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Reading, Writing, RFID

Posted by michael on from the lockdown dept.

supabeast! writes "Wired has a story about a public charter school in Buffalo that now tracks student attendence with mandatory RFID tags. The school's director said 'All this relates to safety and keeping track of kids...Eventually it will become a monitoring tool for us..' In the future the system will expand to '...track library loans, disciplinary records, cafeteria purchases and visits to the nurse's office...punctuality...and to verify the time [students] get on and off school buses.' I think that we can all stop calling the privacy advocates paranoid now."

1 of 650 comments (clear)

  1. How does this violate a right? by JUSTONEMORELATTE · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How exactly does this take away from the child's freedom again?
    They are still free to choose attendance or ditching. They are still free to choose to return library books on time or keep them past the due date.
    Their choices have consequences, and this technology will make sure those consequences are dealt as impersonally as a photo-radar speed trap, but I can't really see where anyone's civil rights are being violated.
    I'm pretty far left-of-center, and I think this illustrates a much bigger problem of breakdown in trusting relationships between parents, teachers and kids, but could someone explain this one to me please?

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