Mandatory fingerprinting of European children

The European Union is working on a new rule that would require all children in the EU to be fingerprinted and entered into an international database. Currently, the proposed regulations would require all children age 12 and up to be fingerprinted, but some committee members are lobbying for an even younger age limit, possibly as young as six. The European Commission notes that “Scientific tests have confirmed that the paillary ridges on the fingers are not sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until the age of six.”

Ben Hayes, spokesman for the civil liberties group Statewatch said “We are going from fingerprinting criminals to universal fingerprinting without any real debate. In the long term everyone’s fingerprints will be stored on a central database. You have to ask what will be the costs to a person’s privacy.” Statewatch also accused the EU Governments of making decisions based only on “technological possibilities – not on the moral and political questions of whether it is right or desirable.”

On the one hand, so long as you do nothing wrong, what difference does it make who has your information on file? On the other hand, however, the potential for misuse is huge. What do you think? Would you be concerned if your kids had to be fingerprinted and put into an international database? Or do you, like I do, see this as a positive move forwards in authentication?

Preemptively fingerprinting your kids

Parents in New Zealand have taken to having their children fingerprinted by police as a means of scaring their kids onto the straight and narrow. The fingerprints and palm prints added to a nationwide juvenile print database. According to Detective Inspector Malcolm Johnston, “We do take a lot of voluntary juvenile fingerprints. Feedback from parents is that it’s a wake-up call for the youths, and crime prevention.” Detective Johnston is in charge of the South Island’s crime prints and forensics team. He explained that a large number of burglaries and car thefts were committed by youths, so having this sort of forensic evidence on file is very important. Voluntary collection of fingerprints and palm prints is allowed by current law.

Apparently, earlier this year, there were an average of six cars stolen and seventeen cars broken into every day in the Canterbury district where Detective Johnston works. I suppose parents think a trip to the police station for fingerprinting on their terms is better than being called down to pick a kid after they’ve committed a crime. But would this really be a deterrent to teens who already think they know everything and think they can get away with anything? While I wouldn’t cover up for my kids if they broke the law, I’m not sure I would go out of my way to help the government track them either. Would you add your kids to such a government database? Do you think doing so would keep them out of trouble?

Technology: tracking or trusting?

Would you, if you could, track how fast and how far your kids go in the family car? I drove pretty fast when I was a teenager and, for the most part, my folks never knew; if they had, I might not be here today. What about their internet usage? Would you read their e-mail or listen in on their instant message conversations? Would you want to know what websites they visit?

If the answer is yes to any of these, then you’re in luck — you’re living in the right era. There is a lot of technology available today that will let you keep track of your kids like never before. SFGate has a nice write-up of some of your options, including devices for your car — including some that would have worked with my mother’s vintage Citroens — and your computer.

While the article cites some instances where this sort of technology has helped, such as the case of a 14-year-old who met a 24-year-old man online and was given a bus ticket to meet him out of state, it covers all sides of the issue. According to Jane Bluestein, parent educator and author, “To track kids for the sake of tracking kids — I know it gives parents a sense of control, but I think it points to bigger problems in the relationship: mistrust, a need to control, a need to think for your kids.” She also points out that it’s important “for parents to teach kids how to think and act when they’re not there.”

I’d like to think that I’ll be able to trust my kids and that, by the time they’re ready to go off on their own, I will have taught them to make good choices, but that could just be my arrogant innocence waiting to be smacked down by reality. What do you think? Do you or will you use technology to stay on top of what your kids are up to? Which is more important, trusting them or tracking them?

Schools, libraries must block MySpace, Facebook

The House of Representatives just passed resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), 410 to 15. If it becomes law (it has to make it through the senate and then the president), schools and libraries will be forced to block social networking sites like MySpace and chat rooms; if they don’t, they will lose their federal internet subsidies. Schools and libraries will be required “to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.”

Unfortunately, the reasoning behind this bill simply doesn’t make much sense — Texas Republican Ted Poe argued, “social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids.” Personally, I thought they came in the bedroom window, but what do I know. Sure, kids have run into sexual predators on the internet. Sure, parents need to talk to their kids and be aware of what they’re doing. This law, however, takes that control away from the parents and turns it into a badly thought out nanny-state policy.

Lots of teachers and libraries use such sites to help educate kids. Vicki A. Davis is one of them. She writes a journal about education and has written extensively about DOPA and its effects. As one of her students wrote, “These lawmakers need to ban ignorance not promote it.” The potential of the internet as an educational tool is enormous, and it’s only starting to be tapped into. This bill would kill a huge portion of that potential. Time to call your senators, kiddies!

Is your kid buying alcohol on the ‘net?

There’s a chance that one day, in the future, you’ll sit down with a kid and say, “In my day, you’d have to bribe a friend’s older brother to buy you alcohol down at the store.”

Your kid will look at you, scratch his head and say, “Someone else had to buy it? Why didn’t you just do it yourself on the Internet?”

Two percent of teens surveyed in 2006 have admitted to buying alcohol online while 12 percent say they have a friend who does. Even if your kid isn’t buying the alcohol, there’s a chance they’ll drink some bought by a friend.

Why? Well, with states expanding laws broadening online liquor sales and really no way to verify the age of someone buying said beverage, it is easy for a teen to purchase alcohol online.

Unfortunately, since not many are trying to address this problem, you can probably assume that more and more teens will buy their alcohol on the ‘net unless liquor companies are required to sell only to authenticated users.

Can this be a possibility? Sure. As more and more schools are discussing authenticating children when they enter school, by the time they turn to the internet to buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, the liquor purveyor could easily have set up a way to authenticate purchasers to ensure that they are of age. One more way to keep those kids in line!

Online friendships more complicated than earlier thought

My children don’t spend a ton of time online, but they do communicate with their friends on the internet via MySpace. With all the spooky talk that TV pundits spout, particularly about MySpace, you would think that the internet is a space-age demon. It isn’t: as with anything else, it depends upon how the internet is used. A study last year in Cyberpsychology Behavior (yes, there is such a journal) looked a what influences online friendship formation. It also attempted to look at motives for online communication as potential explanations. Drawing on a sample of 493 adolescents, the study tested a path model of adolescent friendship formation. As predictors, it included introversion/extroversion, online self-disclosure, motive for social compensation, and frequency of online communication. The analysis showed that extroverted adolescents self-disclosed and communicated online more frequently, which, in turn, facilitated the formation of online friendships. Introverted adolescents, by contrast, were more strongly motivated to communicate online to compensate for lacking social skills. This increased their chances of making friends online. Among introverted adolescents, a stronger motive for social compensation also led to more frequent online communication and online self-disclosure, resulting in more online friendships. The study concluded that the antecedents of online friendship formation are more complex than previously assumed.

When you think of it, the findings make sense. It is not hard to imagine a shy, introverted adolescent using the internet for social compensation. On the other hand, the results of the study are fairly disturbing, Although we monitor our children’s time on the internet I still worry about the predators who lurk online waiting to chat with innocent kids.

Web Safety for Kids

The Internet is good for so many things: information can be pored through, communities can be formed, the world can be made smaller.

These days, Internet communities are as common with modern kids as giggly prank calls were when we were younger.

The dominance of My Space - a virtual community where friends and strangers can post stories, photos, and personal information – is as commonplace amongst school-age kids as television and cell phones. It’s estimated that more than half of eighth to twelth graders have some kind of personal account online.

It can be a source of harmless networking and mindless fun – but there’s also an ominous side, and law enforcement want parents to be aware.

According to a Sherriff’s presentation made in Albany recently, one in four 10 – 17 year olds have had unwanted exposure to sexually explicit pictures online, and one in five have received sexual solicitation. The presentation demonstrated how a preditor could take an email address and a little brother’s name, spend 20 minutes online and learn a kid’s full name, schedule, and home address.

Scary stuff.

This article has tips for web safety for kids – and tips for parents to protect their kids while respecting their privacy.

Family “contracts” on Internet blogging and networking can be found here. It’s worth looking at if you’re concerned about what your kids may be doing online.

Parents spy on kids online

Worried for the safety of their children among the dark corridors of Internet anonymity, parents are coming up with innovative – some would say sneaky – ways of monitoring their children.

This recent article discusses several techniques parents are using to ensure that their children are not visiting obscene sites or giving away too much personal information.  Methods range from monitoring IM to hiring a sleuth to track down a teenage girl’s My Space account.

Companies are also becoming attuned to the need for software to filter and block potentially harmful content – and creating protective software such as K9 Web Protection.

I have some mixed emotions about this.  I do believe kids need some degree of privacy if they want it, to sort out their feelings and belief systems.  I was a kid who wrote everything down in my ultra private secret snoopers keep OUT diary and it helped me sort out issues I didn’t want to discuss with my parents.  But I also think there is a need for some monitoring because of the potential for danger on the Internet.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t trust any company currently providing social environments (MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal, etc.) to make any serious changes to ensure the safety of it’s online users unless there is a tremendous demand for it. If MySpace were deserted because a new, authenticated user social environment came online, then they might make changes. Unfortunately, that means that parents must be ultra-vigilent or not allow their kids online at all.

What do you think? Do you monitor your kids?

MySpace takes precautions against predators

In the wake of a series of negative articles and increasingly nervous parents, My Space is taking precautions against Internet predators by introducing new security measures.

The new rules are meant to prevent adults 18 and over from requesting to be on a younger person’s friend list unless they already know the youth’s full name or email address.

While the move is nice in theory, it’s a tad useless, in my opinion, because the site doesn’t have any way of verifying the real age of the user when they’re registering. I just registered successfully as a 16-year-old and I’m 54.

I don’t know if there is much My Space can do to solve the problem of Internet predators and false identities unless they agree to use authentication of all their users. Bringing all the MySpace millions of users ‘inside’ would be difficult if not impossible, but my hope is that a new, safer environment for teens and young adults will eventually take on MySpace. Such a new social environment could be a very popular place if parents were satisfied that all the users were authenticated. I know I would be. 

High school reserves right to search cellphones

Framingham High School, in Framingham, Massachusetts, is famous for a number of things. Now they can add another first to their list: the principal has decided that he has the right to search students’ cell phones if he thinks they may have drugs or stolen goods. Critics, including the students, say it is an invasion of privacy. At least one student feels that administrators are making the school out to be more problematic than it actually is.

Administrators, on the other hand, say they need the policy to improve security at the school and stop illegal activity. According to federal law, schools can conduct searches if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that a student has contraband. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, “School officials need only have ‘reasonable suspicion‘ that a particular search will reveal evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”

Personally, I’m not sure data held in a cell phone would be “evidence” — there could be plausible explanations for just about anything and, once upon a time, people in this country were considered innocent until proven guilty. At the very least “I’m writing a novel about a drug dealer — those are notes and excerpts” should result in reasonable doubt. I know that if I were a student at the school, I would certainly encourage my classmates to join me in putting “incriminating evidence” in their cellphones just to make the policy irrelevant.

You have to remember, though, I’m a troublemaker by nature. What do you think? Is this a reasonable policy for a high school in this day and age, or is the school really going way to far?