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Using RFID and Wi-Fi to Track Students
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a proposal to use RFID and wi-fi to track students wherever they go on campus: 'Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location.' At The Wireless Event in London, 'Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks.' The article points out that integration of RFID and wi-fi raises the possibility that RFID can be used for remote surveillance."
Angelo Lamme, from Motorola, said tracking students on a campus could help during a fire or an emergency.
And how exactly are you going to access the data if the school is on fire? I cannot think of any legitimate use for this.
Once each student is equipped with a WiFi tag do theyr really imagine that only the school will have this info. Forget the overzealous parent that wants 24/7 monitoring. What about the creepy stalker who wants to follow the girl of his dreams? What about the kidnapper who wants to watch his target?
Forget claims about 'encryption' (it's a unique ID who cares what it "means") or limitations on distance, readers have already shown success at distances far beyond those claimed.
What about the paedophile who wants to track that one kid...
"Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location."
So students are now assets?
This makes sense for hospitals and that's about it. Everywhere else it's a liability.
Angelo Lamme, from Motorola, said tracking students on a campus could help during a fire or an emergency.
Sure; during a fire or emergency sounds like a great time to be snooping around to see where particular students are. Fire alarms seem to be much more helpful than tracking techniques for real emergencies; surveillance technology is much more likely to be used during times of "business as usual," and generally not during times when most people are running around screaming for their lives.
BR>Meanwhile, I can see this sort of technology having great applications during "business as usual" times for creepy security guards who want to see what that hot blonde chick does after her chemistry class... Especially for the peeping tom or stalker types who want to make sure they're walking by the right dorm room window when she gets out of the shower.
that there are typically 5 people sitting in the same chair at Monday morning 8:00 a.m. Calculus classes....
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Tell that to the parents of the Purdue University kid who was dead in a utility closet for a week or more before they found him.
RFID being used to track people is just plain stupid.
There's an argument being made that it can help firefighters rescue people in fire-engulfed smoky buildings -- rubbish. Sure, there may be someone in the building needing rescue; but, what if the person is nothing more than an RFID ID card that's been dropped in the hustle to escape a fire? Now the fire-fighter is NEEDLESSLY endangering himself and others to rescue a piece of plastic and silicon.
Besides, power is cut to buildings that are on fire to mitigate further risk of electrical shorts that might have caused the fire in the first place and to prevent electrocution when those wacky fire-fighters start throwing water around. OK, forget the water. The power's been cut. Where exactly are these RFID towers again? Do they have power? Was the grid taken down to facilitate putting out the fire? Two towers still up so I have an idea where some RFID *tag* is *someplace* in level 2,3 or 4 somewhere in a 40,000sq ft building?
Great job, Angelo Lamme, from Motorola - Keep up the good work.
And, yes, I used to write software that used RFID technology.
There's also the idea of dropping said device into someone else's possession - I'm sorry, who are you tracking again? The suspect exited stage right while RFID card went left.
On the other hand, using RFID to track equipment is a very handy use for RFID. There are huge RFID readers that span entire docking bays than can read some kinds of tags and accurately report the contents of dozens of boxes' contents with ease.
Instead, instal micro cell sites and track using their cell phones. They have a reason to take their cell phone with them (not just a useless tracking tag), you don't have the roll out cost of issuing these tags, and to make this work, you're going to have to put up a heckuva lot of new Wi-Fi APs to do any sort of triangulation, anyway. Why not use cell phone signals on maybe several dozen micro cell sites on campus instead? As a bonus, handled call volume increases and you can get the cell companies to help subsidize the cost...and manage the user database, too.
Then again, why in hell do we really need to monitor student movement so closely in the first place?
No need for prisons, either, for anyone but the most dangerous.
You forgot to add - the most dangerous crime of all is not murder, it's removing or tampering with your ID.
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I was born in 1966. A couple of big things were different then:
Recently we got a mailing from our kids' principal about walking to and from school. It was survey about how many kids walked, but it came with a letter from the principal basically implying that any parent who let their kids walk was a bad parent, because it was so unsafe. This is the same principal who has instituted rules about which direction the kids can swing on the playground swings. The previous principal organized a bike rodeo for kids to improve their skills on bikes, and kids who worked on their skills, and demonstrated them at the bike rodeo, got the privilege of using the bike racks. My older kid passed, but then the new principal came in, and the whole idea suddenly went away. I do not know of any kid at this school who has ever gotten hurt walking or cycling to or from school. I do know of one kid who got hit by a car after school, because her parents were sitting, double-parked, in their air-conditioned SUV on the other side of the street, beckoning her to run across the street and get in.
When I was a kid, I started walking to the babysitter's house after school when I was in kindergarten. Nobody thought that was unusual. This was in an urban environment (Albany, CA). I learned to look both ways before crossing the street, and to cross on the green. No biggie.
Today, it seems like most affluent kids' existence consists of being shuttled back and forth in their mom's SUV from one air-conditioned building to another. And we wonder why the obesity epidemic is happening.
Psychologically, people like to have the illusion of control. For instance, studies have shown that drivers consistently overestimate their own ability to deal with an emergency. When it comes to kids, parents want to have the illusion of safety that comes from having their kid carry a cell phone all the time. Radio-tracking your kids is just the latest instance of this kind of mass hysteria.
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That said, the BBC's website design is not really much different. Plain black text on a white background. No ads, no flashing graphics, and just a small header at the top and side navigation. I find the BBC's site a refreshing change from the majority of news websites which go overboard with flash animations, colours and more adverts than text.
If there was one case when linking to a printable page wasn't necessary in my opinion, it'd be the BBC.
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