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Student RFID Tracking Suspended from School
ewhac writes "As reported earlier, a Sutter County, CA, elementary school unilaterally took the dubious step of forcing students, under penalty of disciplinary action, to wear RFID badges with their name, grade, and photo. The RFID tags were read by sensors placed above classroom and bathroom doors (though the latter had been shut off). The system was ostensibly used to automate attendance-keeping. Well, InCom Corp., the company that provided the tech free of charge to the school, has abruptly pulled out, without explanation. The school superintendant claimed to be, "disappointed," at the development. However, some parents are not mollified, and vow to permanently keep such people-tracking technologies out of their schools."
Due to high demand, this company has no other option but to pull out from this school charity.
But seriously, businesses rarely do things for free, and it's unlikely any one would offer free services in exchange of bad PR.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
It's good that the corp pulled out, but who's to say that the school district won't just find someone else to do the job? Surely someone around would do it just for the publicity now that it's such a big story.
I'm gonna cut class wear my badge for me.
Easy Hack
.. but I'd be disgusted if I had a child that a school wanted to monitor in this way. Is this really the way of the future? Get the kiddly-winks used to the idea of being constantly under watch nice and early? This kind of stuff worries me greatly. Are we going to be looking back at these episodes in five years wondering how we let things get so out of hand so quickly?
the company had stated why they pulled out, and stated that it was because they disagreed with the policy of tracking students everwhere, but truth is, they probably don't. That's what this company does. They probably pulled out because of bad publicity and wanting to avoid being named a defendant in a lawsuit. Great, the students aren't being tracked. Problem is, that leaves the door open for the situation to be repeated. Without the clear determent of a court ruling against this, or an open statement against this by the school/company, I can't help but wonder if this is a hollow victory.
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If I were a parent I would not want my child walking around with a RFID tag that could give potential assailants information they could use to manipulate my child. If they actually had the child's name, grade on the tag I am sure someone would figure out how to get it.
LIVE, Love, die
I was interviewed a few days ago for my local paper with the hypothetical "what if YOUR school instituted RFID tags?" thrown at me. My reply was that in an age where reliance on technology is reaching a dangerous threshold, it'd be wiser to spend the money and resources on a new administrator or teacher instead of tagging students.
I know, at least at my school, we could stand to drop a few laptop computers in order to hire another body to patrol the halls. Sure, cameras and tags might catch everything but how practical is it when one man is responsible for catching every rule breaker?
O' course, the same article stated that my local school board wouldn't mind implementing the system for "safety and attendance." Where's the ACLU when you need them?
Part of growing up is doing things wrong, and getting away with it. If kids couldn't get in a bit of trouble, if they didn't think they could break the rules just a LITTLE, we would have a generation perfectly suited for doing EXACTLY what they are told, by anyone in power.
Thats bad - very bad. Kids have to know they can break some rules and it's ok, and that people in power are not gods. If we all learned that leaving the library 10 minutes early for break is something we can't get away with, (see, word of god) we certainly wouldn't have the balls to tell our employer to F'off when they cut our lunchbreak down to 20 minutes.
Children grow up.
I for one don't welcome our young "it's okay to track people" overlords.
These children shouldn't be tracked. They should be properly supervised.
However, some parents are not mollified, and vow to permanently keep such people-tracking technologies out of their schools
Hurrah!
"I'm disappointed; that's about all I can say at this point," Earnie Graham, the superintendent and principal of Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, said Tuesday night. "I think I let my staff down. Nobody on this campus knows every student."
How about starting by getting rid of this clown?
Getting away with things your not supposed to do, by lying, deceiving, cheating are important skills. It aids imagination and curiosity, such skills are need to advance society. We don't need more mindless droids.
It's just too bad that the "controversy" detracts attention from the actual issue.
I'm a pretty strong privacy advocate, but I simply can't understand the parents' uproar over this. Teachers take attendance, and hall monitors watch hallways between periods. RFIDs take attendance and watch hallway movements. What's the difference?
I can certainly understand the objection to posting RFID sensors outside bathrooms - that serves no legitimate purpose - we don't care if little Johnny stayed on the can for 45 minutes 'cause he's constipated. And it just... seems... sketchy. So the school removed those. Problem solved.
I can also understand that there's an abuse potential, e.g., people getting hold of some kind of tracker and tracking your kid when he's out of school. So Johnny picks up his ID before he gets on the school bus, and he leaves it at the door when he gets home. For the most part, problem solved.
And, I can understand that it's hardly foolproof: Johnny can just carry Mark's ID around all day as evidence of attendance while Mark skips school. No system is perfect, especially not on the first iteration. People have to try them in the field in order to work out the kinks.
In summary - sure, there are concerns. They can be circumvented or simply ignored. In the absence of a solid complaint, I have to chalk this up to parents protesting primarily for attention-whore purposes... people will rah-rah for any cause if they think they'll get on TV because of it. :shakes head:
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
As a student in a public school in America:
I SHOULD HAVE JUST AS MUCH PRIVACY AS YOU. Why?
Because Im just as much or more of a citizen than you, and does any government, be it state, local, or fedral, need to know where I am every second of the day if they are doing their job and nothing more?
Please think a tiny bit before you speak/type, or is this too much to ask for?
I think this is a Good Thing. Not because kids don't need to be accountable for their whereabouts -- hell, they need more accountability -- but because if something like a tracking device is accepted at a young age, it will become more accepted as they grow into adults.
Next thing you know, they'll be putting GPS on our cars.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
It is about INSTILLING the idea that tracking people is ok in young minds. People will grow up thinking hey government, put a GPS receiver on my back, I have nothing to hide! Due to this our future governments will have absolute power over the people because as children they were taught it was ok.
Earnie Graham, the superintendent and principal of Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, said Tuesday night. "I think I let my staff down. Nobody on this campus knows every student."
Now we have identified the REAL problem, that they should be looking to a solution for. Or, of course, we could always try and get technology to think for us.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
but Americans need to make up their fucking minds. They don't want to spend gobs of time teaching and socializing their kids, but by God they'll be damned if someone else is gonna do it 'fer dem. What we're left with is millions of kids with no real direction in life. Their parents are too busy (often just getting by) to do much of anything, but the schools are pretty limited in what they can do. Take Japanese schools, where the school takes an active role in socializing children, for instance. If American parents don't want the school's raising their kids that fine, but they need to start doing it themselves, or just stop having them then.
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I don't claim to know why the company withdrew, but here's a though:
:-) is guaranteed that all resident students are required to be enrolled in a meal plan. Students aren't happy, but the administration is pleased about the reduced cost to them.
Companies would be more willing to do things free of charge/at a reduced fee if they know that participation is guaranteed. On my campus, our food provider (who also feeds a local hospital
The school in the article would have a tough time guaranteeing that all students could be forced to participate in a tracking system as controversial as it is. And without global participation, the school's potential as a case study is greatly diminished, leaving hardly any financial return on what can only be a substantial investment.
Nice straw-man argument, but tracking technology doesn't solve this problem at all. This is a social problem, not easily solved by technology (not without violating our rights/freedom anyway).
As the article points out, this is mostly for attendance purposes. It doesn't notify the principal if you're getting beat up in the library. But guess what it does do! It makes children feel like criminals. Then, when they behave like criminals, we will all act very shocked. "I can't understand why children these days act like this!" we'll say. Well, we're the ones who are training them to act like that. The superintendent has already made it abundantly clear (implicitly) that he has ZERO trust in these kids. He thinks they should be tagged like animals and locked in classrooms like prisoners in a cell. If he had his druthers I'm sure he'd have the RFID chips implanted under their skin so they couldn't lose them.
So please, explain to me again how this helps children stay free of violence. Bear in mind that this was not optional. Nor was it even properly explained to the children or their parents.
Electric Monkey Pants
Let's see, go to the bathroom or other place where your presence won't be noticed, wrap the badge in aluminum foil, leave the campus to do what you wish. Return, go to the bathroom, remove the foil and resume your day.
Do the same but attend class.
Steal someone's badge, hid it in the bathroom, later on put it in the owners back pack.
And so on...
When confronted "know nothing". The system must be unreliable so the administrtation and parents can't trust it.
Nate
"Technology scares some people it's a fear of the unknown," parent Mary Brower told the newspaper before the meeting. "Any kind of new technology has the potential for misuse, but I feel confident the school is not going to misuse it."
There is no unknown here -- we know exactly what's going on. Get the kids used to being "tagged" -- so that everyone with access knows exactly where they are at all times. Once everyone is used to this kind of Big Brother handling, its easy enough to extend it into "the real world".
2 movies in recent memory depicted this "track every step" mentality as the normal operation of society are:
Minority Report -- in that movie, it has eyeball scanners at every corner, recording who is going where and when. The eyeball scanners were a little overkill -- all they needed were RFID tags.
and
Imposter -- in that movie, the RFID (which was much too large compared with what is available today) was implanted in everyone's back. Tracking stations were everywhere.
If you get into trouble, or if someone wants to know where you are, all they have to do is look you up.
If we don't put into place some very strong laws against this kind of Big Brother attitude, we'll forever be fighting people who try and try again to implement this kind of technology.
I'm sorry, but if people think "it won't happen in this country!", they are wrong. All the government has to do is allow something bad to happen, and in the name of "security", implement these tags. As the opening credits rolled in Imposter, you hear Gary Sinise talking about the beginning of a war with some Alien civilization that was apparently trying to take over the Earth (I'm paraphrasing here):
"Democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Civil Liberties... all gone in the blink of an eye after the first attack."
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Actually, the courts have repetitively not seen it that way. The constitutionality has been tested on this issue, actually. Why?
You can't be trusted.
Wait! Hear me out!
Educators, along with parents and administrators are responsible for your well-being. You are not. You're still growing up; learning what it means to be human. Presumably, you don't have it all figured out, and may not be competent to do so. To help you along, there are limits on what you can do, as well as restrictions on your freedom to ensure that you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing. Of course, basic human rights as defined in the constitution are still given to you.
When you grow up, you will be held fully accountable for your own actions, and the alienable rights previously protected by your parents on your behalf will be bestowed upon you.
School administrators are legally allowed to search your person, your locker, and any bags you may be carrying in order to ensure that you and your fellow students are safe. Further, they are allowed, forcably or otherwise, to confine you to particular locations (i.e. classrooms) while school is in session to ensure that you are being productive. They can hunt you down and bring you back to school, too. It is for this previous reason that they need to know where you are. Don't build a straw-man argument of it - not for ever second of every day - only while school is in session. It's their job.
Now as far as being just as much of a citizen...I don't know. Most citizens in good standing with society contribute to it or have done so in the past. Minors are generally not a part of that because they aren't ready or competent to do so.
Maybe you think that you are. There has to be some cutoff point, doesn't there? The Bill of Rights supposedly applies to all full citizens in good standing. If there isn't a cutoff point, then a four year old is a full citizen, and therefore entitled to the right to bear arms. That, to me, is a problem. I'm not even sure how many 18 year olds I'd trust with a gun, and I was one not too long ago.
I submit to you that a minor is less of a citizen in the legal, operation sense of the word. You may mean it some other way, but since we're talking about laws of citizenry, this is the definition that applies here.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Exactly, that's what people seem to be missing. The whole privacy/tracking thing is a concern, of course. But what benefit is gained from this? It automates attendance keeping. In other words, the school is lazy and this feeds their laziness. And it does a poorer job. You could have one kid carry around the RFIDs for a bunch of people who aren't there and they'll be logged as present. You can't do that if a teacher actually takes attendance.
So there's no real benefit to the student or parents, and it does do harm in teaching that it's ok to put tracking devices on people plus the danger of children being tracked for nefarious reasons. I don't understand how anyone could think these would be a good thing.
That's exactly right! If we allow them to monitor the kids too closely, who will grow up to be president???
How long before someone lost their tag and then got reported for skipping a class?
How long before someone realised that by giving everyone's tag to one person, that everyone except that person could skip class?
There are probably other reasons as well, but those two struck me as the most obvious
This sig is intentionally blank
Worse yet, in an elementary school it should be pretty obvious when a student isn't there, since the student only has one teacher. The teacher takes attendance once and if a student disappears, reports it to the school administration. Anything else is a violation of privacy.
No one but the school and the student's guardians should have any knowledge of the student during the school day. Some students are involved as unwitting participants in custody battles, some are on special medications, some have medical problems that require special care. All of this should be confidential.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As a parent I understand being upset reading the AP report that says my kid gets the same tech as my beef. The point everyone misses is this technology is already here and widely deployed in business and government. Ever wave your ID badge to get through the door? As the price keeps coming down on RFID/contactless smart cards it will trickle into schools. That can actually be a good thing if we get off /. and actually help schools write good policies on how this stuff should be deployed.
I remember back when I thought I'd never in my life has to pass through metal detector. Or be forced to stand there while someone rummages through my luggage. I even remember when I thought it was ridiculous that one could be forced to put on a seat belt. Silly me.
If the parents don't like what the principal did they can elect a new school board. Or does that interfere with your tirade about the evils of socialism?
What?
First, it's not "the government" - it's a school. A better logical extension is tracking by your future employer. And that's already close to reality, given the "always-available" nature of the professional world (cellphones, pagers, Blackberries.) If you want to fight that battle, you'll need a tricked-out Delorean set to 1985.
Second, the tracking is strictly limited to while the kids are on school grounds. They're free to chuck the ID cards when they leave campus. This isn't pervasive, nefarious surveillance - which, I agree, is offensive - and I doubt the kids will get inured to permanent surveillance by this limited function.
Third, your response has a knee-jerk "oh-no-Orwellian-future!" quality to it that diminishes the privacy movement. If you do this chicken-little routine every time someone suggests tracking anything, then people are going to write off privacy advocates as idealistic hippies. Many kinds of tracking are bad. A few kinds of tracking are actually useful to you. You'll do better if you accept this now and pick your battles.
Finally - I can't believe someone modded my initial response -1 overrated. It had been rated a 2. (rolls eyes) I guess that's what happens when anyone challenges the Slashdot majority vote...
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
In the school system that I am employed in, elementary school children have one teacher for all basic subjects. If they are struggling with a subject to the point of needing intervention they have another teacher for that, who teaches all Learning Disabled primary subjects, so that if they struggle with math, reading, and English they go to the same person for all three subjects or any combination therein. Some precocious children will attend a gifted program once per week for the entire day. LD and the gifted program are by definition mutually exclusive. The student has two teachers, tops, for regular classes where they make an unsupervised trek across campus at regular intervals. Students also have music, PE, and in upper "intermediate" elementary grades band or strings, but transitions between these frequently happen at regular intervals when some form of supervision is present in the halls. If a student doesn't show up to LD or band/strings, the teacher calls the regular classroom to find out if something's amiss, usually to find that the student is absent for the day.
The only advantage to this RFID system that I can see is that the initial attendance is taken by computer rather than by hand. The alternate classroom teachers still have to find out why a student isn't present if that student isn't there, the first teacher in the morning still has to figure out who is absent and who isn't, and the school still has to patrol the halls to ensure that nothing mischevious or malevolent is occurring.
Most teachers develop a seating arrangement to tell at a glance who isn't there. They don't have to spend ten minutes per day taking attendance, they glance while the kids are getting situated, mark a scantron bubblesheet appropriately, and leave it in the bin for the campus runner to collect. The only time that lenthy attendance is required is if the teacher doesn't have a seating arrangement, or if there is a substitute teacher, in which case the system is likely broken anyway.
The only place that I'd think that RFID interrogators would make sense is at entrances to the building, if the school is set up for that, as it'd let administration know if a student left early or entered late, assuming the badge was being worn and not encased in aluminium foil. Most schools here are not set up where that could be done though, so that wouldn't have much chance of being successful here.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
can certainly understand the objection to posting RFID sensors outside bathrooms - that serves no legitimate purpose - we don't care if little Johnny stayed on the can for 45 minutes 'cause he's constipated. And it just... seems... sketchy. So the school removed those. Problem solved.
Um, they didn't remove them, just turned them off. Would they have been turned back in in a week or two? Or next semester?
I can also understand that there's an abuse potential...
And, I can understand that it's hardly foolproof...
In summary - sure, there are concerns.
Exactly. It don't work, and it endangers kids. (Not to mention the main point another poster brought up- the fact that it 'trains' kids to accept tracking, for what future end?) What do you think we should do about these concerns??
They can be circumvented or simply ignored
Sure, lets ignore the concerns. Everything will turn out all right. The State is our Friend. We've always been at war with Eurasia....
I don't have much trust in the public school system as it is, and I admit that I am biased against them, but this would have been more than enough for me to remove my kids from the school and to seek alternatives.
Now, however, I do know what the principal would say, and what my wife would say: "This is good because no one could take our kids without us knowing who did it and when. Also, this could prevent another Columbine."
I think that both of those reasons are bunk, and I refuse to give creedence to them, but I do know that many parents believe them. It's a sad sad world we're living in.
Many times I'm inclined to believe that if I instill in my children a love of freedom, liberty, and a hackish spirit, they will either rule the Earth, or be burned at the stake as heretics.
Mark my words. In two years, this will be back, and people will be less resistant. Five years after that, it will become a nationally mandatory perogative.
Personal security erodes over time. Always. Period.
Get used to it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The college I was at five years ago used RFID-based ID cards. They weren't used for attendance because I was attending an evening class where attendance was optional anyway, but they did track entering and leaving the college grounds as well as entry into "sensitive" areas like the computer labs and presumably other places where there was expensive equipment. My sister did a course at the same college a couple of years back and told me that they'd extended the scheme to cover most sections of the college more granularly.
I didn't really care at the time. They knew the class was on and I was likely to be there anyway, so I don't mind them having it on record that I was (or, indeed, wasn't). Using it to track attendance is just silly, for the reasons you describe in your post; I don't really see the privacy problem in the school itself.
This only really becomes an issue if shops that are aimed at school-age kids start reading RFIDs on entry and thus have a unique identifier for each student because they are forced to carry their RFID tags around with them at all times. A similar concern exists with the new RFID-based train cards in London, England: shops around stations could track repeat customers who have the cards. I think the exploitation of this is some way off, though.
Wish I had mod points. I'm really getting sick and tired of this, mjedia fed, perception that all paedophiles are predatory loners hanging around in parks and children's play areas when they're not surfing the net downloading child porn or grooming kids in chatrooms. Most of them are parents or people who work with children. Probably the biggest child abuse case in recent years in the UK was Ian Huntley, a school caretaker (Janitor) at the school the children he killed attended, who lived with his girlfriend (I think she also worked at the school) and was well known for being really good with children to the extent that parents had no qualms about their children visiting him in his home. As I recall there was no mention of him even owning a PC let alone downloading child porn or frequenting chat rooms.
MOD PARENT UP
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Meanwhile, the government, represented by the school principal, still wants to act against the will of the public which is funding it.
The deciding government official here is the Superintendent of the School System, not a lone Principal. A Superintendent is accountable to te public as an elected official. If he defies the Will of the People, he will know it at election time.
because of vested interests (read: public school teacher unions), the parents are going to continue paying for this system they oppose.
I assume you have no clue how this all works together? The teachers' union (the NEA) has nothing to do with the decision making process here. This is the result of a decision made by an elected official. How the hell does the NEA benefit from this? Where is the "vested interest" you claimed? I don't see it.
Socialism has nothing to do with THIS problem.
-Tom
Oh, I don't know. They could always supervise the kids by, oh, damn, let me think. They could use their eyes, and a bit of sense as to what's going on in the school! There we go!
And you know, I have a neighbor who's a teacher, and talk to him quite a bit. He's told me that parents are extremely important in any child's education, and that he is always grateful for parents who are involved, even if sometimes that means they disagree with him. So maybe you just know a different type of teacher.
"You should hire more teachers! But don't you dare raise my property taxes."
Certainly, you did not put that in quotation marks as to say that you were quoting, or even paraphrasing me, I didn't even bring up that subject. I'm sure that was just an honest mistake, since I imagine you're well aware that it's wrong to stuff words in someone's mouth. However, since you bring the subject up, in Colorado, voter approval is required to raise taxes, and I voted in favor of a tax increase at the last election to build two new elementary schools and add on to two high schools. Now, I'm not entirely sure, but I do imagine they plan to hire teachers to staff these schools, too. (The increase passed by a 65-35 margin.) So apparently, these "morons" who won't pay for more teachers are, at least, in the minority.
When I went to school, I don't recall a single instance, after the first few weeks of a new year, that the principal could not refer to each and every student by name. This was at a school of 1600-some students. We need more PEOPLE of that caliber, and less intrusive technology doing a poor attempt at doing their job for them.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.