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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."
How else will they know if their schoolchildren are being attacked by this month's Tentacle Monster?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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...
They love electronics. They'll probably be signing up for Hello Kitty themed RFID tags voluntarily.
I can't think of any other culture that would want to do something like this. I love Japan. Everything about it seems to be 20 years in the future. If you ever say anything weird or unbelievable, add "in Japan" at the end, and it sounds more realistic.
Try it out.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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.
.. if it saves one kid, then it's worth it...
Or just think about yourself trying to explain how you don't want to see this because it violates privacy to a parent whose child is missing/abducted..
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?
Hmmm. Who wants to start placing bets on which child will emerge as the lone survivor of class 9-B?
Longhorn is released, nearly bug-free, and crushes Linux once and for all... in Japan!
Slashdot in 5 Paragraphs
Battle Royale
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Come with us now as we study the migratory patterns of the Japanese School Child.
[Helicoptor flys over a school yard full of children, one is separated out from the herd and tranqualized with a dart, scientist staples an RFID tag in his ear...]
1. Copy the RFID tag of a classmate
2. Change it for yours when you're out of school.
3. Enter the max. number of shops/places considered "dangerous" for you in one day.
4. Restore your RFID before going home.
5. Make fun of the poor bastard the next day of class
No profit but lots of fun
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
With a few slight mods to the screen formats, the Online Herd Management System should be applicable to schools.
Just what your local pedophile has been asking for all along.. a way to track kids so that they can grab them in much more concealed places. Oh look, that one kid just seperated from his friends and is now going down an empty street all by himself.. yum!
but then you couldn't put your kids in the microwave anymore.
Aand it was actually relatively skillfully done, in my opinion at least. You refute an argument by showing how its logic leads to absurdity. The argument isn't meant to provide a serious assertion, but rather an obviously silly assertion that reflects badly on the argument it is replying to.
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.
--
make install -not war
I think you'd find that the most likely second target for a scheme like this would be (convicted) criminals, not employees.
(IIRC Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders)
First our pets and cattle, then our children, then criminals, then the rest of us.
A while ago, after reading a newspaper article about some hideous unsolved crime, I mentioned to a friend that we should start putting radiotags on criminals. Man, he hit the roof! Wow. He used a variety of terms to describe this idea, the one that I remember most was 'Nazi'.
Radio tagging people has its merits and can certainly make the world a 'Better Place'(tm), but it is simply too prone to abuse/misuse.
Who would you trust to manage and control the monitoring system? Your government? The United Nations? Your local police department? Your favourite church/religion/cult/sect?
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.
One of the (many) unintended consequences of this will be that parents and authorities will have a higher perceived confidence level but a lower real confidence level.
Current situation: Parent sends child to school. Did they get there? Probably, based on past behavior and other factors, but not necessarily definitely. Therefore, the parents continue to assert controls and recieve feedback (aka nagging and snooping) over time to increase the liklihood of the child going to school and behaving safely.
Proposed situation: Parent sends child to school. Did they get there? Definitely, based on the feedback from the sensors at the school. Parents don't need to check and reinforce behavior (spy and nag), because they can be sure that their little darling is safe at school. Except that only the tag is at school, in their little darling's friend's bag. Little darling is skipping school and is currenly at a bukkake shoot earning some extra coin.
I'll stick with the nagging and snooping.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The current goal is one reduction of school bueracracy and truency rather than stopping crime and abduction. Why not do this more simply with Bluetooth enabled key cards instead? Maybe the goal of taking this the more invasive aims like those is on the horizon, but must be introduced one step to hell at a time.
Get the RFID tags implanted to help locate children in earthquakes and major disasters. Get long lasting bio-driven versions that will survive between school sessions and vacations to protect against abductors. Widely deploy readers to track school kids who might choose to vandalize a school. Will the tags be removed at the end of one's education? No, they're harmless. Within a few generations you have a populace with high percentages of people already RFID tagged and having no problems. Require it of everyone.
If the current uses are "just" to reduce bueracracy, I'd definitely side with technologies that would not be easily expandable to a more trecherous slope.
As an English teacher at a Japanese elementary school, I'd like to explain a few things about how the commuting works for students here.
. pl5 ?ek20040520ag.htm
Almost no kids in Japanese public schools are driven to school by their parents. It is not against the rules, but is generally discouraged. Public schools generally do not have buses, though some students will take a bus if their parents can afford it and they live far from school. Middle and high school students might bike or take a train, but those are often off-limits for elementary students, who must either walk or come by bus (Kids generally go to the local elementary/middle school, but there are exams for high school, which might require a long trip every day).
In my small rural town (pop. 7000), and in many other places, elementary and middle school students who are walking/biking must follow certain routes to and from school. Teachers are posted at locations along the route to check up on the students. But, they can't be everywhere. The middle school in my town has recently had problems with middle-aged men approaching female students. Students are out in the open for a much longer period of time than in the US and are thus bigger targets.
That said, I don't want to see my students given RFID tags. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it became very popular here. Elementary and middle school students already have tags with their full name and the school's name on it which must be worn at all times. Also, nearly all middle and high schools have uniforms. With all this required attire, it's hard for students to go someplace after school that they're not supposed to be, and this is part of the point. People will even sometimes complain to a school if they see its students doing something they don't approve of. There is already a lot of monitoring in place here, and I don't see this as being a big shift.
Related article -
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle
PS - It's not that important, but the CNET article is poorly written and unclear. Osaka city and Wakayama prefecture are completely seperate places, but someone who knows very little about Japan might think that Osaka city is the small "town" in Wakayama where the RFID tags are being tested. Anyone have a better article?
If this could prevent child-napping, yes I'd put one on my kids.
But it wouldn't. An RFID detector would be easy enough to buy or manufacture from parts you could get at Radioshack. If the tag is injected under the skin you'd use the detector to locate it, then cut it out.
Remember, it's not as if the kidnapper is at all concerned with the welfare of the child. Cutting out a small hunk of flesh isn't going to bother them. And a canny kidnapper would do something interesting with that hunk of flesh - like tape it to the underside of someone else's car so the police would waste time trying to locate and storm(trooper) the house of some innocent.
There is no upside to tagging kids in the crime prevention department. The only use that such a system has is to track the child itself, for the benefit of the parents (in terms of control) or the government (also in terms of control).
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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
The military.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hey, who better to do drugs than kids? What are you gonna fuck up at age 16 that you can't bounce back from - what, you going to get a F?
I can't do drugs any more - At my age I have shit to do. I can't go on a 2 day acid binge cos I have to move my car on street sweeping day. Drugs are for kids.
Paraphrased from a piece by the guy in my sig
You obviously do not have children
The battle cry of the narrow-minded parent who can't possibly understand that someone else that has children might have a different opinion on how they should be raised.
There's being involved in your child's life and there's being so oppressive they have no choice but to rebel and rebel hard. One of the worst things you can do as a parent is to make your child believe you do not trust him at all.
Let me ask you this: If you treat your child as if he's a criminal, what incentive does he have to not be a criminal? If your home is already a prison, how effective is the threat of prison going to be? And furthermore, how is this complete lack of trust preparing him for life without you?
I would suggest that if you need to track your child's every movement when they are old enough to go places by themselves then you haven't done your job as a parent. Getting children to behave properly when you are with them is trivial. Getting them to behave properly when you aren't with them is what parenting is all about.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Unicef, UN, and Amnisty International can all bite me with their anti-American spew.
That's funny, because there was nothing anti-american in my post. I simply named the 2 countries on earth who refused to ratify the declaration on the rights of children.
so, you're saying that kids of Iran, Iraq (two years ago), Afghanistan (3 years ago) Syria, and the like all have a right to privacy?
Yes, they had a right to it.
Maybe their rights were being violated...but they had rights.
Where's the UN on the Sudan? Rwanda?
When the genocides started in Rwanda in 1994, the U.N. tried to move in with a peacekeeping force, but the move was blocked by the U.S. because they didn't think the deathtoll of hundreds of thousands of africans was high enough to risk U.S. soldier casualties that might result from their participation.
Where's Unicef on female genital mutilation?
Here.
You can't take the sky from me...