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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Free Mac Mini
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.
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
Exactly. This is a case of gratuitous use of excessive technology where pen and paper are capable of doing the job precisely as accurately, almost as efficiently, and much more cheaply.
The only motivation for this is surveillance for the sake of surveillance: to spy on students in forums where the school knows it would not normally have the right to spy on them. (I am reminded of how I, as a non-USAian, have to provide the FBI with my photo and fingerprints every time I enter the US. That isn't to catch crooks or terrorists: it's surveillance for the sake of surveillance.)
Oh, and by the way, we have always been at war with Eurasia.
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.
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.
The difference, as I see it is removing the basic trust given to students by the school. As it stands, if you show up late for a class, and say you got held late in the previous one, the teacher can say trust you and not mark you as late.
It's a basic human system. Students in high school are becoming adults. As such, they need to be given some freedom, and shown that they can go outside the lines a bit as long as it isn't excessive, and still be ok. The world is not out to get them, but if they completely disregard the rules, then they will be in trouble.
This system changes that. Now anytime you step outside the lines, it can be tracked, every story checked. You, from day 1 entering the school, are treated as if you are guilty. Now we are saying to students who enter the schoool: "we know you're gonna screw up, and we want to be able to prove it when you do."
Yeah but turn this around. Let's say the student loses his name tag and some other kids find it. Those kids enter some unauthorized area and cause damage. I guarantee you the school will come looking for the student. When he/she says he lost his ID card, they'll just suspend him for not having his ID card. They might do that on top of holding him accountable for breaking stuff.
Basically, you're shifting the burden of proof onto the accused - guilty until proven innocent. Very bad move! It's no wonder kids don't understand their constitutional rights when we treat them like cattle.
Oh, and in regards to your original statement, the school won't even check the records until something happens. It won't prevent anything except make it easier for the school to point and say "You broke the rules here, here, and here." Most of the rules broken are usually asinine in the first place, and no reasonable person would follow them. In doing this, the school also violates the right of every single other student following the rules.
"What do you teach children when you have to tag them and constantly monitor all their activities?
That you don't trust them."
Thank you! I was hoping someone would say that.
Indeed, put yourself into a kid's shoes... well, actually, the grandparent poster didn't seem to have any concern for the feeling of violation a kid may feel at this. The ends, for him, seem to so justify the means, that anything ill about those means seems not to exist.
The general disregard for the rights, ideas, and opinions of kids is what pissed me off most about being one. No matter how smart you are, no one wants to listen to what you have to say until you're eighteen, or more likely twenty-one. If you're a kid with a talent, you're the monkey in somebody's sideshow, fodder for talkshows, political photo-ops, or slow news day "human interest" pieces.
Setting that diatribe aside, though, and going a bit more in depth on one of the parent poster's points:
"They never learn to be trusted, thus either will rebell even more than the kids of today or become complacent slaves to society"
They will not become slaves to a society that isn't constantly watching them. What lesson should be taken from being tagged and monitored than that one should behave while being watched? If one is never not watched, can one learn that one should follow the rules then too? When would that lesson be learned?
Society works through the often tacit agreement of the people in it to follow certain guidelines at all times, with the knowledge that, for most of that time, they won't be near anyone who can enforce those guidelines. Most of the time you can probably get away with crossing a double yellow line. Most of the time you can get away with stealing someone else's stapler. Most of the time you can sneak into someone else's yard and use the pool. We don't need to be constantly under surveilance, though, because most of us do agree to this social contract.
The term "social contract" brings up another of the parent poster's points(and one that has been brought up before): trust. Drafting a contract in business requires good faith on both sides. Good faith... trust. The social contract requires no less. The tagging of these students shows a lack of that faith.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things