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."

Comments

Help in an emergency?

[BHearsum]

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.

Re:Help in an emergency?

[Rakishi]

Lecture attendance registers (and alerting a student if they are about to miss a lecture) Kickass, now all you need to do is get a friend to bring your tag. Purely accidentally too, of course, if anyone were to ask. Then you get the fun of people not getting detected correctly and students having to spend 2 months arguing that they didn't miss all the classes (and so didn't fail the class). The prof is of course on a sabbatical (and didn't really pay attention to who attended anyways) and the TAs slept through the lectures. And since the system can never lie or be wrong the student must be lying.

Student security Such as? Oh no, I'm in a building that isn't my department so I can use the bathroom, better call the cops.

efficient computers/lighting (i.e. computers/lights turn on/off when someone enters/exits room) So the school has never heard of motion detectors I take it? Joy, now I'll need to bring a flashlight with me for all the times this more complex thus error prone detection system fails.

computer account security and log-on convenience. ...unless the tag is embedded in your arm you gain no security benefit unless there is a password as well. Then you gain no convenience benefit. Not to mention that you'd need a detector next to each computer as a tracking system (that is error prone likely) would be far from "Secure."

Umm, Stalking.

[Irvu]

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...

Re:Umm, Stalking.

[Normal Dan]

What about the creepy stalker who wants to follow the girl of his dreams? Hrmmm... Good point. On second thought, I support RFID tags for students.

Re:Umm, Stalking.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

What about the paedophile who wants to track that one kid...

What's he going to hang around a college for?

Re:Umm, Stalking.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

um, hello - pedos don't go for 17 year olds. Normal people do, at least until they open their mouths.

This is Snape's idea

[L. VeGas]

Thus rendering Harry's invisibility cloak useless.

Re:Cost

[commodoresloat]

That being said, how big are these things? What would be the consequence of not carrying one around? The RFID chips themselves are small they can be implanted under your skin or woven into clothing, or into the student ID that you have to carry around everywhere. The battery power is probably the size of a battery; it's unclear from the FA what kind of battery is necessary, but I imagine it would be pretty small. "Lugging it around" would not be an issue, and I'm sure student fees could easily absorb the cost without much notice. The real question is what real value does this have other than providing a tool for stalkers or control freak administrators? Do we really want to encourage the equivalent of temporary restraining orders or dorm arrests as a disciplinary mechanism in colleges, for example?

Don't upset the dots.

[Radon360]

"Who's upsetting my dots?? Are you messing with my dots?!?"

Re:Cost

[Like2Byte]

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.

what's the real crisis -- safety, or obesity?

[bcrowell]

I was born in 1966. A couple of big things were different then:

1. The obesity epidemic hadn't started.
2. The mass hysteria about kids' safety (child molesters, etc.) hadn't started.

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.