A friend of mine (we’ll call him “Joel”) sends a link to an article on arsTechnica (which I always think says Arse Technica) about mandatory RFIDing of elementary school students, which article then links the following story:
If you’re at all interested in this sort of civil liberties issue, read the news article above first. Evidently this elementary school, operating on its own, decided that it would require id badges to be worn around students’ necks containing an RFID chip. Let’s think about this, shall we?
“The RFID chips are worn around the neck in the form of ID badges”
This is an elementary school. How many hours do you think will pass before a bully yanks on a kid’s id badge to choke him? How many hours do think will pass before another bully steals a kid’s badge? What will happen then? This is moronic on its face, RFID aside.
“carry the child's name, photo, grade and unique school ID number”
Ah, great, yet another opportunity for identity theft. Let’s say that this handy little ID falls into the hands of a pedophile or kidnapper. What then? Why, look at all the cool information he’d have to start spoofing the child’s parents and the school.
And what are we doing with the “unique school ID number?” Is the kid’s name and grade not enough? I went through a large public school with a kid who shared my first and last name and yet somehow the school was able to tell the two of us apart. Possibly by that tricky middle initial, I don’t know. Is it that we’re just numbering all our kids now so that they’ll be used to the idea of being known by a number for when the Government decides that we should all henceforth be known by our numbers? Hmm.
"Students who lose or destroy their badges will be accountable for the cost of replacing them."
Ah, yes, so now we’re discriminating on the basis of wealth. Obviously a lost badge is a much bigger deal to a poor kid’s family than to a rich kid’s. Seems to me like the aforementioned bully has a whole new way to make fun of the poor kids. Yaay!
“the system allowed the staff to find when a non-student was in the school, due to the interloper's lack of badge.”
What? I may not be the most technologically savvy person around, but if I recall, RFID works by tracking the chips in the cards, and it really doesn’t have any way of tracking a card with no chip. In other words, if a person lacks the RFID, how are they going to show up on the RFID tracking system? This doesn’t make any sense at all. I’m sure the school thinks it does, but I’d like to see it working.
After all, the stated intent here is to know where the wearers of the badges are. RFID allows the school to track the students by monitoring the whereabouts of the RFID chips. And yet here they’re saying that they’ll also know the whereabouts of, well, apparently of everything else in creation since a “non-student” wouldn’t have the RFID chip and so wouldn’t be traceable.
“while the whole school must wear the badges, only the seventh and eighth graders are being tracked.”
This has a host of problems. Only some students will be tracked, but all students have to wear the tracking device? Interesting. So either we’re saying that some students aren’t important enough to be tracked, or that other students aren’t trustworthy enough not to be tracked. I don’t like either of those implications.
This also just muddies the waters regarding the tracking of “interlopers.” Not all students are being tracked. But we’ll know who doesn’t have a badge because we’ll be tracking them. If the question arises that you have an interloper, mustn’t you then attempt to determine the location of all the students? In all the grades? Thereby tracking them? At what point do we just say we’re really tracking all the students, because you never know when there’s somebody on campus who ought not be there?
If I’m a visitor to the campus, do I get a badge at the front desk? Doesn’t that then allow the school to track me while I’m on campus? What if I refuse?
I think this school is opening itself to a host of legal challenges, and I hope my donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps fight those battles.
Now read the bit on arsTechnica.
This brings up a whole other side of the problem, namely what are we programming these kids for? Besides a lifetime of not trusting others, I’m not sure. The author here is correct in his statements about the industrial public school system; one does not have to be a disciple of John Taylor Gatto to recognize such things.
The question is, if public schools are intended to socialize children, what sort of socialization is intended here? Are we heading toward a
Do They have to wear chips? I’ve always wondered.
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