Slashdot Mirror
Students and Bodies Tracked Via RFID Tags
AT writes "The Brittan School District in Sutter County, California, is requiring students to carry RFID-tagged identity badges on them at all times. Readers are currently installed at the doors to all classrooms. Readers were removed from bathrooms when parents protested. The school district is meeting next week to consider parents objections to the system." Relatedly (but not), Leilah writes "The University of California is considering using RFID tags or bar codes to help track their collection of bodies and parts. They are attempting to reopen their body donation program which has been on hold since spring 2004 due to disappearing parts - they've previously had legal trouble over improper disposal as well."
Readers were removed from bathrooms when parents protested
They must have forgotten about those RFIDed toilet paper. Someone I know received a $94 invoice for "Excessive use of toilet paper" from her son's school.
Seriously though, tracking body parts is fine since they're donated "inventory", but tracking a human is a different matter entirely.
And I'm not going to make a joke about the ease of transition from that school to the university.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
So when the next columbine happens, it will be easier to recognize the bodies
now the school will know when kids leave campus and go to Steve Wynn's casino on the Las Vegas strip.
or the morgue.
Total Law Enforcement rules. And the trains run on time, too!
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It reminds me of one class I had in High School. You signed in at the door, and the teacher never checked.
It was the last period of the day, and an extremely easy class. So despite there being the full list of students, the classroom was basically empty.
So, how long do you think it will be until students just give their badges to their friends?
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
How is using an RFID system which is more accurate, efficient, and convenient any different from tracking students on paper?
Most schools I've seen use paper attendance sheets; keep a paper copy of your schedule (ie. where you SHOULD be during that time period) and require a written record if you leave a class for any reason and also your destination--bathroom included.
I fail to see the difference here, let alone how it's somehow an invasion of privacy.
I don't envy this kind of freedom....
Well the upside to all this is that if a major school shooting takes place, the university will be all set up for the bodies.
(ducks)
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Sounds like fun to carry.
which then is translated into the student's name by software contained in a handheld device used by teachers to check attendance.
I can see it now: "Hey, Mikey - take my badge and scan it for English class, or I'm gonna beat you up with it!"
Bueller... Bueller... Bueller...
Get together several times a day to trade id badges... and leave the staff wondering why the girls are going to the boy's restroom, etc.! They can require you to carry an ID, but can they enforce a requirement to carry YOUR OWN ID?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So what? I mean schools require students to reply to a roll call... making them swipe a badge is the same thing.
When RFID spoofers are outlawed, only outlaws will have RFID spoofers.
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
I'm not a fan of radical RFID use. I'm skeptical of many uses, such as sticking them in bank cards so that when you step through the doors of your local branch, they know whether they can ignore you or if you're a significant enough customer that they should meet you at the door and give you tip-top attention.
This just doesn't seem like a big deal. Rather than wasting class time doing roll-call, they automate it so that as soon as you walk into the class, you're counted as present. This will help parents and school officials know that students are not missing and are where they should be. Maybe they'll even implement full blown java cards to ensure that only the AV-club students can access the AV room, only faculty can access the faculty lounge and so on. Even better would be requiring the use of a java card to gain access to the school at all. Swipe the card to get in the front door. No more lunatics wandering the halls.
Oh, and most adults have to use these cards in the real world, too. The only difference is that we have to swipe our cards and that swipe usually ends up in a database, logging the time, door and building we entered. The only difference here is that the RFID readers in the door eliminate the need to swipe the card.
I also don't see the big deal with tagging body parts like this. It enforced accountability and I'm pretty sure dead people or someone who no longer has that arm attached to them doesn't much care what happens to it - tagged or not.
Also, any remotely intelligent kid will just wrap the card with a couple layers of tin foil, stick it in their lunch box, etc.
Like I said, I'm a really skeptical person when it comes to RFIDs. I hate the idea of tagging, tracking and cataloging EVERYTHING under the sun. But these two cited implementations seem entirely reasonable.
Yeah, I'm totally for having to government replace parents and personal responsibility in general, too. I just don't know where I'd be today if I hadn't had Big Brother watching every move I made while I was in school.
It's amazing how quickly we've transformed from a country which at least claimed to value freedom, civil liberties and self-determination into one which pleads for the government to come in and run our lives, isn't it?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
...when you can't remember where you left a cadaver?
I am getting the impression from reading rants on Slashdot that people think if you have an RFID badge that someone could be sitting at some screen watching a little dot represent a person as they move across a building. Watching the little dot move step-by-step down the building.
Yes, this is an invasion of privacy but this is not what RFID does. RFID is an inventory control method. Almost always, an [unpowered] RFID badge must be swiped within a foot a reader - and even then you sometimes have to swipe it once or twice to get a reading. RFID cannot and does not provide a method of tracking exact locations.
Parents that either don't care about their child's education, or ones that think their child is immune to the rules or does no wrong are the real problem with the school system.
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Hey, as long as we're shifting the blame from teachers to parents, why don't we go ahead and shift it to where it belongs, the students. EVERYBODY'S parent suck. Some worse than others. That is no excuse to go blaming your parents or anybody else for your own actions. Everybody, deep down, knows what is right. Even my three year olds do, because when they are doing bad things, they stop as soon as I come in the room.
If people don't do what is right, then they are to blame, not their parents, not their teachers, not society. If we are to get anywhere as a species, everyone has to be held accountable and responsible for themselves.
Yes, I realize this could be devastating to the law profession, which feeds mainly upon people holding other people responsible for their own foolish actions or lack of common sense.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
> Somebody please clue me in here. What sort of a
> sick excuse for a human being would steal parts of
> a cadaver???
No kidding. Normal people would take the whole damn thing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
is what the school gets in return. This article points out that the school got some computer equipment donated to them. However, according to the version of this story at MSNBC:
"InCom has paid the school several thousand dollars for agreeing to the experiment, and has promised a royalty from each sale if the system takes off, said the company's co-founder, Michael Dobson, who works as a technology specialist in the town's high school. Brittan's technology aide also works part-time for InCom."
Seems more like this is less of a "it's for the safety of the kids" and more of a "let's make money by tagging our kids like cattle."
"1. Students have rights, even in school."
But they are not the same rights adults are accustomed to. Here's blurb with some of the key cases listed:
"All people in the United States are guaranteed this right by the Constitution. Students, however, do not have this right to the same extent as adults. This is because public schools are required to protect all students at the school. The major aspects of this right are speech and dress. Both the right to speech and dress are not absolute in public high schools. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: "You (students) have a right to express your opinions as long as you do so in a way that doesn't 'materially and substantially' dirsupt classes or other school activities. If you hold a protest on the school steps and block the entrance to the building, school officials can stop you. They can probably also stop you from using language they think is 'vulgar or indecent'("Ask Sybil Libert" ACLU 1998). Public schools can also restrict student dress. In 1987 in Harper v. Edgewood Board of Education the court upheld "a dress regulation that required students to 'dress in conformity wit hthe accepted standards of the community'"(Whalen 72). This means that schools can restrict clothing with vulgarities and such, but they cannot restrict religious clothing: "School officials must accomodate student's religious beliefs by permitting the wearing of religious clothing when such clothing must be worn during the school day as a part of the student's religious practice"(Whalen 78)."
Here's some other stuff:
"Veronia v. Acton 1995
In Veronia v. Acton the issue concerned the drug testing of athletes at an Oregon Public High School. In 1995, drug abuse was a major problem in Veronia, Oregon, and the school district reacted by implementing a policy of drug testing all student athletes. When a member of the Acton family had signed up for athletics in the school district, the parents did not sign the testing agreement. They believed this policy violated their son's privacy. The United States Supreme Court felt that this policy of drug testing was constitutional and that by voluntarily becoming an athlete the person gave up some privacy (Harrison and Gilbert 175). These cases helped all those involved with public high schools know exactly the rights of public school students."
I agree with 2 and 3, though.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Frankly, I don't really see any problem with the tracking of the kids, per se. It doesn't tell you what they're doing in the bathroom... it just lets you know that they are in the bathroom... which I don't regard as an invasion of privacy, really. All in all, it's good to keep close track of those meddling kids.
However....
The thing about this that really freaks me out is that it might give us a group of future voters who view this level of tracking as "the way things are". I'm someone who considers the Patriot act to be a dangerous step in the direction of Nazi Germany. However, I think that a group of kids just graduating from a school where they wore, essentially, tracking beacons for four year will think that the Patriot Act is downright lax.
The largest problem facing public schools in America is not parents opposing the system. I'll give you a hint what is: Poor distribution of funding. This trend has been apparent for a long time but no child left behind did NOT help. While we are at it, since I don't agree with your decisions, that makes you the scum of the Earth as well. Just like the 19 year old girl you so despise. Why don't we remove you/your parents/loved ones from the face of the Earth? People make mistakes. Deal with it, you don't have to help them, but you have no right to force abortions on someone.
"Im such a nonconformist I'm going to not conform to the rest of you!"
"Dude I think we just got goth-served"
When I was in HS (which was only 6 years ago), there was no "tracking system" of any kind. Sure, some teachers took attendance. But most did not. And there was definitely no school-wide system.
Seriously, how hard is it for a dumbfuck teacher to notice when a kid is missing 2-3 days a week? It is not like we're talking university-style auditoriums of hundreds of students.. a typical HS class side is only 30-45 kids.
Is there really a *need* to automate this? Seems like a waste of money more than anything else. If I was a parent this would be my protest angle - get the teachers in line.
If the parents are upset over this they should just microwave their child's identity card everytime they get one. The child can continue wearing the card but it won't do anything.
Parents are no longer on the side of teachers and the administration. It is a battle with the parents believing that their child can do no wrong and everyone is out to get that child.
That is because school administrators and teachers are losing their fucking minds.
Today you have kids getting suspended for having nail clippers. A kindergarten kid was punished for wearing a halloween costume that consisted of a fireman with a plastic axe. 3 kids were punished for possessing pornography because they had a drawing of a stick figure with breasts and a penis.
When I was a kid, if I was in the wrong my mother woudl have my ass in a blender. If I wasn't wrong, my mother would raise hell at the school.
If the school admins weren't such asshats, the parents wouldn't need to be so adversarial.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Did you notice that this system was put in without parental input? Or that the systems was actually a test for the company that makes it (payed for with a donation of equipment).
Also the badges contain name and age (grade) of the kids. If the kids forget to remove them after they leave the grounds then this is a threat to their safety.
So: No parental input.
A corperation testing a system on unconsenting individuals*
A potential threat to the children's safty
This does not seem like its the parents not working with the system, more like the system is not working with the parents.
Can you give me a reason this level of tracking is needed?
Can you give me a justification for the schools approach to the matter?
*Since they are children gaurdian's consent should be needed.
This will certainly make it easier to find the zombies.
1) Put RFID chips in body parts
2) Wait for zombies to eat them
3) ???
4) Profit!
Actually, since public school districts receive federal funds, there _ARE_ rights to privacy, free speech, and such as guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights - it's the same clause that applies to the colleges that accept federal funds.
However, ignorant parents and students often sign these rights away when they receive student handbooks and "behavior contracts" at the beginning of the year. The behavior contract includes clauses about "disruptive behavior" and "classroom disruptions," though no one really defines what those are. Students are usually barred from participating in extracurricular activities until said contracts are signed and returned to the school's office. If the student ever gets in trouble, the contract is brought out to remind the student what a good little sheep they agreed to be.
The legality of the contract is binding, as the school requires both the parent(s) and the student to sign it, thus circumventing any age-releases if the student's a minor.
Most schools are even starting to do this at the primary level.
I'll wholeheartedly agree with your comment about parents not being strict enough. I taught after-school computer classes for the kids at the primary school where I work for a year, and one day, the four-year-old son of a fourth-grade teacher walked out of my class with the biggest grin on his face. He turned around and said, with thirty kids in the class, his mother standing RIGHT behind him, and me showing a kid how to use Firefox...
"I swear to God I'll kill you all next time!"
He walks off, and no apology was forthwith from either him or his mother, and NO disciple was had in front of me or later when I brought it up with his mother (he was removed from my class permanently for that; I don't take crap from kids, ESPECIALLY not when I'm teaching others).
And don't think that all private institutions are good. Several charter schools down here have been horrible, not just in financial terms, but in terms of the discipline; one I attended (West Houston Charter School) regularly had violence in it (kids making homemade flamethrowers and using them on other kids and computers, beatings, and of course the ever-popular swirlie), thefts, and teachers not giving a damn about the kids.
Disclaimer: I am a network administrator at a public elementary school in Texas. I have firsthand knowledge of this, as I work for the district I went to school in.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
OK, I'll tell you what. I'll pull my 98 Explorer with 90,000 miles on it up to the nearest emissions testing station, in any condition you choose (hot, cold, whatever). You pull up in your non-catalytic equipped, reasonably similarly engined vehicle. We'll put $500 apiece down, least emissions takes all. Are you willing to take that bet? 'Cause I'm willing to take your money.
And the worms ate into his brain.
My girl has a university class that has over 400 students. To sign in to class everyone had to buy a 18 dollar little remote sign in thingy. Like a remote control. Yes after a little while some students would have their friends "beam" them in for attendance. In one class a bunch of students got caught cause one guy had like 10 remotes for all of his friends that ditched. Although I don't know how he got caught cause you can basically beam in from the back of the auditorium. Haha
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If you're a single mother, you made a mistake. I don't support your decision and I think the world would be a better place if abortions were forced upon you. Just the other night I saw on the news a 19 year old girl who had 3 children and was being brought up on child neglect charges. It is simply sickening. Society, as a whole, needs to tell these swine that if you have that many children and that young of an age, you are the scum of the Earth and the planet would be better off without you. I am sick and tired of supporting someone else's mistake. And of course, those 3 children will grow up to either steal my car, have children they can't support just like their mother, or both.
My mother was single.
I don't steal cars and, as yet, I've not had children that I can't support. I'm three units away from a university degree, I work part time as a software engineer and I do a lot of contract work on the side.
And in my opinion, the education system will never teach anybody who doesn't want to learn: whether they have good familes or bad families, it all comes down to the individual.
Honestly, you bitch and bitch like you know what you're talking about.
You don't, it shows: families aren't perfect. You're obviously not in such a situation, so for fuck's sake stop moaning like you're somehow better than these women. You're not. It's not up to you to judge moral values.
People make mistakes. Life goes on.
Why not just tag us at birth.. add sensors everywhere.. stores. schools. homes. cars.
"Its for the children"
My kid would be home schooled if our system here tried this garbage.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This isn't big brother. This is a school tracking students, something schools have always done. Hall monitors keep an eye on where kids go. Teachers track when a student is in or out of class. As I read it the RFID's are just to make the teacher's job easier, not to add something new to what is already being known.
What privacy is there in school? How many dark corners are there that students should be allowed into with no one knowing? Schools try to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen. So how do the RFID id's violate privacy any more than a teacher at the hall corners with a notebook watching when and where students go?
The better question is how will the school keep one student from carrying around another students' id.
I love my sig.
I also had a single mom, and while it could be argued that the software company I work for now isn't "good," it's an excellent job. I don't steal cars either, and again - no kids that I can't support.
This is being used to automatically take attendance. That's it.
Nobody's "rights" are being violated, nobody is forced to take any drugs... Yes, you look like a bit of a dork wearing one, and I am not sure that there has been a rash of elementary kids that have been trying to infiltrate the school.
I am pretty sure that this is not serving any purpose other than enriching the school. How hard *is* attendance anyways? But surely, this is no big deal.
I agree with you 100%. I had a handful of extremely talented and down-to-earth teachers during my 4 years of high school. Many of them took time aside to help me out with projects unrelated to their classes. One helped me start a business and another helped me with legal advice when I got arrested. One teacher even took the time to show a video tape of the Feb 15 Iraq War protests on Democracy Now to our class. This teacher had no reason to do so except that he felt it was right we see what was truly happening in our country. After seeing the video which featured American protesters and interviews with everyday people living in Iraq, it completely changed my perspective on the war.
I realize I'm going off-topic, but the fact is that many people rant about the poor quality of teachers. I'm not saying every teacher I had was great - with the handful of outstanding teachers, I also got a few really bad ones too - but thats life. But getting back to the point, the teachers I mentioned were frequently in trouble with the administration. Never in my life have I seen such a power-hungry group of people so detached from their constituents and reality. They're policy was "we're always right and the students must obey." When they fucked up, no reparations or even an apology were ever considered. When I look back at high school, I do not have one good thing to say about the way my school was run.
In 4 years of highschool I witnessed a number of confrontations involving parents who would basically call a teacher a liar to their face over the behavior of the student. Nine times of ten the student WAS in fact being a complete asshat, disrupting class, starting fights or otherwise breaking rules.
I don't disagree that in some cases administrators take things too far, but there are PLENTY of parents who simply can't fathom their child misbehaving and become very angry when it's suggested he or she is.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Parents that either don't care about their child's education, or ones that think their child is immune to the rules or does no wrong are the real problem with the school system.
silly me... and I thought it was lack of funding... but, hey, what do I know?
seriously, though... why does everyone want to blame someone... most of the time, problems are far too complex to blame a single person, group of people, or any single cause for that matter.
It really just kind of makes me sad.
*yawn*
We need to be able to provide a little *feedback* into the devices to help the *education* of the students. I can see it now...
"Please stay inside the yellow line. Do not cross the yellow lines. Do not cross the Red lines."
Ohw, Ohw... No we should have electronic colloars that are paired to another unknown student. If one of them trys to play hookie, ka-boomie.
Serriously, to make sure the students carry them just put a Nike mark on it and charge $125+ for them. Now its a must have fassion accessory.
I think the reason people are weirded out by this, but not by paper attendance lists and other traditional methods of getting kids to go to class, is that technology has a tendency to be regarded as absolute and infallible, and its records are used instead of human judgment. This creates the "well, the computer says so. the computer's never wrong" situation which popped up in old jokes about banks etc.
You can argue with the principal that you forgot to sign the attendence sheet but what if they rely on the sensors and you later find out your tag wasn't working, or was sitting inside your metal pencil case or something. Odds are they won't listen, because there'll be a "zero-tolerance policy" in effect which forces them to punish you. I had a rough time in high school but at least the admin didn't treat us like incarcerated criminals.
And yes, this sort of thing WILL create a generation of people who think technological intrusion is "normal". Maybe not desirable, but normal, the way we all hate to pay taxes but don't demand they be rescinded. And thus the ratchet tightens.
Freedom: "I won't!"
3) Student walks into class. As they enter, scanner in entrance reads RFID tag and 3 others they're holding for absent friends. Computer in office down the hall has completely innacurate attendance list. Parents do not get called.
4) Student walks into class. RFID tag fails. Computer in office down the hall updates the attendance list. Parents are notified that their child is not in school even though they are.
5) Students start swapping RFID tags. Attendence list becomes a complete work of fiction.
You're implicitly assuming that "rights" means "legal rights in the US of A".
But "legal" and "right" are different. Slavery still was wrong, and so slaves had a right to be free and to fight for freedom, even when the US Consitution explicitly permitted slavery. Likewise Jews in Nazi Germany had a right to live, no matter what the Nazi legal system said.
Whether or not students have a right to privacy at a public school is a moral question, no matter what the US Supreme Court says. So parents claiming their students have a right to privacy aren't "mistaken about their kids rights" - they are disagreeing with the school about their kids rights.
Sean
"Where are your papers" is a phrase an American adult should ever endure while minding their own business in the USA. And it is no one's business where an American adult goes, except maybe his wife's.
Minors in a school are a different thing altogether; and I don't buy the slippery slope arguments on that point. Kids do leave the schools without authorization. And no, that is never a good or welcome thing. This way school admin has another tool to know where they are, or are not, during school hours.
Some people have different thoughts on this matter. The most reasonable approach might be to assign these cards only parent request.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty." - Ben Franklin
I would have my kid's ID in the microwave the same day. Or maybe I could rewrite it.
The school would be mighty confused by an 8 pack of Gillette Mach 3 blades showing up for 5th period Algebra.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
Why should a bunch of armed hooligans with guns fare any better than some ragtag bunch of illiterate, underequipped Asian peasants? Because such people could never hope for any sort of victory against the U.S. Armed Forces.
English is easier said than done.
Put yourself in a kids shoes. Just because you are an adult NOW, it's easy to say they should be monitored constantly 24 hours a day.
What do you teach children when you have to tag them and constantly monitor all their activities?
That you don't trust them. They never learn to be trusted, thus either will rebell even more than the kids of today or become complacent slaves to society (neither is healthy for anybody).
When many of these kids grow up, they'll be so used to being monitored and bitched around, when society requires this for adults too, they will not have a concept of freedom that we do. It's the American way of life to be monitored and put under constant surveillance then. Corporations monitoring for maximizing profits will seem natural, because that will make more money, and you don't really have any other options. The concept has been eradicated.
Kids become adults you know. And they become what we teach = our own example mixed with our treatment of them.
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