Dive Brief:

• City Colleges of Chicago workers have written an open letter protesting a biometric scanning system they say could be used to verify their presence at work.
• Faculty and staff say the administration has justified the scanners as a way to save money by cutting down on payroll fraud.
• But the workers say that any payroll fraud isn't a big enough problem to justify an expensive new system, much less the invasion of privacy that fingerprinting involves.

Dive Insight:

In an online comment, a spokeswoman for the schools says a decision on how to implement the system has not been made. Now that fingerprint scanners are built into phones, this is likely only the leading edge of such controversies.