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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.
Hey, a similar scheme seemed to work well at Hogwart's.
Mischief managed.
J
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
They're children. Surely you want to track them. It's like the big complaints people have about having cameras in schools and people monitoring them. I tell ya, when I went to school we could have done with some of those cameras. Would have put a quick stop to all the anti-social lord-of-the-flies-esq behaviour that characterizes the school years of most kids.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm gonna cut class wear my badge for me.
Easy Hack
They probably figured out that kids are smarter than they are when it comes to technology. I'm sure if I was in a school that used RFID (and 10 years younger) I would be able to do some mischief using that system by cloning other peoples RFIDs, making it seem they were in multiple places at once, or letting people skip school and have dupe RFIDs stay in the library etc. For the majority of students I'm sure things would work as expected, but some of those "troubled teens" or "geeks" would have a wickedly fun time with it.
.. 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?
...Incom Corp. has announced that it is getting out of the RFID market entirely and will instead start producing starfighters.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
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.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
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?
When they try to pull this next time, remember this handy formula:
RFID badge + 3 seconds in a microwave = piece of dead plastic.
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.
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?
So here we have a case in which 2 opposing sides -- the public, and the publicly-funded government school -- are fighting over a technology that a private company has been selling and promoting.
The people paying for the system get pissed off about it. Company responds by having nothing more to do with the situation -- in other words, the company, recognizing the threat to their own future profits, is catering to the demands of the public.
Meanwhile, the government, represented by the school principal, still wants to act against the will of the public which is funding it.
Please, somebody promote socialism to me, and tell me that the government responds better to public demands than businesses do, or heck, even that the govn't has the public's best interests in mind. LOL!
The sad thing is, that because of vested interests (read: public school teacher unions), the parents are going to continue paying for this system they oppose. Welcome to the wonders of socialism and government, generally.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
I say it didn't go far enough, instead of just RFID tags, full GPS should have been used, that way kids could be caught running in the halls, crowding round a toilet (that means someone is getting dunked), cutting in line for lunch and making-out in the bike shed (2 people should NOT be that close together). There would be a display with little dots showing their position at all times. You could even add sensors to this device to make sure its never removed, and a microphone and camera so you can patch in to any kid. Im certain the school would run like clockwork, no-one would be out-of-line, especially after the electric shock modules were installed.
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However, I guess that with RFID this law has to be completed in one way or another. For instance by having the RFID sensors signalled, and their purposes indicated by separate colors.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Is the principle's name Ed Rooney? Cause I hear he IS a pedophile!
"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
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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.
Forcing the students to wear the badges isn't an issue. The real problem would be a student hiding a badge somewhere deep in their book bag and registering an absent student as present.
I'm sure the faculty was smart enough to recognize this problem, thus they would have been performing manual attendance to audit the system. Plus every time a student forgot their ID, or a part of the system failed, or there's a power outage, they would have to resort back to the manual system.
IMO the heart of the problem is misapplying technology. Is taking attendance really such a time-consuming, difficult task to perform to require tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and the dispersal of hardware to every single student? A teacher should recognize their students, and should be cognizant of empty seats that are normally occupied.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Some of the feedback is interesting as well. Basically, the 'solution' doesn't solve any problems, and it's money that could be better spent on teachers and books. Yes, I know, this one was 'free', but it won't always be free.
g erprinting_1.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/fin
...graduated from HS in 2000.
When I was a senior, a tech company 'volunteered' to install a fingerprinting system for checking out books - the idea is that you have the librarian scan every book, you swipe your fingerprint in the reader, and you're off. It replaced good ol' barcode on the back of our (photo) student IDs (which we were supposed to carry always).
I happened to be in the library during the time that the system was launched, the suits there and all. I walked by, wanting to check a book out and they asked me whether I wanted to test drive this awesome new fingerprinting technology, and I said no to their face (the look was priceless). I graduated soon after and didn't look back, but I found out that all the fingerprints, in BMP form, were stored on an unpatched, networked windows PC in the library. (Oh, the fun I could have had; I could have delivered the fingerprints to the principal Veronica-Mars-style [flippantly] and gotten away with it too)
I don't have a problem with submitting my fingerprint as part of the moral character application to the bar, but for checking out a frigging research book at school?
Anyway, I also heard that they got rid of that later, because kids didn't want to use it. I'm all for phasing out shitty security-dangerous technology de facto.
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.
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
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