AS IF HAVING TO go into work wasn't bad enough as it is, some workers in the US are now having to scan in and out with biometric hand and finger recognition devices which record their comings and goings digitally.

Dunkin' Donuts, the Hilton hotels, McDonald's and even the US Marine Corps have all started using the biometric systems, to keep an eye on their employees. A manufacturer of hand scanners based in California, Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, reckons that it has sold at least 150,000 of the devices to the above-mentioned companies alone.

A consulting company called the International Biometric Group, estimates that $635 million has already been spent on biometric devices by companies in the last year. It also reckons that by 2011, the corporate biometric industry will be worth an astounding $1billion.

Meanwhile, however, workers are none too pleased at being tracked so invasively by their big brother employers. Unsurprisingly, most find the system demeaning, and one landscape architect who designs city parks in New York City, Ricardo Hinkle, told Live Science magazine that it was "a system based on mistrust". He adds that "The creative process isn't one that punches in and punches out" and that it is nothing but a sordid bureaucratic invasion of privacy on professionals who would never have given a second thought to staying at work late to finish a project they cared about.

But those in favour of the system say that it has many benefits, including putting an end to time-off-work fraud. Falsifying holiday leave forms will sadly be a thing of the past for the unfortunate biometricised workers.

Also, although Ingersoll Rand's general manger of biometrics Jon Mooney reckons that all the paranoid privacy concerns of employees are unfounded because the scanners don't hold onto large databases of people's fingerprints, others say that that isn't the point. Their concern stems from the evil and creepy managerial exercise of control over the digitally whipped proletariat. µ

L'Inq
Live Science