RFID badges

[David S]

Parents Protest Student Computer ID Tags
Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:08 AM EST
The Associated Press
By LISA LEFF

The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.

The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.

But few American school districts have embraced such a monitoring system, and civil libertarians hope to keep it that way.

"If this school doesn't stand up, then other schools might adopt it," Nicole Ozer, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned school board members at a meeting Tuesday night. "You might be a small community, but you are one of the first communities to use this technology."

The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID's so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books.

But some parents see a system that can monitor their children's movements on campus as something straight out of Orwell.

[Blue Rectangle]

The parents are concerned with their child's privacy at a public elementary school?  Do they have any idea what it is like in elementary school?  Except for the bathrooms, the kids are under adult supervision at all times.  I really don't see how this program is different from the current situation.

That being said, I wonder if the ALCU would be interested in school choice, so that parents would be able to choose whether or not to send their kids to a school with this program.

[opebo]

These things probably cause cancer.

[Lunar]

These things probably cause cancer.

Probably not, usually only fun things cause cancer.

[Akno21]

What a waste of taxpayer money.

[Jake]

These things probably cause cancer.

Randomly ing people causes worse things than that.

[Alcon]

Wow, this is a bunch of idiocy.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

The ID's are truly fascist.

[Platypus]

No-F*ing-WAY!

UI have no problem with students being issued with a school ID card, that logs them onto the school's computers/photocopiers, allows them to take books out of the library, etc.; and I think it'd be a great idea for them to be useable at the tuckshop, but knowing your every move is awful.