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Student Refusing RFID Badge Now Fights Expulsion Order
BeatTheChip writes "Lawyers representing Andrea Hernandez, a science and engineering student at John Jay High School, are fighting an expulsion notice issued a week ago for refusing to wear a Smart ID badge. To represent her, lawyers filed a preliminary court injunction, seeking legal restraints on the school. She maintains stance of refusal to wear any badge containing an RFID tag for reasons of basic privacy and conflicts with her belief system. The controversial decision for her school to adopt the NFC badges is part of the Student Locator Project, tracking attendance. Local schools started issuing the lanyard badges this fall despite parental outcry at NISD school board meetings."
Its on public transport and in pretty much every workplace. If you want to opt out then go and live in a hut, otherwise get used to it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
She's not fighting for freedom. She's free to do as she wishes. She's fighting for her privacy.
While I generally dislike the idea of being tracked, I don't really see how winning this would make any difference. It's not like RFIDs can be tracked via satellite or anything so outside of school it's doubtful they'll be able to tell where she is (unless they've installed RFID scanners everywhere in the immediate area, which would be an entirely different issue). They only work within the school where you're probably tracked by cameras in the hallway. Even if she gets them to drop the RFID system they'll still be able to track her the old fashion way, attendance calls.
Reading my thoroughly into the article, they even offered to give her a card without the RFID chip, meaning she wasn't going to be tracked (she still would have needed it to borrow from the library and buy cafeteria food apparently)
As for the religious objections, unless she got the number 666, I don't see the problem (at least one that cannot be solved via a number change). Carrying the card will be just like carrying your government ID (which has numbers on it), or your healthcare card, or any number of other things that 'mark' you via a number.
In a way I see this as sort of an agreement. You can attend this institution if you follow our rules. Here we measure attendance via RFID, don't wear the tag don't get marked as present. Don't have enough attendance don't pass. This is a system that was put in place by a group of elected (at least I assume they're elected there) officials, who in turn likely voted for this to pass. Not following this rule would be like going around murdering people (a rule that was put in place via a vote by people who were voted into office).