Big Brother Is Watching XIV

Beginning this fall, students in Akron, Ohio, will be fingerprinted in order to eat school lunch. Currently in use in only one other school district in Ohio, Garfield Heights, the plan will require students to scan their fingerprints on a biometric device as they make their way through the school lunch line.

While the $700,000 system's designers say that the original fingerprint scans will be destroyed -- and that students will be identified by a "template" that can't be used the way police use fingerprints -- parents and organizations such as the ACLU have voiced privacy concerns about the system. Students who do not want to be fingerprinted will be issued an ID card. Sounds like a lunch ticket to me. In my day, you bought a lunch ticket. School staff members punched it. And you ate lunch.