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But suffice to say, it was dumb luck that has kept my fingerprints out of some now-yellowed police folder or some computer database. I’d like to keep it that way.
Everything else about us — what we buy, where we travel, whatever health issues we might have — is tracked by some bar code, surveillance camera or computer cookie. About the only private information we have left are those unique swirls on our fingertips, unless we’ve left them at a crime scene.
Only it’s beginning to look as if none of us will escape the age of biometrics. Fingerprint scans are replacing timecards at many businesses. To get into the weight room, gym rats press their fingers on electronic readers. In some schools, a kid’s finger is his meal ticket, as fingerprint scanners replace bar-coded ID cards in the lunch line.
I was lucky to escape this new age of identity tracking until the other day. Then a note arrived from the city of Lenexa cheerfully explaining how it was doing away with pool passes this summer.
But great news! To get into the city pools this year, members like me will have to display our thumbs to an electronic scanner. No more cards to lose. Gone will be the hassles of getting two cards if you have a kid in day care. And not to worry, your fingerprints will not be shared with anyone.
There was no hint of a downside in any of it.
Which means, if you’re like me — paranoid, fearful of Big Brother and certain that there’s an ulterior motive for everything — there was every reason to be suspicious. And to a certain extent, my skepticism was warranted, I learned after checking with Lenexa recreation director Jim Finlen.
Yes, he told me, the fingerprint ID system is a convenience to swimmers who don’t want to fool with a card. However, unmentioned in the city’s upbeat announcement, Finlen acknowledged, was another rationale. The new system will boost revenue by making it impossible to share cards.
Certainly, there’s an upside to that, if it keeps my rates down. Cheating is also why a lot of employers go with fingerprint scans instead of timecards. No more punching in for your late-to-work buddy.
But as for Lenexa’s promise to keep the fingerprint data confidential, that’s not so ironclad.
“I can’t promise that I’m not ever going to turn the information over,” Finlen said, citing a court order as an example.
But before I could say, “Aha, then I am right to be paranoid,” he explained that the system doesn’t catalog whole fingerprints.
It records 15 unique points and reduces them to a digitized code. The original is discarded.
I got the same explanation from the Atlanta-based vendor of the equipment Lenexa will use, M2SYS Technology.
Spokesman Ches Eaton told me that it’s virtually impossible to reverse-engineer an entire fingerprint from the digital info. For purposes of law enforcement, the scans Lenexa will use are “totally useless,” Eaton said.
“If you really understand the technology, we’re not doing anything in any way invasive.”
No, what would be invasive is if someone were to steal your identify by hacking off a finger. That’s a real possibility that the biometrics industry is trying to thwart by building temperature sensors into high-end scanners, ensuring that prints are read off live, not dismembered, digits.
Of course, Lenexa won’t have a system that sophisticated. But to reassure me, Eaton allowed as how it was somewhat unlikely anyone would want to lop off my thumb just so he could cool off at Indian Trails pool this summer.
Other reasons, sure. But not to save on a pool pass.
So I went away somewhat less concerned, though not everyone is comfortable where we’re heading.
Fearing the potential for identify theft, some school districts won’t use finger scans. Also, the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing for legal safeguards to ensure prints freely given won’t end up in the wrong hands.
So until it all sorts out, each of us will have to decide for ourselves: Just how should we respond when someone asks us to give them the finger?
I’m still considering.
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