Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Schoolchildren to be Tagged with RFID
oostevo writes "CNET has reported that Japanese schoolchildren in the city of Osaka will be tagged with RFID tags. Apparently this is in addition to the trial program in Tabe that The Register reported earlier, where parents can track their children on their way to school."
The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements.
/tinfoil_hat_on
/tinfoil_hat_stays_on
In 2 years replace the word 'kids' with 'employees'.
In 5 years replace the word 'employers' with 'shoppers'.
in 9 years replace the word 'shoppers' with...
I'd tell 'em they have it when they're old enough to understand. And if they don't like, when they're old enough they can take it out themselves.
The only problem with the way they are implementing it (and I don't see any workaround short of implanting the kids skin with RFID devices) is that since the tracking devices are tied to their book bags, if a pedo or other person wants the kid, they just have to drop or incapacitate the book bag chip .. thus making the tracking device useless.
,. than it might be useful.
Now if parents want to know if their kid is down at the pachinko parlour or some such
What happens when someone else besides the school is able to access them? I can view my whole school district's security cams and people think that is a privacy issue.
What is going to happen when someone is able to track these kids and it isn't the school?
.. if it saves one kid, then it's worth it...
This argument is such a fallacy. Why don't we encase our children in 'Nerf'? After all, then they would just bounce off of cars when they run out in the street.
If it saved one child, it's worth it right?
I think the police department in your town should require citizens to have RFID implants, and their movements/location should be recorded at all times. If anyone is ever murdered/raped/abducted, or if a robbery is ever reported, someone can check the recording and use the unique ID to tell almost instintaniously who the criminal is. There wouldn't even be a need to have a live watch over the feeds.
You wouldn't mind that, would you?
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
I think many people tend to be cautious of the implication, and the precident that it sets. These kids will be growing up accustomed to wearing tracking collars, and may well not see a problem with it if a good enough case is pressed for adults to carry such tags 'in the name of public safety'. Besides, just having such tags will not serve as a solid secured method of finding abducted children. First thing an abductor would do, knowing that these tags are out there, is to strip the kid, and throw away every piece of clothing or gear they had. Now, you have the same problem (abducted kid) and you still don't know where they're at.
Human society has a nasty tendancy to slip from what may be a clear defined goal (Keep kids safe by tracking them) towards something that's similar where the logic matches fairly close (Keep people safe by tracking them). However, at the same time, you run a higher risk of abuse of such information. While this is something of a straw man argument, consider what the Holocaust would've been like if the leaders of the country could find every member of the Jewish community, hiding or not, because they were wearing tags?
Personally, I'd almost rather teach my children self defense and how to handle unknowns in the world, than to rely on a removable tracking tag for their "safety". They'll be better off for knowing that.
The whole recurring theme about man and machine? Ghost in the Shell? Tetsuo in Akira merging with all the machinery around him? How many other examples can you name? I've always wondered why that's such a common idea in anime. I have my answer now.
It's because the Japanese think it's a good idea, that's why.
You know, Slashdot is a great place to be a geek. Look at the new technologies coming out, marvel at their application...but sometimes you just gotta say enough is enough.
And I have to draw the line right before RFID tagging my children.
It's impressively geeky, but c'mon guys - sometimes "because you can" isn't the right answer!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Seriously, I'm not joking at all. If you've been carrying an RFID tag as long as you can remember, requiring it by law won't seem like a big deal at all. Laws that take away freedoms are preceded by education campaigns to convince the public they want to give the freedom up.
I know a lot of people here think this can fight abduction. But how? Would a kidnapper really care whether or not the kid has a tag? If the sensors were placed EVERYWHERE, maybe they could track a missing child, but the abductor would certainly not stick around school with a tagged (or any) kid. I could see this as a potential means to fight truency, but not abduction.
Yes, kids are under adult attention a lot of the time. Still, I cannot dismiss this as just a "more efficient method" as you do. Is torture just a more efficient method of interrogation? Efficiency is not a justifying dictum, just a bonus.
That's your choice. Me, I do care. I'm not a totally paranoid tinfoil-hatter, but I have purposely avoided owning a cellphone and intend to continue doing so until it becomes an absolute necessity (if it does). And even then, I doubt I'll keep it with me all the time, much less on. I don't want to be reachable or trackable 24/7, that's not human nature, or at least not my nature.
This seems like a real waste of resources, especially in Japan, unless there's some kind of kidnapping wave there that I haven't heard about. And it encourages parents to complacently trust technology, rather than communicate directly with their children.
As for the slippery slope, remember that children have fewer rights than adults. To kids it looks like their rights are just suppressed, because they don't have the power to take it back. But it's actually because they are still learning to be people, when subordination to experience is necessary, and haven't actually developed the inalienable rights inherent in adults. Otherwise kids would have all emancipated themselves already, at latest in the 1960s when they all got money, cars, and TV role models.
It will be important to remember these distinctions when the police states attempt to raise the age of application of these tracking devices, saying that kids don't mind, why shouldn't adults, whose lives are risker. Adults who are monitored become even more neurotic, sources of risk. Monitoring us will make us less safe, as society becomes unhinged from the transferred social pressure. At least watching the increase in deviance, from unfairly implanted kids who are already developed into adults, will give us some data warning us away from general application of the technique.
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make install -not war
If this could prevent child-napping, yes I'd put one on my kids.
The odds of being kidnapped (in general, of course if your area has higher stats, then my arguments change) are so low that this sort of thing doesn't do a lot of good. The odds are very high, however, of RFID tags being used for undesirable purposes (unless RFID is well-regulated with regards to privacy, which seems unlikely at this point).
We have:
1. A dubious benefit.
2. A certain detriment.
In complete seriousness, if my parents had tagged me in this way, I'd be very upset with them. I could forgive ignorance on their part (them being fed the line that this is a good thing, and that there are no drawbacks). I could *not* forgive them if they did this with full knowledge (not that I'd disown them or something, just that there would always be this one issue that, regardless of how good our relationship is, I could not forgive).
Now, in Japan the culture is quite different. This doesn't strike me as being too terribly unacceptable there.
Children don't have a "right" to privacy. Their parents may choose to respect their children's privacy if they believe them to be mature enough (and most aren't, even once they are legal adults - although it's often not as much of the parents' business after that).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Japanese schoolkids have enough pressure to deal with as it is. Tagging them like animals isn't going to do them good. Just how high a youth suicide rate do they want?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer