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Students In UK Tracked With RFID Chips
An anonymous reader writes "Ten kids in a pilot program in the Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe, England will participate in a program that puts RFID chips in students' uniforms to keep track of their whereabouts. A group called 'Leave Them Kids Alone' is opposing the program. Bruce Schneier blogs: '...Now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere.'"
Ten kids in a pilot program in the Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe, England will participate in a program that puts RFID chips in students' uniforms to keep track of their whereabouts.
Clearly, this measure is needed, as the government doesn't yet have enough cameras to track everyone individually.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The kid or the kid's jacket? Would you want to send firefighters in to rescue the jacket?
Here is a radical concept. Stop treating children like animals and start treating them like human beings. Letting kids go off the "leash" is necessary for them to become responsible people. How can they learn to be trustworthy if they are never trusted in the first place?
Not only that but you are essentially teaching children that there is nothing wrong with being tracked wherever you go - and that can only mean that they grow up to be people who will consent to draconian surveillance schemes because they are used to them.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
There's a huge difference between the government being able to subpoena your records and records of your movement (e.g. cellphone provider logs) and the government being able to have "always-on" monitoring of you at all times "just in case." Automated tracking via software elevates government snooping to whole new levels that would never be possible with simple "sight." It's not really fair to compare the two.
Your other points are somewhat valid, but if you can't see that, I don't think you're qualified to make any judgments on Schneier or other security experts.
Most teachers I had didn't even do a roll call. They just scanned down the list and checked for missing people, anybody they didn't see they would call out their name. It probably took them about 30 seconds.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I can see an outbreak of truancy and students tags being traded somehow.
Bad idea, to be honest, if the task is for roll call or tracking movements as it would take the human element out of a simple task which would be better off being kept manual.
On a related issue with personal RFID tagging, I just took delivery of a new "e-Passport" where the middle pages are labeled "do not stamp or mark" as they contain the RFID tags for travel. I can understand the need for an RFID in a travel document, but it's utterly a waste when we consider Towelhead Tom from Kerfuckistan doesn't need RFID because his country doesn't have RFID-enabled passports.
I can see where this is heading.
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Not only that but you are essentially teaching children that there is nothing wrong with being tracked wherever you go - and that can only mean that they grow up to be people who will consent to draconian surveillance schemes because they are used to them.
Isn't that exactly what we want - a generation who think there is nothing wrong with being monitored? A generation so used to the idea of being watched, that they will start demanding it when it is absent?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Child abuse.
These two words describe a situation where an abuse is perpetrated on a child.
These people are children, and probably do not have the full context to understand just how bad life can get when they are older, and realize that most of the owrld is out for themselves and there are no parents or teachers around to protect them.
As for calling it abuse: using tech like this to track other people has not yet become abuse - but I feel strongly that is exactly where this trend will go. It will migrate from voluntary to beneficial to compulsory and eventually, to involuntary. Already in the US and in bars in Latin America do we hear about people putting them in their skin. In the name of safety, in the name of peace, in the name of efficiency, in the name of prosperity and growth and everything good, people will eventually be forced to accept the tracking chip that tracks them cradle to grave. And when we are there, we will look back at these voluntary, ignorant, precious children and realize that it was an abuse to start the process.
Somehow in this techstrubation system I see research like this that has completely lost touch with what is good about living simply, without gadgets or crutches or machines that inevitably make things better for a minority of people in power, but worse for a majority of not-in-power people.
"Gee, these two students have been sticking together all day... and they don't even have all the same classes! Send someone to take a peek."
If the students are that stupid, they deserve to be caught. But it greatly illustrates why a system like this is really bad idea. The last thing we want is for the school administrators and teachers to know which kids hang together all day:
"Hey, you! Yes, you! I see you have been hanging a lot with that troublemaker Smith lately! I am warning you, you better stay away from him, or you are gotta get it!"
That'll tell you where they AREN'T. The whole point is to know where they ARE,...
No it isn't. Really pretty much all the teacher needs to know is that the kid is not in the class. So what is the kid is taking a smoke break in the bathroom? Or if he or she ran to the locker to get a homework they forgot? Or he decided to hang out with his girlfriend in that hidden spot in the school attic instead of going to the class? They are not in the class, when they show up, just ask them why were they missing. You don't need any stupid RFID chip for that. Of course, if a small kid comes to class late, with red cheeks, obviously has been crying, you notice and know something is up, and you act accordingly. I am afraid that with technology such as these chips, teachers will just say "we know where everybody is, we don't really need to pay attention to how they act, how they look like etc."
The kids are supposed to learn how to be responsible, make their own decisions, and generally become members of the society. They cannot learn that while knowing they are under a constant surveillance with no way to escape.
If the building is on fire and not everyone is accounted for, wouldn't having a general idea where they might be in the building count as a plus?
That's pretty much the only legitimate use of the technology. I am quite worried about serious surveillance technologies being introduced "just in the case there is some emergency".
AccountKiller
"Gee, these two students have been sticking together all day... and they don't even have all the same classes! Send someone to take a peek."
I was under the impression that RFID (especially passive RFID, did not RTFA, but embedding in clothing implies passive), is only feasibly read in close proximities (3 or 4 ft is pushing it as far as I know). This wouldn't allow tracking, just whether or not they may have passed through some barrier, or swiped the tag somewhere. One could argue that using many powerful readers would allow position tracking, but then you get interference from all the tags, neglecting the expense (maybe a non issue for a private school).
Just my $0.02
Again, as many people pointed out, ALL the RFID-in-your-clothes would give you is that the RFID chip is somewhere. That's why I pointed out that it doesn't tell you a kid is still inside. You still need to do the old fashioned head count, one way or the other. You should put absolutely ZERO faith in a reading or lack of reading from a chip. Otherwise, you're sending firefighters into burning buildings to rescue jackets. Or some kids were jacking around and popped the RFID chips out and one guy is carrying a couple just to mess with the system, and then you miss that there really IS a kid in the burning building.
So RFID chips in this situation are actually worse than useless.
Seems to me it's part of a broad psy-ops venture on the part of the british government. Throw out enough new surveillance methods for "security" reasons, thus beating in to the minds of the population at large the implied message that everyone is a potential threat - to themselves or others. That's why you need surveillance, right? After a while, people will get used to it and will no longer question their government's need to know every detail of their lives. Hell, they'll welcome the daily scrutiny.