and supermarket giant Woolworths uses fingerprint scanners to clock staff work hours.

The vein scanners are made by Japanese company Hitachi, which has installed tens of thousands of them at ATMs in Japan.

The technology captures the vein patterns in a person's fingers and stores them as a template for future scans.

Victoria's privacy commissioner Helen Versey says she is surprised that a local council would use such technology.

"It sounds surprising that you would need it for a library, but again without knowing the facts of the case I wouldn't like to say definitely whether it would be a breach of the Information Privacy Act or not," Ms Versey said.

"If they're creating a database of their employees' biometrics then that does raise some significant issues in terms of data security."

The council refused to do an interview with AM, saying it was looking at the technology for use in libraries but had not decided to go ahead with it yet.

But Mr Grattan said the union got confirmation from the council that it is planning to install the scanners next month, affecting up to 100 library staff, including casuals.

He said the council had originally intended to introduce the scanners at libraries, aquatic centres and aged care homes.

"At this stage, they've even said it's not going to be used down the depot at this stage so everything they say has got the 'at this stage'," he said.

"It was going to be the leisure centre and they've backed off from that, but I can give you a direct quote, it's recently brought to my attention that council intends to administer this system in the infrastructure services area," he told AM.

Another issue is where the biometric material will be stored and how secure it would be.

Security experts like Stephen Wilson from Lockstep Consulting warned there are risks.

"The risk is that you need a master copy, like a master scan, against which people are compared when they're coming and going. And the security of that master scan is absolutely critical," he said.

"The weakest link in any security system is usually a person - a database administrator holding the keys with access to these master copies is actually in a position of great power and influence and potentially is corruptible."

Mr Wilson says the data is valuable to organised crime.

"Electronic systems are becoming increasingly dependent and increasingly reliant on personal data," he said.

"So any data that I've got that defines somebody in terms of their drivers' licence or their credit card numbers or their home and address, that all adds up to a portfolio of information that is valuable to identity thieves."

Misc. Gadgets

Hitachi finger scanner opens a new vein in biometrics


By Marc Perton posted June 28th 2005 5:30AM

We're guessing that someone has been watching a few too many thrillers where the villian has used a spurious technique to fake a fingerprint (invisible ink, a meat cleaver to the hand, etc.). How else to explain Hitachi's vein scanner, a biometric security device that scans the veins in your finger in order to provide secure access to a PC. At $365, this thing is significantly more expensive than most consumer-level fingerprint scanners, so we hope it really works, and that the bloodless finger created via the, er, hack mentioned above, doesn't show up as a positive match.

Surely, Pollies on Local Councils have better things to do with ratepayers' $$$ than to implement such draconian technology in libraries of all places!?

Seriously, draconian 'Big Brother' privacy issues aside, how much does something like this cost upfront to implement and then to operate over time!?

gizmo_2655 wrote on Sep 8^th, 2011 at 1:49pm:



If thats the reaosning, they'd be far more productive at parliament house than the local library.

Surely, Pollies on Local Councils have better things to do with ratepayers' $$$ than to implement such draconian technology in libraries of all places!?

Seriously, draconian 'Big Brother' privacy issues aside, how much does something like this cost upfront to implement and then to operate over time!?