Slashdot Mirror
Brazilian Schoolchildren Tagged By Computer Chips
New submitter smi.james.th writes with an AP story, and extracts from it: "'Grade-school students in a northeastern Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with computer chips that alert parents if they are cutting classes, the city's education secretary, Coriolano Moraes, said Thursday.' Personally I don't find this too inspiring. Mr. Orwell certainly has warned the world about this."
I sure hope pedophiles in Brazil can't hack or learn to hack. Holy crap this is bad on so many levels
Doing this with chips is barbaric. We must do this with cameras and biometrics, hopefully also we'll get drones involved somehow. That's the American way!
Sounds like the ideal provocation to strip buck naked and cut some class.
Technology CANNOT solve social problems. It can only hide symptoms.
It promises security and at the same time obviates the need for the parents to be responsible - the perfect American dream.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Those kids will learn very well that
Being monitored: restrict your behavior.
Absence of monitoring: you are free, do whatever you like.
Those will be good citizens, as long as you don't forget to keep them leashed all the time.
I'm assuming this is just an rfid system and not something more elaborate. The question becomes what happens to students who are reported absent by malfunctioning or poorly set up equipment and incorrect information in databases?. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a problem since the student would be able to verify their presence some other way, then the problem would be conscientiously addressed and corrected. This is the real world, however. In the real world, school administrators tend to be authoritarians and extremely blunt thinkers. The prevalence of ill-thought out "zero tolerance" policies in the area of education makes this perfectly clear. Students identified as absent by this system probably won't be given a chance to prove their innocence and may stand a good chance of being punished more harshly if they try.
Declaring that this is bad is a joke. These are tags in the uniforms of CHILDREN. It is as orwellian as putting RFID in my dogs. I would love to know if my teens cut school. And I am just fine with using a tag in their clothes.
Now, if they want to do this to an adult, or forced embed it in a human, that is a DIFFERENT issue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
that will kill them
The actions those kids take when not in class could have a harmful and costly impact on others (vandalism, illegal drug use causing health problems that must then be paid for, a lack of education resulting in more stupid grown-ups that can't hold a job and drag on the economy, etc.). In addition, plenty of parents want their kids to go to school because it keeps them safe and is ultimately good for them.
So, there are direct incentives to make sure the kids go to school. Those incentives are strong enough that people will eventually give over to them, and embrace technologies that give them easy, cheap, and effective ways of enforcing this behavior.
However....
This doesn't just apply to kids, it applies to everyone. The actions any person takes impacts one's neighbors, and as such everyone has direct incentives to encircle everyone else in systems of control. This isn't a matter of "them" wanting to take "our" freedoms away. It is am matter of "us" wanting to make sure "they" don't do things that have a negative impact on "us." This principle is universal.
The desire for freedom will always be in conflict with the desire to limit the freedom of one's neighbors...and eventually the desire to protect one's self and one's own will always win out over the desire to protect the freedoms of one's neighbors.
Just watch, you will see.
With a big clump of people moving thought the door at the same time may lead to missing a few reads and with a big load of people beeps may not help as much as they do with one person at a time with a turnstile.
Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned attendance? Back when I was going to school, it was done with Scantron forms. The teacher took attendance and sent a runner to deliver the form(s) to the attendance office where they were processed. Once it was determined that a kid was out that shouldn't have been, that office called the parent to ascertain where the kid was. Simple, effective, and hardly Orwellian.
Don't get me started on taking attendance in college courses, though...
Student's Friend: "Susie had to miss class for a [theatre/sports/music/etc] [practice/trip/performance/game/etc] today, Teacher." Roll call fooled.
No, you need your buddy to take your shirt to class with him. Is the GPS good enough to know "two people are in the same chair?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
These are tags in the uniforms of CHILDREN
Early monitoring by the state is especially depressing.
I would love to know if my teens cut school.
It's too bad instead you'll only know if your kids clothes are at school.
I'd say the going rate per day to hold a jacket in my backpack going to class could easily exceed $1, even in Brazil.
So why is it valuable to train your kids to be sneaky bastards?
If the state is not monitoring them you can place much more sophisticated devices for spot checks without them even thinking about the possibility. Once you get a paranoid teen you are utterly screwed and blind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why put them in their uniform? The kid gets naked and your tracking goes in a messy pile of laundry next to the bed he's cavorting in. Or they ditch the uniforms are go for a ride while the uniform is still reporting them as school.
Make the kids eat the chips every few days. This way you'll be able to identify their mangled remains after their car goes off the road or after they get kidnapped, murdered, their bodies set on fire after the parents cant pay the ransom....
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ah yes, the conservative mentality: children are pets of their adult owners.
Conservatives are the ones for freedom and elimination of government oversight at all levels.
Liberals are the ones who do things "for your own good".
Get it straight man or you end up voting for exactly the opposite result as you desire. See: present.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Don't tell the kids there are 'magic transmitters' in their school uniforms - they'll just take off the RFID tag-laden article of clothing and put it in a friends backpack...
And the teachers will wonder how her computer says every student is in the class when half the seats are empty?
Ken
That works until classes start moving around, like gym, theatre, shop, etc or meeting in different rooms. Not to mention having to make special cases for days with assemblies, field trips and other special circumstances.
I'd guess that would be a huge load of work, and schools would be better off just making sure kids are in the school itself, and letting the teachers and staff ensure that students are in class once they're inside.
That's a terrible system, then. Here the teacher always marks the absence, regardless of the reasons, and then the parent/legal guardian can justify it later.
Dilbert RSS feed
You're new to the news on Big Brother! Welcome to the Axis of Oppression!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Take off your T-shirt and give it to a friend. He will enter and stay in school with it. At the end of class, take it back outside the school.
Do you really think they're putting a GPS (plus some kind of GSM modem to keep track of the location ) in each uniform? And that whole setup fits "underneath each school's coat-of-arms"?
It's probably a basic RFID tag that gets logged by a reader by the door.
Dilbert RSS feed
Explain exactly how is this "evil" (and remember this is a simple RFID tag, not a GPS locator).
Dilbert RSS feed
If not, they'll become fundamentalists or Muslim terrorists. Or racists.
Normally I'm against Orwellian schemes, but this one is for a good cause.
Futurist Traditionalism
How long until little Suzie is carrying around 4 shirts/skirts in her bag for $10 each for her friends?
We certainly aren't teaching responsibility. That requires trust. I've reared several kids throughout the years. Some I micromanaged. Later, I learned to teach them morals and ethics and allowed them to develop their own behaviors while still maintaining a safety net where required. The latter group seem much more well-adjusted and have avoided a lot of the trouble the first set still manages to find. In my opinion, the government is not doing these kids, and itself by extension, any good.
Something tells me that these kids' backpacks are gonna be bulging with extra clothes, leaving their parents wondering why every time they hit refresh on creepyorwellianshit.com their kid hasn't moved from the bleachers by the football field for three hours straight. "Well, at least they're at school!" they say as lil' Bobby's wandering around town in their everyday-outfit with half of his class.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Do you really think they're putting a GPS (plus some kind of GSM modem to keep track of the location ) in each uniform? And that whole setup fits "underneath each school's coat-of-arms"?
It's probably a basic RFID tag that gets logged by a reader by the door.
They don't need GPS to track RFID chips on-campus, they just need RFID readers at every classroom and building exits.
It is pretty Orwellian, but I actually do think it's a good idea. I assume it's RFID rather than GPS, which means all they're doing is registering you at the front door. And in addition to skipping classes, you have to think about kids getting abducted while walking to school or waiting for the bus.
Which is not the plan. They'll only install a reader by the door, according to the news reports.
Dilbert RSS feed
And what purpose does this serve? have teachers completely forgotten how to take attendance? I know it's low tech, but it's a whole lot more accurate, cheaper, and much less orwellian.
Really, conservatives don't want to do things "for your own good" then why have they made an argument based on their greater moral superiority?
Why was Newt Gingrich wanting to put school children to work as janitors to teach them lessons in a work ethic?
What does Rick Santorum claims he women not to have birth care since it'll be better for them morally?
Why does Ron Paul want us to be on the gold standard, if not for our own good?
Why does Mitt Romney....oh who am I kidding, Mr. Etch-A-Sketch doesn't even have the principles of the others. And no, he's not severely conservative either.
But the others are, and they sure claim to be in it, and based their actions on fixing us.
They also want more government oversight. Can't have people voting without ID. Might have somebody buying food with a program in a strip club. Might have somebody who didn't complete Form 61-A in triplicate getting Medicaid! And there might be some women somewhere having sex, God help us!
Really, conservatives don't want to do things "for your own good" then why have they made an argument based on their greater moral superiority?
You are thinking of social conservatives, not the general conservative/libertarian.
Even most of the current social conservatives are all about limiting federal power, they can see which way the wind blows.
Why was....
Deleted pointless rants about people who will not be the next president no matter what.
Why does Mitt Romney....oh who am I kidding, Mr. Etch-A-Sketch doesn't even have the principles of the others.
Incorrect. He fluidly adopts whatever principals are popular. Those happen to be conservative, not really social conservative as noted.
You argument is fundamentally flawed aanyway since you are arguing he may not be wholly conservative when we have countless living examples from Obama taking choice away right now.
You better hope Romney can hold down this principals a term or two because otherwise we are going down the jackboot hole with liberal boots at our throats.
Can't have people voting without ID.
You can't have real elections without giving people one, and only one vote. They must be secure. That is not removing a right, that is making your vote actually mean something.
But if you are agains that by all means let me warm up my hacker hands and totally invalidate any vote you care to put forward.
You really do not seem to understand where we are headed or what is at stake now, very disturbing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Depends on your goal. For those that have a goal of total control of their population, its a good thing. AND they have support of parents, so the children will grow up thinking this is normal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Slippery slope is a fallacy.
A lot of heuristics are considered informal fallacies when applied to the absolutely known premises of the artificial world of pure mathematics. But in the real world, premises are not known to absolute certainty. Human minds don't necessarily follow the rules of pure mathematics; they make decisions based on emotion, and they gain bargaining positions from hiding their true premises. The slippery slope, the proverbial boiling frog, political momentum, the Overton window, and the like are ways of modeling these non-ideal effects.
I think this story might be a fake. that's more children than there are in the entire world
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download - some schools in South Carolina and elsewhere might be badly in need of that too...
At least unlike British politicians the authories of Brazil do not seem to have proposed that kids be implanted with radio IDs (just yet).
The main issue for me is, if you're a kid growing up in this situation, you'll then see location monitoring by the authorities as "normal."
So the society that will exist in 40+ years, when most of the population consists of kids who've grown up with monitoring, won't see any problems with letting the government track everyone...
Back in the 1980's when they started tagging dogs and cats, - by inserting a chip into the neck of the animal, - in the name of "identify owners of lost pets", I already wondered aloud when will they start doing the same thing to human beings
This Brazilian example only tag students via chips embedded in their school uniform
Wait till someone come up with similar scheme with what they did to dogs and cats - insert chips into the body of human beings - and I am sure they can come up with whatever grandiose reason to justify what they do
It would be not that dis-similar to the tattooing of Jews by the German Nazis
Those who do not learn from history will find ways to repeat it
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I feel like this will encourage streaking. I streaked a few times during high school for laughs, now it will be useful for cutting class. I am certain this will backfire in short order.
-g
I don't seem to remember preventing truancy as a sinister issue to Orwell.
I get a SMS if my car moves 2ft when I'm not in it. My 3 yellow labs all have id chips as well as GPS trackers. My laptop and phone have "find me" features so I don't loose my precious terminal.
However your kids, your husband, wife, parents run around in complete secrecy under the guise of "privacy"
When people aren't looking, people do HORRIBLE THINGS. When teachers aren't looking kids do screwed up things, uncles "touch" and ask to not "tell", priests take advantage, people have strokes on hiking trips, pass out in bars.
I should not only know where my most precious humans are, but I should know they are safe, conscious and alive.
Sex trafficking, kidnapping, dump luck kill, wounds and mentally damages the brother and sisters and wives and husbands of all of us, and we sit around saying " oh it's totally worth it, because "privacy" is so critical.
I grew up in a town with a secret gov facility. We were all under constant surveillance We all knew it.
If sunlight or starlight can touch you, so can anyone who wants to. Anyone who thinks differently is kidding themselves.
It's time we get over that book and start taking care of our loved ones.
It MUST be transparent. It MUST have watchers watching watchers watching watchers. It MUST be optional.
and we MUST stop losing humans like car keys.
And what purpose does this serve? have teachers completely forgotten how to take attendance? I know it's low tech, but it's a whole lot more accurate, cheaper, and much less orwellian.
Not to mention it puts the responsibility with an adult that should already be investing time, energy, and interest in the child's welfare. Not only will that always be better than an automated system, it's also the right thing a teacher should be doing anyways.
...is this going to give a new meaning to "brazilian wax"?
You'd need to leave your clothes in class though.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Agreed. That's what my school did, if a child was not in class when the teacher took roll call, then the parents were telephoned. No need for microchips, really.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
That means, they'll use whatever equipment an expensive contractor can sell. And it won't limit the liberty of the children, because it will work badly for 6 months and none at all after that.
That is, it will have a chance of working badly if some tribunal somewhere don't declare it illegal. Otherwise, it won't even be turned on.
Rethinking email
In fact, RFID is probably cheaper than the teacher's time for taking the atendance.
This is just wrong, not expensive. (Oh, and won't work either.)
Rethinking email
This is no different from a computerised classroom. Using wifi to log in the student with the smart book when the enter the school yard and then using infra-red login in the class room to exactly note their location. This in conjunction with the teachers computer, who can via their smart book, face match each students class room login, when the students connect into the individual class rooms (lecture theatre, laboratory or various offices) infra-red network.
Soon as the student logs out of the class room infra-red they switch back to wifi, in the school yard, as they leave the school are, they are logged off from the wifi, requiring a wired connection a place of residence to the school to log back in to access home work etc. You don't want to get caught in over-tracking and privacy invasion and using infra-red in the class room minimising parental concerns.
Add a camera fish eye lens in the class form random monitoring and teacher evaluation. Measuring a students grade does not measure the teachers skill, it measure the ability of the student to learn (IQ genetic, they either get good brain chemical rewards from learning or not so much), the effort the student puts in, and the amount of educational support provided by parents. Want to evaluate a teachers performance you can only do that by monitoring classes ie measuring the teachers ability to engage, control and teach as class (should be done upon a regular random basis). Also useful to corroborate disruptive students who would do better in special classes, as would the rest of the class (larger class sizes, using computers necessitates elimination a disruptive students to fairly distribute the teachers time to the rest of the students). This taking into account psychopaths and narcissists are born not made and the rest of the students and teacher should not be psychologically tortured by their presence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, the Nazis started with badges on the clothing, and moved up to embedding the ID on the person.
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find someone to double up on uniforms... or you know, find the chip, take it out, stick it in some else's pocket, which is what I would have done in school.
But now I'd probably just start collecting uniforms and microwaving them in the cafeteria... "I paid for the uniform, the uniform is fine, too bad about your chip"
but I think we're missing a far more important problem here.
TEACHERS AREN'T NOTICING WHEN STUDENTS ARE NOT PRESENT.
For the cost of installing RFID readers everywhere, installing the necessary computer infrastructure, creating new uniforms with tags sewn in, and training everyone to use the new system, wouldn't it have made more sense to simply issue each teacher a laptop with which to send out attendance alerts? The only reason I can think of to use this system is that teachers aren't noticing when a student doesn't show. And if the teacher can't take attendance effectively, how the hell are they teaching effectively?
Wait, how many schoolchildren?
having swipe cards to mark the roll lesson by lesson, and keeping track of when a kid goes out of class for any reason. Yes, this system IS in place in some schools and I applaud it.
It's obviously a corrupt deal. A shitty school district, from Brazil's shittiest region (the "North East"), spending a huge sum of money for tech not even developed countries dare implement.
The writing is pretty much on the wall...
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
1984 was puerile, unsubtle propaganda, and almost as laughably hysterical as the commenters who refer to it at least once per thread. Don't you realize how utterly boring and mindless it is to repeat, again and again, that "Orwell warned the world"?
Do you think that gesticulating wildly in the direction of 1984 makes you look smart? It's a children's book.
I agree 100%. Being made to go to class is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to being put in an oven.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, it's not cheaper. It takes a few minutes from every single class. In a fourty minute class, that's ~5% of the time. I suspect that if you could increase teacher efficiency by 5% that's well worth the cost of a few rfid chips and readers.
May we live long and die out
Reading a small passive RFID tag from 150 feet? [citation needed]
also your forgeting that every store and warehouse, post office/UPS/fedex van and WIFI RFID reader anyone with ipadd rfid reaer could scan you on way home from school, plus walmarts been doing this for over 10 years now.
Yeah, and they can also recognize the child by looking at his/her face. Oh, the horror! We must force them to use burkas!
Dilbert RSS feed
How would you copy RFID chips that employ ciphers, like the RFID chips in passports?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I recently attended a mandatory meeting at my university that was an extended sales pitch. I've actually attended about five of those so far this year. Administrators eat that crap up, especially the brown-nosing from the salesperson. Anyway, this particular one was about half about how wonderful it will be if we adopted their RFID system for student tracking. It's primarily aimed at attendance, which is a major problem at out institution. We have, in our general education courses, an about 40% attendance rate, which is, perhaps not coincidentally, the pass-rate for those same courses. I'm expecting administration to buy these damn RFID things, which will be another waste of cash. The problem isn't taking attendance; the problem is that there are no significant penalties for failing to attend. And that won't change because federal money in the form of tuition is dependent on keeping that nonattending student enrolled.
Now what do you think that backpack is for if not for carrying clothes? Or did you honestly want to spend your time in town in your school uniform?
Jeesh... kids these days, you gotta tell them really everything. Back when I was young we had to figure out ourselves how to cut class without getting caught, where would you kids be these days without the internet?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"my mom always warmed up my socks in the microwave when it was a cold day, and it's a cold day, so I thought, hey, why not warm up my school uniform..."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At least one company in the US, Aim Truancy Solutions (http://www.aimtruancy.com/), is tracking students with school-issued GPS devices.
PC World recently covered an early adoption: http://www.pcworld.com/article/220225/california_school_district_battles_truancy_with_gps.html
Financially, it makes sense for the school districts because they lose so much attendance-based funding on truant students.
Walk in the door, climb out the window! Problem solved!
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
It's not on you to decide when I feel cold, you insensitive clod!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Timmy, how come you are wearing 6 tags? And where are your "friends" John and Max?
I informally suggested something very similar to this years ago, to solve a problem with local retirement and "assisted living facility" homes in the area. They were (and still are) having big problems with residents wandering out and away, missing for days, dying of exposure in nearby fields and woods, that sort of thing. And apparently no solution, since the staffs are overworked, underpaid, and often basically useless or irresponsible.
I suggested RFID tags (which is what they're talking about here, not computer chips) and an alarm or at least monitoring system. But nooooo .. too expensive, too hard to understand, too likely to put responsibility back on the home for the well-being of their residents. It never flew. Figures.
Good for the Brazzies. Kids have no expectations of privacy or freedom anyway; that's why they want to grow up.
Like in that Rutger Hauer movie I forget the name of. When they wander out of the zone, it detonates.
First of all, if they wanted to track you; then they'd sure as hell do it no matter what.
This is a weak argument. If they wanted to track YOU, this is certainly true. But if they wanted to track EVERYONE, then they'd need the kind of system described here. There is a fundamental difference between the 2 situations.
I... can't believe it! My arguments were all destroyed! You have singlehandedly destroyed every single one of my arguments by providing a highly logical counterargument!
Oh... I see. The same person, huh? You're just trying to deny Gamemaker's greatness!
You're nothin'! A mere clone...!
You don't pay extra, it's standard as part of RFID chips.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
That's the excuse they'll use for implanting it.
It's only the uniform that is being tagged and tracked.