Slashdot Mirror
Texas High School Student Loses Lawsuit Challenging RFID Tracking Requirement
Chris453 writes "Earlier today, a Texas High School student named Andrea Hernandez and her family lost the first round of the lawsuit filed to prevent her school district from forcing its students to wear RFID badges for tracking purposes. The judge in the case declared that the district's compromise for the student (a badge without the battery) was sufficient and dismissed any First Amendment issues. The badges are RFIDs powered by built-in batteries and one of the concerns was that the badges would be used to track students off-campus. Interestingly enough, the school district claims in court documents that 'The badges do not work off campus (PDF).' However, on their website, the school district confirms that it is conceivable that an off-campus RFID reader could access badge serial numbers, but tries to downplay the significance: 'Therefore, an intruder or "hacker" can only learn that the tag serial number is, for example, #69872331, but that does not provide any useful information. Has the district committed perjury by claiming that the active RFIDs magically deactivate themselves when off school property?"
You're under 18, so not a human being in the eyes of the state, and as such subject to being tracked like cattle.
If it's any consolation, the rest of us are only marginally human beings in the eyes of the state, and are still subject to being tracked like cattle if we go out to anywhere public, or use any service or product. On the bright side, you're getting indoctrinated to it early.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
...the chip in the Smart ID badge also enables school staff to locate a student on a campus with a very large student population.16 The campus is equipped with sensors to read the card and school staff can determine the general whereabouts of the student carrying the card.17 The sensors do not give an exact reading or pinpoint the precise location of a student (e.g. a specific classroom), but it would show whether the student is in a certain wing of the school.18 The Smart ID badges work only within the school campus that has been equipped with sensors to read them.19 The badges do not work off campus.
I would just leave it in my locker at the end of the day and they can track it all they want.. If for some reason I can do that i guess it would be time for a tinfoil wallet
"Drive Fast Kill Slow"
Sounds like any perjury on their part would hinge on what it means to work and whether the judge allows them to make their own definition of the word.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
No. If the "system" "works" in such a way, then once you break that way, that system breaks. Now, you may be left with multiple parts of that system, in different places, and maybe another system could use that piece for it's purpose, but it's not perjury to say that those cards do not "work" off campus, because here "work" is defined by being an active part (ID badge) of an active system (school RFID system), with an intended purpose.
It's sorta weird to see how RFID is associated with privacy. The student is at school, in their physical body, that we all can see with our built-in eyes! Normally, they're accounted for via some "roll-call" in the mornings (or at least that's how we used to do it back in the day), and then that information was sent to the office where it was processed, and a larger set of information was sent to the state, and everyone that was at school that day was accounted for, it's been happening for a long time now. So what if they want to put teachers at all corners of the halls and watch all of the students, what's wrong with that? ...other than it being waaay to expensive for the tax payers to pay the teachers. So instead, they try this idea, and everyone is trying to freak out over a privacy issue. I don't get it, but I'm old and it's probably time that I just move on to yelling at the neighborhood kids about my fine grass.
"The judge in the case declared that the district's compromise for the student (a badge without the battery) was sufficient"
Active RFID tags cost a fuckload of a lot more than passive ones, not to mention they occasionally need the battery replaced. Never mind the privacy issues here, why the hell do we allow public schools to waste so much taxpayer money on frivolous BS like this?
I have two passive RFID badges I use on a daily basis, and they do their thing just fine. Hold it up to the pad next to the door, the door goes "click", done.
...just maybe if she didn't include a hypothesis that wasn't absolutely looney-tunes, she would have a better argument.
Using the bible as a basis for legal argument is dumb. It can be *part* of an argument, to show history, but this whole "mark of the beast" Revelations crap is just crap.
FTFA:
Evangelicals drive around with drivers' licenses with numbers and a photo and other state/work/school IDs. They don't have a religious objection to those. So why is it suddenly a religious objection when it's a high school ID even without an RFID chip?
Someone's telling tall tales here, and it's not necessarily the school being mistaken about the utility of RFID off campus.
I want an argument against RFID badges that doesn't include a batshit-insane argument about Satan, because I think there are legitimate privacy concerns about RFID being trackable outside of their intended environments. But this gets drowned out in the herp-a-derp religiosity, which only paints those with real concerns as shiny-side-out tinfoil haberdashers.
This girl and her dad aren't helping. Not. One. Bit.
--
BMO
Just pop the tag in a microwave oven for a minute or two. No more RFID.
"I don't know what happened. Maybe the Lord don't like RFID tags."
After enough tags go poof, the school administration will probably give up on having you wear one.
Physical tag with barcode? Sharpie the barcode to another number, maybe. Or generate your own barcode and forge a new tag. There are so many possibilities to screw with the administration that it seems like it would be more fun to see how long until they broke.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
"Therefore, an intruder or "hacker" can only learn that the tag serial number is, for example, #69872331, but that does not provide any useful information."
Joe Stalker sits in a car, watches student walk by, and notes the RFID that shows up on his scanner. From that point on the student is trackable by RFID.
Sure, the ID# doesn't provide any personal information by itself, but now any personal information that is found (e.g., follows student to home address) can now be uniquely associated with that student and tracked. The exact reason why a unique ID is useful in the school context is also why it would be equally useful in other contexts. If it works at all, then, yes, it does "work off campus". The fact that you can't access the school's database mapping from RFID to student personal information is irrelevant. Someone could build their own database.
Contrary to popular belief, most RFID systems do not store any information on the RFID tags. The tag simply has a unique serial number. The information is all in the back-end database, where they correlate the serial number to something. In this case, a student's record.
But, reading the RFID tag, without access to the database back-end, off campus will reveal only a number.
Now, the truly paranoid will note that, let's say, a coffee shop with an RFID reader could read that serial number connect it to a credit card transaction and then build/,maintain their own back-end and tracking capability. That's true, but you already gave them the credit card, they knew who you were without the RFID tag. But, they would be able to see when you were in the shop after that, even if you didn't do a credit card transaction.
Many Slashdotters have badges for work. The types of badges that have been in use since the 1990's. Many times, these badges are used to open doors and so forth. That's the EXACT same thing. An RFID serial number in the badge and a back-end database that assigns a name and access rights to that serial number.
Andrea Hernandez is the student who refused to wear the badge because she believed it was the 'mark of the beast' and offended her religion. This case wasn't just about privacy. It was also about the boundry when a person's religion conflicts with secular regulations.
Well, they are about as useless off-campus as my thrown away bank documents that anyone with a decent brain could turn into money. People have been concerned about this same issue for years with passports--it just takes one terrorist to find out there's an 'american' in the room by scanning... and, well, you know the end of the story.
I'll bet if they gave each student a free cell phone (which "may or may not" contain tracking technology) that they can keep with themselves during school, they'd be ALL over that!
Easy Fix... Give her two badges. Once see determines the one that is the Serial number "of the Beast" she can turn that one in.
"A 'person' is smart. 'People' are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
For example, a stalker could quite easily learn, on campus, what his target's RFID tag is, then build a gadget to report when they enter/leave their off-campus flat.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If I have the tag's serial number, I can track her so long as she's within a set of zones (which is the REASON the school did this idiot thing in the first place...)- so, I have information about HER.
Sadly, the Judge was ignorant (as are most of the /. commentors on this subject) of just how it works and why one would want to use this sort of thing. For work, it semi makes sense to regulate access off of a proximity tag. The passive tags in your badges only work with pretty much near-field operation and only place you in time and space at the reader contact point- which acts like a key on steroids. These active tags, they're powered and they've got either greater range, faster turn on times, or both. They're not typically used in an application like this. Seriously. As you enter the field, yeah, you have an ID. If I'm stalking said child, I will work at peeling the serial off the tag and use a ranged reader to find the tag. As long as it's on her, I know PRECISELY where she is.
The school lied about the tags, and there's no excuses for what they're actually aiming for here. So what if she used a religious reason? It's valid per the Constitution. As is my line of reasoning. And...we won't get into just how expensive this system is and that it doesn't do ANYTHING for protecting the kids- all it does is turn them into cattle. Which is what the Government seems to think we all are.
Literally, toss it in the microwave and nuke it for a few seconds, that will destroy any electronics in it, leaving the badge in tact (well mostly except for maybe a few burn marks...
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I lived in Boston Massachusetts and was 33 before I got a driver's license. I did get a "Liquor ID Card" at age 25, which I used exactly once -- who wants to hang out in a smoky bar with a bunch of drunks? -- and then that "Liquor ID Card" sat in a drawer for years. So, until the late 90s I did not have any "identification papers" -- why would I need them in a free country?
...by claiming that the active RFIDs magically deactivate themselves when off school property?"
No. They are probably stupid enough to believe it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I wonder what the school's policy is on tampering with the device. Working for a Texas School not to terribly far away, I've wondered quite a bit about this case.
The school is willing to deactivate the device by taking the battery out... and if applicable to one student it would be applicable to all, no? So why not have all students just remove the batteries. System deactivated. Problem solved.
> why would I need them in a free country?
Because you live in civilization. We do not live in an anarchy.
But previously....
>So, until the late 90s
So you needed a state ID. You couldn't get through life without one at that point.
The government also assigned you a Social Security number and failing that, you got an IRS tax number, which identifies you in "the system." - because either one of these is mandatory to be able to file your taxes.
Why are these *not* a "Mark of the Beast" while a school ID *is*?
--
BMO
As schools become larger (cost saving), some students get lost in the shuffle. Some are lost because they choose to be lost, and some just cannot connect to the environment. In place of knowing all of the students, these Texas principals have chosen to track them. They are not unique, just cutting edge. I have worked with few principals through the years who roamed the halls and knew the community. Our modern schools are statistical exercises. How much do we have to spend to ensure that the majority of the population receives enough education (standardized tests) so that the district cannot be questioned and can still justify administrative salaries? Currently we have numerous students taking remedial classes at colleges; this article: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/01/students_can_avoid_remedial_co.html puts the number at 42%. And while it might be a good idea to better prepare students for university, Ohio has decided that that a 430 writing score is sufficient to deem a student ready to produce college level work in an Ohio collegiate English class (that is a 54% SAT score.) In the end the RFID tags are nothing more than a symptom of our current educational woes. They may solve the problem of the student who cuts class, but do not address the problem of what are we going to do with the students in class that will better prepare them to live a quality adult life whether or not they they choose to go on to college.
And after all, these kids are a product of their generation!
*rimshot*
Let me know when you find that "free country". It's sure as hell none of the countries I know about, including all the western democratic ones, are free.
They're being totally unreasonable. According to the legal document linked, the school actually offered to compromise and allow her to wear a badge with no RFID chip at all. They just needed to give her something with a barcode or whatever so she could check out books in the library and pay for school lunches under the new system. The dad still refused because the badge was now "the mark of the beast" and they would not "go against the teachings of the LORD." [emphasis not mine]
Thing is, she already carries a badge every day under their current system. He's claiming that a simple piece of ID has now become the work of Satan because someone asked to put an RFID chip in it, even if they change their mind and agree not to.
Every student should refuse to wear the badges. They don't have to destroy the badges or anything like that. Just get together and toss them in a big pile. Problem solved. They're not going to suspend every single student. Of course I come from the tail end of a generation where burning draft cards, holding sit-ins and other acts of civil disobedience were not such a foreign idea.
Proverbs 21:19
The family objects to any ID that has a number on it for religious reasons. They were offered a school ID without RFID and they turned it down.
I'm glad this failed, I'm glad because her entire argument fell back on religion and people have to learn that well you can believe what ever you want you can't use that belief to circumvent the rules. She was offered more then fair alternative and yet she still decided to have a fit, well now maybe she can see that well she has the right to religion, it can stay in the church and not enter everywhere else.
Here is a malicious use scenario: 1) Malicious user points own RFID reader at target at school, gets ID #
2) Malicious user then tracks target to time when alone, following that ID#.
It might be even easier than that if RFID numbers are allocated in batches; Identify one student and others in a similar range would also be students.
They would have declared here a distinct society and built her a special school just for her already..
I fall into that heavy geek group of go-fuck-yourself when you want to search me, track me, or otherwise invade my privacy or my right to not be cattle. However, I could do without people like her standing up and taking on that position, publicly. The taint of religious idiocy just contaminates everyone else who actually takes issue with it for real-world concerns and sensibilities that don't involve the battle of two deities and an attempt by some "new world order" to track a human being by some goofy stamp at the behest of the super evil devil guy.
It's kind of like I'm sure everyone (including myself) felt when they saw Alex Jones "defending" our second amendment. Just a collective shout of "shut the fuck up, you birther, truther, new-world-order, end-of-the-world, religion spewing dipshit -- you are speaking in front of the world and making every other person who gives a shit about gun rights look like a fucking lunatic by association!".
Why couldn't she just say "hey, I take issue with this on the same grounds that any other person would have the right not; not on some silly religious preclusion"? It's like when I see all these news reports about the shitty behavior of the TSA when it comes to people in wheel chairs, or elderly nuns, or toddlers, or war veterans -- as if somehow it's wrong to violate them, but if you're just a regular every day everybody else, then fuck it.
Gah. This whole thing is just frustrating as hell. If another student has the guts to stand up to this, I hope they do it without the trappings of crap she came with. Unfortunately, I guess this also sets precedent for whoever the next student is and they won't get anywhere. Meh.
And have them call the police on you for identify fraud.
Is there some particular reason that she would be required to have this badge on her person when she goes home after school? If the badge stays in her locker when she's not there, and gets put on in the morning when she arrives, this is not any different than somebody wearing an employee badge while on the job.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why do you figure that would be helpful? It's a student ID, probably with name and photograph on it. Any teacher would recognize on sight that they were wearing a card that didn't belong to them.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Therefore, an intruder or "hacker" can only learn that the tag serial number is, for example, #69872331, but that does not provide any useful information.
Yes, it is just a serial number, like SSN, and we are going to use it for authentication. What can possible go wrong?
The sooner we let the beast come, the sooner the Lord will return to strike him down for a thousand years.
Yes, except with concealed RFID readers, you wouldn't need to even be looking at someone. Or even to be personally in the area at the time, if you concealed one and left it unattended except for a remote connection.
You can do that with small cameras now, sort of, but to get a good and immediate ID with those you need to either be monitoring them or have good facial recognition software behind it. With the RFID, you can interrogate it and get a definite identifier back without any guesswork.
Of course, it's elaborate and possibly a just little dramatic, but this does make that scenario possible. In a world where crazy people have the focus and the desire to create thermite, homemade explosives and intricate trigger devices, this is child's play in comparison for a stalker.
Try Somalia. You can do pretty much anything you want there.
I don't have much of an opinion on the technology itself, but I'm generally happy to see most of the people angry about this being angry. Either the religious freaks who talk about "numbers of the beast" or the "I have parent issues so any authority is something I'll speak against as a pavlovian response"? Yeah. Good to see them lose.
I'd be happy to talk with sane, reasoned people who don't generally have a problem with authority and reasonable tracking but who might have legitimate concerns about the specifics of this, but those people are rare, and the more stupid arguments from either of the groups above, the harder it is for me to want to take the issue seriously. Kind of like with gun control; I don't really care one way or other on the issue, but I'd love to see people like Alex Jones shake their tiny fists at the sky as they lose.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I have to type something here to please the filter.
I wonder which program was used to fund this project for this school? Who stopped and said, "we can create a community of people by having them put on this badge and have a computer track them." And what has me wondering even more is, what event occured that prompted such a reaction?
Because you live in civilization. We do not live in an anarchy.
Not having a number assigned to you don't have civilization and are living in an anarchy? That is way more crazy than "it's the mark of the beast."
No you can't.
You need to have more guns than the other guy. You can't just waltz over to Somalia and declare yourself completely independent from the human race. And not only that, but if you piss enough of the "other guys" off in Somalia (probably likely if you take offense to Islam and show your distaste), it probably won't matter how many guns you do have.
--
BMO
With the talk of stalkers and such, what is the maximum range we can read the badges? Passive RFID has to power the badge from the reader- at long range at the frequencies that these run, you're going to need a powerful transmitter and a big antenna, which makes it pretty hard for the stalker to hide at least. I do understand that advancements are being made all the time, but we still can't break the physics and basic information theory with respect to power and signal-to-noise.
The Octopus Card is a contact-less card used for payments on stores and public transit, and a large number of schools and companies as a mean of tracking check-in / check-outs and attendance issues in various countries since 1997. So far everyone has applaud about their convenience, and very few complains about privacy issues.
This kid (and their family) probably has listen too much to Alex Jones.
New Economic Perspectives
We live in a complex society, where the membership is much larger than the 300 person tribe/clans of the paleolithic hunter-gatherer era. Beyond that, it begins to be much more difficult to keep track of everyone. Beyond that, you no longer *personally* know everyone. So we, as a species, decided to organize, create writing and math to keep track of things. Getting a state issued ID is a direct extension of this drive to organize things and make stuff less confusing.
Organization is part of civilization. If you don't want to be part of the organization, yes, you are an anarchist and basically anti-civilization.
How well could you do, personally, foraging off the land and depending solely on the goodwill of strangers and living like Diogenes, living in a barrel and masturbating publicly?
--
BMO
Well since the summary states that the compromise that the court finds acceptable is to remove the battery from the badge these are powered RFID tags. That makes it very easy to install a passive reader in any doorway to determine when the tag passes through.
This reminds me of the school district who gave every student a laptop with a built-in camera that they could turn on remotely. They promised never to use it when students were off campus... Except they did: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/02/23/2030207/federal-judge-orders-schools-to-stop-laptop-spying
This is just another step towards an Orwellian state (not that we are too far away).
You are unique, just like everyone else.
way to cite your imaginary antisocial DRUG ADDICT friend!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
That may be what raised some suspicions about the capabilities of this badge.
Yes, most RFID is powered by RF from the reader. As such, it has a limited range. Put a power source in it and that range could (theoretically) approach that of a cellular phone. And that could lead to long range tracking. Nobody is certain.
Battery power can also overcome many crude shielding techniques (foil lined pouches) allowing for surreptitious on-campus tracking (who's hiding in the can, smoking a joint). RF powered RFID would have to be taken out of such a pouch to be scanned at known checkpoints (entry doors, lunch counter, library, etc.) where students expect to present ID anyway.
Since a battery creates a significant maintenance cost, the added capabilities it allows must be significant to justify its incorporation.
Have gnu, will travel.
The things that can go wrong with this type of program are too numerous to itemize. When the first student is stalked and killed using these badges, hopefully minds will change.
I assume the staff are also required to wear these badges and are tracked as well, right? RIGHT?
The only kids who have to worry about carrying those RFID cards are the kids who want to do bad stuff. If the kid isnt doing anything wrong then it doesnt effect them.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. I don't think I need to say anything more.
Did carrying that paper effect your life?
And to people who don't fly by plane, people getting molested at airports doesn't affect them at all. What does that mean? That it's not wrong?
Ruin your civil liberties?
No, because it's just a piece of paper you put in your pocket yourself. That's an absolutely terrible analogy, in my opinion.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
As an aside, anyone who is paying attention already knows that the mark of the beast is the credit card.
This is the most insightful comment all day.
--
BMO
> one of the concerns was that the badges
> would be used to track students off-campus
Wait, so are they trying to make her _wear_ the thing even when she's not at school? THAT would be a very clear-cut case of the school overstepping their bounds.
If they're NOT doing that, I'm confused about why it matters whether the thing could be used to track her when she's off the campus. She could just not wear it when she's not at school, problem solved.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
It is worth noting that when the drivers license was introduced, it had quite a few opponents. Some on the grounds that it wasn't up to the government to decide if you could drive or not and some objecting to any form of positive ID. They never really conceeded the argument, they were just worn down into silence.
There's even a Porky Pig cartoon lampooning the license for everything crowd.
Do you have a license to sell hair tonic to bald eagles in Omaha Nebraska?
No, actually, you need to rationalize your need for someone to control other people. I'm fairly sure that during the existence of writing and math, required identification has not been a mandate for humanity. Specifically for America, the number one reason that people do not want an identification requirement for voting is to assure no one's voting right is prevented. Having said that, no matter what you believe, you do not own people in this country and they do not have a requirement to adhere to your paradigm.
Let the child whack the RFID a few times with a hammer. Tracking problem fixed.
Or 5 seconds in the microwave, although the burn marks might clue in the school as to why the RFID no longer works.
There are actually a number of people who do object to SSNs on this basis and do not have them. I believe the Amish fall into this category. Not everyone has an SSN, but it makes life a lot harder to live, except in an Amish or Mennonite community.
However, this is a BS case, as the school offered to remove the battery and chip and issue a trackless card, but it would look just like all the other ones on the John Jay campus. But she and her Dad refused that. She wanted to use the same picture ID she had from her old school. Which looks different, as each school has it's own style of badge for rapid identification of student who do not belong on a particular campus.
So, from the get go, they really had no case, because the school accomodated the Religious objection, which likely would have passed muster.
Then go live where there is no society.
Go ahead, try to find some place that exists where there are people and no cultural norms at all. I'm betting you can't.
Did you build your computer from scratch that you are reading this message on? Did you smelt the copper for the circuit boards yourself? Did you make the photolithography masks for the chips yourself? No? Other people did that?
You owe society for your ability to have the things you have, to be able to get up every day in a safe environment, to have standards for food and water. To have sanitation. To live in society, and take advantage of these things, we all have to conform to certain norms because without those norms, society fails and there are no computers, no health standards, no road maintenance, and no internet.
You're crazy.
--
BMO
Catal Hyuck was city that had a population of around 10,000 people, approximartely 10,000 years ago. There is also evidence of ancient American cities like Cahokia, which likely had a population of around 40,000 at it's height. Long before European settlement, and a population greater than any North American city until Philadelphia exceeded 40,000 around 1780. But you didn't see state issued ids in Cahokia, nor in the Colonies. In fact, it's possible the Native Americans in Cahokia didn't even have a writing system.
I call Bullshit, that you need to keep track of everyone, and have to give out ids for that. I could do everything I need to do except drive a car or travel to a foreign country without id. And if we got rid of the idea of this planet is divdeed into countries with imaginary lines telling us the boundaries I would need id to travel. the id requirement for driving is solely so you know who to blame in the event I damage someone or something.
You can certainly go through life without a SSN. You can apply for and get an IRS tax ID. The IRS gives not one shit about whether you are in the SSI system, but they do tend to give a shit if you are an Amish or Mennonite farmer that has an income that needs to be taxed. They will even give an illegal immigrant a tax ID. They don't give a shit about whether you're here illegally, and many illegal aliens pay taxes in the demonstration of good faith hoping that one day that we'd see immigration reform and a tax record would establish "good residency behavior." The IRS cares only about one thing, that you paid enough taxes this year and on that they should be commended for sticking to their business and not scope-creeping like other agencies.
I believe I did mention tax ID numbers... yes, yes I did.
Render unto Caesar and all that.
Someone should have just told her that you can throw the badge in the microwave for a couple of seconds.
--
BMO
Birth Certificate
Social Security Card
You had "identification papers," you just didn't use them.
Ken
Home. School.
Download every documentary made by man, Khan Academy, the NEA is a joke anyway, and public schools are awful. Get your kid involved in a different activity that connects them with other kids. School is an unmitigated fiasco.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Leave the badges in your locker when school is done for the day.
Be seeing you...
Actually, it seems that most historians believe that 666 referred to Nero. Remember the scope of the New Testament. They expected the 2nd coming to be "right around the corner...all the signs are there". In the meantime, the faithful needed to be warned about Nero and what he was doing. Apparently 666 encodes "Nero" in Hebrew, or something like that. They were big into numerology back then.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Greek, but you're right. Nero is a possible fit for 666. Of course so was George Walker Bush Jr, in ASCII, if I recall correctly, George Walker bushjr (6 char, 6 char, 6 char) add up the ASCII values for each word and you get 666.
And where are they now?
I'll tell you.
They are dead.
--
BMO
Greek, thanks. That's the great thing about numerology (and asstrology)...one can make up whatever one pleases. Nero was pre-ANSI, though, so no ASCII back then. EBCDIC probably.
"ASCII silly question, get a silly ANSI"
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Of course the Christian who came up with the GWB theory argued that an all knowing deity would know ASCII before it was invented, and thus it makes some sort of sense. Cornering a religious loon is like trying to nail jello to a wall. They always find some excuse for the absurdest of the absurd and don't hesitate to resort to "it's one of God's mysteries!" if you really corner em.