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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.'"

4 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. reverse psychology by User+956 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think this is a very responsible use of "human monitoring". Its voluntary, its in there CLOTHES, and its only useful at school.

    Yeah, but when you start requiring specific clothes, all you're going to do is entice the teenagers to get naked. You don't want to have naked teenagers on your hands, do you? I know I would. I mean, wouldn't. Right.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  2. Re:Well by Cassius+Corodes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Re:Well by camperdave · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  4. Re:Well by illegalcortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.