Slashdot Mirror
Reading, Writing, RFID
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."
Kids in schools are already treated to an all-day tracking with security cameras virtually everywhere but the toilets...and maybe there too...
Tell me why keeping track of children in a school is such bad thing?
My High School had a no hat policy, so I guess tinfoil wouldn't even be an option!
Workaround: "Hey Sandy, if you carry my tag to English today, I'll carry yours on Thursday."
:)
Thus: false sense of security.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
I think that we can all stop calling the privacy advocates paranoid now.
I'm going to continue doing so until they can find an effective way to keep tabs on me...
Minority Report was wrong... they don't track you by scanning your eyes!
I can't wait to walk into the GAP, so they can read my RFID tag and announce to everybody around that I recently purchased an unusually large amount of womens' underwear.
These are not the same tags they are proposing for inventory control in retail outlets dispite what both the Wired article and the slashdot submitter imply. These are designed to be read from a longer distance and used specifically to track people. You can still call anti inventory control RFID privacy nuts 'paranoid'.
You just know in a few months, some corporation is going to announce RFID tags for their employees. Heck, some companies already monitor email, webuse, they have cameras all over, they check when you come in if you have a door ID card. So they'll stick RFID tags in your badge and tell you to wear it at all times. And since people are so afraid of getting laid off, now's a perfect time to impliment such orwellian schemes.
Isn't it amazing that schools always seem to have money for this crap and yet cannot seem to educate literate graduates or provide pencils, books and paper for their students?
They've got endless budgets for in-classroom cameras, RFID name badges and seminars about file-sharing but never enough for field trips, athletic equipment or buses.
It just never seems to improve.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
For example, we could remotely help them with their homework, automatically remove them from dangerous situations, make them do funny dances and speak with foreign accents, as well as invade neighboring countries, all with the push of a button.
Here's to the future.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
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?
--
Sweet Zombie Jesus, this is terrifying. Kids growing up in a world where their every move is in effect monitored, as are all objects around them. If you're old enough to know better, you can at least fight the concept. But to grow up in the middle of it as if it were natural... disgusting. We're going to be raising children who are either soulless or, in the case of those who can't deal with it, psychotic. What a truly hateful development. Somewhere Huxley and Orwell are weeping. And yes, I'm aware Orwell wasn't trying to predict the future but was in fact commenting on totalitarian regimes in his lifetime. He's still weeping.
and our kids are totally fucked. I predict an entire generation of useless paranoid humans who can't bear any responsibility, because of their paralyzing fear of irrational and inequitable punishment.
Even without these tags, I remember the animosity generated among kids when someone gets away with something (beats the system) while other kids get caught red-handed (brought a Swiss army knife to school, because, well, it's useful for stuff).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Okay, but will the principal & the teachers have RFID tags to track their attendance, too? And perhaps GPS systems tracking their cars to make sure they're not speeding to work in the morning? And Internet filters on their computers? And let's check the length of the male teacher's hair to make sure it's not too long, and the length of the female teacher's skirts, to make sure they're not too short, and oh yeah, let's have them blow into a breathalyzer each morning before they're allowed to enter the school, and by the way, the "Civil Liberties" class has been cancelled due to obsolescence. We've put the "Don't Be a Pirate" class in its place.
</rant>
Simply implant the tags into student's bodies. Surround the tag with an air-sensitive, explosive capsule so counteract removal attempts.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Wake up, public school is all about treating children like cattle. Thats why I hate it so much. Dropping out of high school was the best choice I ever made, it was MY choice to exercise MY rights and to proclaim MY freedom from a tyranical overloard, my fat bull-dyke principal (that's not an exageration, she really is a fat bull-dyke). If you disagree, you can bring it up with my bachelors degree and my honors.
Homeschool your kids. Or group homeschool them. Or something. Don't send them to McSchool.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
The privacy advocate (implying most people aren't concerned with privacy) is exactly right. This move's effect (and probably its purpose) is to prepare children to accept ubiquitous monitoring and tracking, so they don't resist it when the cameras are installed on every city block in a few years.
My age group will be ridiculed as paranoid when I complain about the corporations/government start keeping detailed logs on everything I do, everyone I see, everywhere I go, etc. etc. After all, GovernCorp is only doing this for our protection, to keep the TERRORISTS away!!!
Watch as your children are taught to love Big Brother...
Presumably if they're going to the trouble of determining all those other parameters, they'll also determine if the average distance between any two tags remains two low (ie, within two inches of each other because they're both around the same student's neck) or if the correlation between the positions of any two tags is too high (ie, because one's around a student's neck and the other is in his pocket for two straight hours).
Maybe the school is too obtuse, but if I were the principal and I was an RFID-phile, that's what I'd do.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
What triggered this memory was two words near the start of page two: where it said "picture tags", I misread it as "prison tags". I think my subconscious was trying to tell me something.
It was interesting watching my own prejudices while reading the article as well; I started out with a "this is terrible!" preconception, but then that conception wavered quite a bit when the article carefully emphasized "inner-city school". I went to one of those for awhile; I don't know about all of them, but the one I was in was pretty awful, and that was almost thirty years ago.
Regardless of how bad the school is, I don't think there is any excuse for surveillance technology on everyone, whether or not they've been convicted of anything. Perhaps putting that kind of dog collar on kids with discipline problems would be ok, but on EVERYONE? Isn't school already enough like prison?
"Each morning at 7:30 AM, check your free will at the door. We'll return it to you, only slightly tarnished, in the afternoon. "
If you insist on putting a dog collar on children, you've got no gripe if you end up with dogs.
If they were scanning you passively, I'd say, ya, it's bordering on 1984. But it's passive.
Students have to touch a kiosk screen and then, it can only read your tag at less than 20 inches. So, this makes it just another form of swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard. Having been a teacher, I can tell you this would be wonderful. Automating the roll taking process would save lots of time each class period dealing with absent, late, and excused kids.
Now, in my opinion, they are going a bit overboard with tracking lots of unnecessary information, such as when they boarded the bus. And even with this being just another form of card swiping, all this electronic tracking may still ruffle privacy activists feathers. But one things for sure, it's definitely not 1984.
It trains our kids to be used to the idea of having their every move monitored. When they become adults they will so trained to it that they won't put up a fight when the government decides everyone needs a tracking device.
If my daughter's public school ever decided to do this, I will be the first parent to refuse to allow my daughter to carry the device.
An important reminder: the Consitution is not suspended just because you are in school. It still applies, despite what some control freaks would have you believe.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I have an access badge at my work, lets me in rooms, lets me into the building, tracks my movement. We where going to enable it for Sun Rays, so we could walk up to any desk and have access to our x-session.
Not exactly the same as RF, have to manually scan every where you go, but if you want access you have to scan.
I use a system called Powerbroker, that logs all my keystrokes when I log into systems, it can be used to replay sessions incase something went wrong. Also tracks everyone, incase someone did unathorized work.
My Net connection is logged in the corporate proxy, and if I hit an authorized site, it informs me that the site is blocked.
My wireless data and phonecalls are tracked, with detailed records. All the way down to my location using trianglation (we call it location-based services to the customers.) Not exactly E911 and GPS, but thats in the works.
About the only security I have is my own computer and system. Since IT doesnt control my Unix box or Laptop, I can have encrypted FileSystems, and encrypted containers to keep people out. Also I use encrypted tunnels to my own systems (ssh/ssl/vpn) so I can have un-monitored access. With Wireless data being around, you can have access to the net even if your IT department blocks you. Private IRC/IM/email and such.
I guess I noticed security and privacy issues, same goes with kids. The RFID's just monitor movement and services, not the actual data the kids use. If we started recording the converstations in the hall, and sniffers to read sms messages between kids, then its a REAL invasion of privacy.
In other news, anyone see that the Senate passed the Genetic Privacy Bill? Hopefully this gets signed into law, this is the real type of privacy we need. Thou, Flip side, criminals get put into a nation wide DNA database, go figure.
-
None of us is as dumb as all of us
They don't have to carry these things around when they're not in school. And when they ARE in school, they're supposed to get on/off the bus at a specific time, they're supposed to be in specific classes at specific times. They're not supposed to leave campus during classes (with obvious legitimate exceptions, of course). Each class always takes roll, and if the student hasn't shown up for class that day, and the office hasn't been notified why, the parents are contacted. This happens already, why would adding RFID tags make any difference? It might be helpful to know that the student got off the bus, but hasn't shown up to class. Or walked out of the building after 3rd period not to return. The advantage of using RFID is that this information can be made available immediately if needed, and if there is a real problem, you don't have to spend a couple hours tracking down attendance records from the teachers or watching hours of video looking for the important 3 seconds.
I suppose it's sad that anyone thinks that this is necessary, but the same can be said for metal detectors and locks on the doors. The only problem I can see with this is if someone relies on on the RFID and ONLY the RFID for tracking purposes. Manual attendance counts should still be taken and verified to avoid any attempts to abuse the system. But lets not get too excited about a perceived loss of privacy where there really has never been a whole lot of it anyway.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
the government does not have the right to track and monitor a citizen's every move. it goes against the notion of privacy. IANAL, but it seems it would be an illegal search of a citizens life. on that same note, no business has the right to put full tabs on its employees because that is a violation of their rights. if it is wrongful to disregard the privacy an adult citizen of this country then we must also frown apon any attempt to ignore the privacy rights of minors. they are citizens as well but do not get the luxury of having their voices heard. they cannot vote. it is, therefore, the duty of all the adult citizens of this nation to protect the rights of minors because they cannot do it themselves.
-----
Constitutionally Institutionalized
by daniel mcdonald
I am the unpatriot,
for not standing behind
the man blind.
You are the patriot;
for idling in line
no questions in mind.
Plus they claim that the chips can only be read from about 20 inches away from the reader anyways. There are simply no benefits to this invasion of privacy.
So...Unless a little scanner gnome follows the kid around at all times, how exactly is this different than swiping a time card or something? Kids in school are already tracked six ways from Sunday:
Get to school? Attendance sheet checkoff.
Don't get to school? Parents called to check on you.
Take out a library book? Scan school ID card.
Want school lunch? Swipe card again.
Use a computer? Log in with personal username.
Doctor's Appointment? Sign a log when you leave, and have your parents called to confirm the appointment.
Etc.
Hopefully you get the idea. RFID tags may not be a good thing, but claiming that they somehow destroy school "privacy" is utterly silly.
The school spent $25,000 on the ID system. The $3 ID tags students wear around their necks at all times . . .
...except my school spent nearer to $30,000 for regular plastic ID cards for us to wear around our necks and a couple of cameras to watch the school parking lot. What's scary to me is that they also plan on making the kids in the junior high and elementary schools wear these IDs. Looks like someone else got to them first.
.....
I've also been told by some of the faculty they want to make the cards act somewhere along the lines of how the RFID, for attendence and the like.
"Before, everything was done manually -- each teacher would take attendance and send it down to the office," he said. "Now it's automatic, and it saves us a lot of time."
This I like the least... we also just switched over to having the teachers use the computers for attendance. That was a bad call, especially since the computer writes out cut slips automatically when a student is marked absent, for which in most cases was a mistake on the teacher's part. Taking attendance before was much easier, since the teachers understood the system, and if a student needed to be somewhere else during that class, they could, and the teacher would just have to make a mental note of it and could mark an absence for the day in her book with no cut slip, since the student was where s/he was supposed to be. With the computers the teachers are required to mark the students absent if they are not in the room, even if they had called in (though most teacher fortunatly ignore this rule). Cut slips for everyone; just one big annoyecne.
The $3 ID tags students wear around their necks at all times incorporate the same Texas Instruments smart labels used in the wristbands worn by inmates at the Pima County jail in Texas.
Well, I've joked about my school turning into a prison . . . I guess I deserved to hear that anther school did, and mine just might follow even more closely in its tracks.
I don't see what good ID tags in schools will do. To many people refuse to wear them (though they oft face consequnces for it) for them to do any good for identification purposes. They're not about to stop terrorist attacks on the school, and there more of a hinderance than a help when it comes to getting students to be where the should be, since the students know where they should be more often than the school does. Unless those little peices of plastic can stop bullets, why bother?
What happens when these kids grow up thinking it's okay for Big Brother to track them everywhere they go? Looks like a generation that doesn't realize that they don't have privacy, freedoms, rights, etc. is being bred. No one ever fights if they don't know there's something to fight for. I thought the government couldn't win this under the guise of security . . . looks like they can.
When his parents would show up at daycare and ask where my friend's clothes were, he had no idea.
At my school, when a kindergartener had to bring an important piece of paper home to his parents, they stapled it to his shirt so that he wouldn't lose it on the bus.
I'm in college now and have lost an embarrasing number of plastic mugs in class.
If schools can get kids to keep track of their RFID devices, I'll be impressed.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
FUCK THIS! My kids are going to be homeschooled!
Why was this modded funny.. this IS the ultimate goal. Implant EVERYONE.. make them practically non removable....
it should be modded as 'scary true'.
Get them as kids.. makes it an easier process to maintain it when adults. and after a generation or two, you get mass coverage.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.geocities.com/ussmunchkin5/TNG80.htm
It seems that George Orwell's "1984" is slowly but surely coming true. If you think that this infringement on privacy rights is going to stay in the schools, you're sorely mistaken. With all of the people abdicating their rights by having cameras monitor the public streets for better security, its only a matter of time before this rfid program will be expanded to the public streets. In the near future, if you want to go out into the public streets, you will have to carry a national id card that has an embedded rfid chip in it. All your movements can easily be the tracked, logged and spindled!
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
What I want to know is, with all the talk of school cutbacks, reductions in education spending, and the decline in U.S. educational standards, where are schools getting the money to build systems like this?
I mean, that's great that they want to know who is in the building and what time they got there, but it strikes me as odd that teachers could not perform the same duties using a pencil and piece of paper.
The focus of education is on academics, not punctuality. Unless every child there is doing Calculus, reading through one of the top 100 literature lists, knows where France is on a map, can dissect a pig, is able to competently complete a line rendering, and knows all that junk they teach you in home economics, the people behind this system are wasting these kid's time and their parent's money.
"School" as we know it was designed to train the children of subsistence farmers to be effective factory workers. Rather than getting up at dawn, working with their families at their own pace, and doing whatever it was subsistence farmers did for fun, the Industrial age required workers trained to wake up at the same time every day, respond to stimuli such as whistles ordering the start and end of the working day, and so on. A few generations of such schooling later, and it's become our cultural norm. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, the notion of schooling was nothing short of, well, revolutionary.
Fast-forward to today. We have Industrial-era schooling in an Security-era economy. Your post ("I don't see why kids should have it any better") is evidence of this - you seem to think that having the Panopticon in the workplace and government is a Bad Thing. And yet, you're learning; you're adapting, as evidenced in your next paragraph:
> When you have kids you'll take whatever steps are necessary to protect them. If that means they have to live without much privacy for 18 or so years of their life then so be it! They have approx. 70 more to have all the privacy they want.
Actually, they won't. But you're correct that the RFID-chipping of kids is a Good Thing. Just as you know no limits when it comes to keeping track track them for their protection, your employer and government has an interest in your well-being. Granted, the interest isn't as overarching as the relationship between parent and child; more like rancher and cattle. But show me a rancher who doesn't take care of his cattle, and I'll show you a rancher who's out of business in a year.
But back to school. We moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and we designed schools to raise children who would take us there. We now stand at the transitional generation from the industrial age to the security age. By getting the kids accustomed to the Panopticon at an early age, they'll graduate from school better-prepared to take part in the security society.
300 years ago, old farmers probably hated having to get up at oh-dark-hundred to go to the factory as much as you seem to dislike your zero-privacy expectation at work.
As a result of our transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society, we have a wide range of consumer goods ranging from broadband pr0n to advances in medical treatment that have doubled the human lifespan and nearly tripled the useful part of the human lifespan.
Today, you and I grumble, and your kids might even chafe (initially) at being chipped. Within a generation or so, our presecurity culture will also be abandoned, and 300 years from now, our descendants will look on us and our presecuity culture as just as primitive as we now imagine our preindustrial subsistence-farming ancestors.
This is simply the logical next step of public education.
The original supporters of public education were largely supporting it for the purpose of subjugating the public. They saw mandatory public education as a means to subvert those of higher intellect, and to "level the playing field" so that people would be more easily managaged. Additionally, it was seen as a tool to sundivide people, and to cause folks to see artificial social barriers (such as age) where they were not, by dividing them up into such age-based groups.
When you consider that people throughout our history have been doing college-level work at around 12 (Benjamin Franklin, anyone?), this isn't in the least bit inconceiveable. Franklin wasn't a savant or anything like that - he had quite a few contemporaries: Washinton, Jefferson, Adams and the like. They also started adulthood at a younger age. (Franklin was a printer's apprentice at 12, and was doing graduate-level work, ot a degree, at that time).
When you contrast this historical treatment of education, vs. modern situations, where there are often intelligent people that do poorly in school, or simply do medicorely because they don't have the desire to invest themselves in something that is incredibly slow paced, and teens in general feel distant and confused, it's no small wonder.
This is just one step closer towards the Governing class being able to truely and completely subvert people: we're well on our way to thoughtcrime. I give he US (and maybe other countries too?) no more than 20 years until there is mandatory RFID-taging of every student, and maybe 30 years for every citizen - all globally locateable. All in the name of "stopping terrorists", and the easier management and control of the populace.
Doesn't make those "crazy" biblical philosophy folks seem that far off with the "mark of the beast". I guess now would probably be the right time to mention that Christianity has a strong centric emphasis on the individual, if I wanted to be flamed and start the trolls a' rolling.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Never mind, everything is here.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
> My 7th grade son has to carry his ID card whenever he is on school grounds. If he doesn't have it, we are called and either we deliver the ID or take him home.
And they're doing this in the name of security, correct? So, every time he loses his ID card, you have to drop what you're doing to act on it, pony up $20.00 and he misses a day of school? What if the local bully decides to take his card from him every week? Is this really a sensible solution at all? If he loses his ID on the day of a big test, does he get the chance to make it up? Can you think of ways this could be abused?
It sounds like you need to reconsider the school your son attends. When their need to track him trumps his learning, the system needs revision.
Virg
In our school 1984 was one of the main book used in our English course.
Oh the irony.
Good to see the guys at MiniTrue working hard..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Your point about responsibility-enforcing technology destroying true personal responsibility is valid, but much of the modern American pop-cultural concept of the "proper" use of law is blind to this subject-object dichotomy. Example: ever notice how politicians talk about being "tough on drugs" to "send a message?" Who is the subject and who is the object in this discussion? Heroin (example drug) is illegal in the US because of an intellectually specious concept that society is responsible for protecting individuals who are irresponsible. The problem here is that separating responsibility from the individual ultimately deprives people not only of their freedom, but from an environment in which the concept of free will itself has independent validity. I don't believe children have the intellectual capability or life experience necessary to make consistently mature choices, so protecting them into adulthood is necessary and a genuine moral obligation of those who bring them into the world. But stripping kids of responsibility ultimately ruins them as adults later on, because they never truly get exposed to the consequences of the exercise of free will. The use of artificial restraining tools (the application of law, instead of the application of mature mind) is so insidious precisely because it encourages laziness of thought. That laziness of thought then takes on independent psychological force after the original reason creating a legal structure is forgotten. The laziness in thought then corrupts the society it was meant to help. That's why welfare policies in the US failed and were largely rolled back in the 1990s: welfare was found to create psychological dependency on welfare. That's because people (and other natural entities) tend to default to the lowest-energy state possible. With people, low-energy means less thinking, less acting and less ultimate freedom, because thinking, acting and understanding how to maintain one's freedom and independence all consume a lot of energy. That's what it means when they say: the price of freedom is eternal vigilence. Government has one purpose and one purpose alone: to serve as the organ of coercive force. When people lose sight of that fact, they start dreaming of new functions for the government without realizing that if something is truly good, it should come about through the exercise of free will in the first place. It takes effort to enforce laws, and divorcing effort from the application of force will not help the cause of freedom. Indeed, because government always has a monopoly on power, it will only serve to increase the relative empowerment of the government population (because governmental power is ultimately controlled by people who, like other people, take personal responsibility for advancing their own interests if it's easy to do so) versus the relatively unaware general population.
I teach and to me this doesn't sound like such a bad idea. As a homeroom teacher trying to keep track of 25 students or more is a really hard thing to do, let alone a school of 200-300 students. I'm thinking right now about the parents who show up to school and their child isn't around (happens more often that you think) because they got on a bus, or are still in school, or left at a earlier time, or maybe ditched halfway through the day. A system like this would help us to keep track of where students are and possibly alleviate a whole lot of aggravation and panic on the parts of parents and teachers. There is also the paperwork side of this. Teaching is soooooooo much work. I regularly put in 12 - 14 hour days and one thing that would be great is if I didn't have to worry about attendance. There is a lot of attendance paperwork to keep track of, (We SHOULD be doing it on the coputer but the administration seems to have no idea what computers are capable of.) not to mention that in the morning there are a bazillion other things to do along with taking attendance. It would be so nice if they just walked into the school and they were automatically noted. (sigh)
> This is a charter school--a privately run school that applies capitalism's "someone doing it for a profit will do it better" principle to higher education.
Charter schools are not private schools, and elementary schools are not higher education. A charter school is a public school with a specialized charter. Google it and you'll find a mass of optimistic and not-so-optimistic descriptions of charter schools.
Virg
Would you really like to see us evolve into a society where all laws are enforced at all times by a "no sparrow falls" all-seeing authority? That's where we're headed, and it's disturbing. The idea of living in such an oppressive world seems to suck the very oxygen out of the air. And to complete the role reversal, I'm pretty right of center.
I mean the days where they tatooed a number on you and kept track of you by placing you in a concentration camp^H^H^H^H oops I mean resort.
.. expell them, humiliate them, impose corporal dicipline? Call human services on their parents for neglecting their kid when they are no longer in school. Call the police to take the kids away, and pop a bullet in their heads if they fight back to keep their child?
Also this begs the question, if the RFID requirment is so harmless, then what are you going to do when a kid or parent refuses,
How much you'd want to bet that they'd call the parents extreme!
There are usually two groups of people who get upset about privacy issues like this.
First there are the people who are breaking the rules, and who vaguely claim "privacy" as the reason to cover up their real reason. Unfortunately, these people just give ammo to the other foolish idea that "if you are doing the right thing, you have nothing to worry about".
The second group thinks it through a little deeper, and realizes the long term dangers of each little encroachment. What are the possible abuses? They will occur. What then?
If every movement of a child is tracked, who might want that data? Parents? Advertisers, even? Suppose the budget just didn't come through this year. Why provide the temptation for abuse? Suppose Johnny's aunt works in the main office, and isn't too keen on him dating that black girl because "it just isn't right". Funny how she's always suddenly walking past whenever they're together. Or suppose the administration decides to take a proactive approach to discipline by keeping an extra close eye on any student with any problematic history... including notifying the parents of the new friends that Johnny makes while trying for what he thought was a "fresh start" in high school. Is that right? How did Johnny's name even get on that list? Was that his aunt's doing? Or did a jealous classmate hack the central computer? Hey, it's like in the War Games movie, but you can do a hell of a lot more than just change your grade!
Now consider the psychological effects of living under a constant watchful eye. Keep in mind that you are not really acting morally until you do the right thing when you are NOT watched... that's really what matters. When do the students get to practice that?
Have you ever been driving alone on a road where you *knew* for certain that there were no cops for miles? Many teenagers (and some adults too..) would drive like maniacs, until the time they hit a deer, or nearly soiled their pants when that cardboard box in the road came out of nowhere... and they realize the reason for the speed limit laws. Learning that there are reasons behind most rules is part of growing up, and if the only reason for obedience is "because I said so, and I'll KNOW if you break the rules", won't it take a very long time for a kid to grow up?
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
For now. For how long? These are small details, small details can change - the principle is in place.
Automated roll taking? "Hey, Johnny, can you keep my ID tag with you? Me and Sammy gonna skip the class
But it can be at the snap of their fingers. Minor details can be changed at any moment without notice or anybody's knowledge and approval. The reasoning is:
"hey, we've been doing this for a few months now, nobody has objected, it seems to be going very well - now we are just going to automate the whole process; we'll spend less money on kiosks, save students' time approaching and "registering" themselves with kiosks. And spend more time and money on our kids' education - it's all about our kids, and their future, right?"
Then wait until federal gov't comes in and requires the data be shared with the FBI or schools won't get federal funding. Why not? They are doing it with the libraries.
Small details can change. It's similar to saying - give me all the power to track your every move - but don't be afraid - I will not abuse it; I will only use it for your own benefit. This is what RIAA and John Ashcroft have been saying, and many times getting it too.
The "security age" is crap. It's just a way to further the whole producer-consumer paradigm to it's final destination. Yeah, I'd know where my kids are any given moment, but they'd also be adding rows in someone's DB and sending targeted ad-banners to my web browser..
Oh, and your analogy with cattle & ranchers? You got it backwards. We are the ranchers and the politicians are the cattle. We tell them what to do, they listen to us. Yeah, it may seem like it's getting close to what you described, but once the pendulum swings over enough, it'll swing back and the people will be firmly in the driver's seat.
And with regards to children, how are little kids gonna be able to grow up and realize that not all people are bad people, if they start with the assumption that all people are bad people, even fellow students? Potential relationships will be lost, friends won't be made, etc all because tommy is a yellow threat while jimmy is red.
The worst thing is your comment reads like you are ok with all of this stuff going down. You've just resigned yourself to living in a place where freedom is a memory, and privacy an afterthought.
Just as you know no limits when it comes to keeping track track them for their protection, your employer and government has an interest in your well-being. Granted, the interest isn't as overarching as the relationship between parent and child; more like rancher and cattle. But show me a rancher who doesn't take care of his cattle, and I'll show you a rancher who's out of business in a year.
Funny, that's exactly what Apologists said about the condition of slaves in the Old South.
By getting the kids accustomed to the Panopticon at an early age, they'll graduate from school better-prepared to take part in the security society.
You seem to be arguing that loss of privacy is enevitable, that we should get over it, and it's really a good thing anyway. That's bullshit. That type of thinking can only lead to more government control over our private lives. The more I hear people spout off such inflamatory nonsense, the more I think about purchasing a gun while I've got the chance. I'll pay in cash, of course. Does that sound threatening? Good, it's supposed to. I'm not threatening you in particular (that is, you'll never be in physical danger from me), but I want to make it very clear how serious the right to basic privacy really is. I, for one, will defend it to the death, and will raise any children I have to do the same.
This boils down to our right to be anonymous in our speech and in our beliefs. Lack of privacy means lack of anonymity. A lack of anonymity means a lack of freedom in speech. A lack of freedom of speech means that we no longer control our own lives.
300 years ago, old farmers probably hated having to get up at oh-dark-hundred to go to the factory as much as you seem to dislike your zero-privacy expectation at work.
What's the point here? 150 years ago (there were no real factories 300 years ago) workers were treated like cattle with little to no respect for their saftey and well-being, least of all their privacy. Disposable and repressed, the factory workers eventually banded together and forced the factory owners to pay attention. Hence labor unions.
I don't know, maybe you'd like to being forced to work 16 hour days, seven days a week, for maybe a tenth of your current pay. Personally, I'm very thankful for the sacrifices those workers made way back then.
Within a generation or so, our presecurity culture will also be abandoned, and 300 years from now, our descendants will look on us and our presecuity culture as just as primitive as we now imagine our preindustrial subsistence-farming ancestors.
Unless we vigorously defend all of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, including free speech and the right of anonymous travel (eg: no implanted RFID tags), nobody will know a damn thing about us 300 years from now. Certainly not in any meaningful sense. The revisionist control freaks will make certain of that.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Correct. I'm not threatened by your willingness to pick up a gun to defend what you perceive as your rights. There are very few of you, your numbers are shrinking, and should your kind actually start firing that gun, your lives will be shortened quickly.
In our presently insecure society, the security meme propagates extremely well. It is outcrowding, and will continue to outcrowd, the privacy meme. People need to be led. They're willing to give their lives for security, never mind their privacy. Once the privacy meme has been effectively neutralized and a secure society established, there'll be a few stragglers, but they'll be recognized as paranoids or sociopaths, and given medical treatment to help them overcome their affliction.
> This boils down to our right to be anonymous in our speech and in our beliefs. Lack of privacy means lack of anonymity. A lack of anonymity means a lack of freedom in speech. A lack of freedom of speech means that we no longer control our own lives.
Anonymity (or even Slashdotesque pseudonymity) does not mean that you are not accountable to others for your actions, words, or thoughts. Privacy is not a shield for lawlessness; anonymity is not a shield for privacy.
It could be useful to the nurse's office to know how often and for how long someone takes a crap. Hmmm, Johnny seems to be in that stall a long time, perhaps he's doing his sex-education homework.
OK 2 things.
:-)
1 - Who hear has to wear ID tags at work. *raises hand*, who needs to swipe them to get into work *raises other hand*. What is the difference.
What is the difference between manual rolls and RFID rolls. or the difference between libary cards which must be manually swiped and rfid where they can just walk past a sensor to borrow stuff.
2 - RFID signals are encrypted and encoded. Yes I know people will be able to crack these codes but do you seriously think shops like kmart will bother to work out the encryption of a school kids ID cards considering every school will have a different encryption.
So The use of RFID tags at school is simply speeds up the roll marking process. There is no privacy difference between a teacher manualy marking the roll and the kids electronically doing it.
Here we are on a geeks and tech forum and everyone is scared of a little electronicalisation. (spelling is bad).
Heck I would have prefered my school to have these systems instead of having to manually mark the roll each day and manually scan ID tags.
Sorry, does anyone else out there think we should LET kids take risks, LET kids learn from their mistakes, LET kids take actions that aren't good for them so they can see for themselves. And if a few don't make it - well, bluntly, there's plenty where they came from.
The current situation seems destined to produce adult children - people who have never experienced anything outside of the carefully sanitized artificial environment created for them. Maybe experiencing a little danger might be good for them.
Our society is obsessively compelled to believe (in large part thanks to media induced hysteria) that there are psychos and thugs around every corner. The reality is those of us in North America and Western Europe live in the SAFEST SOCIETY THERE EVER HAS BEEN.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a greater good to be had by letting our kids LIVE and LEARN (and risk) than locking them down every moment of their lives and then suddenly turning them loose when they are 18. Our society seems bound and determined to ensure children make the LEAST of the first 20 years of their life.
Did anyone else spot this one?
Huxley, anyone?