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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.
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...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.
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.
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BMO
"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.
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.
And how would you get back into the school the next day?
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."
It's not about a working tag or not. It's about COMPLIANCE. They will let her use a tag with the batteries removed, as long as she doesn't make waves and looks like she's OK with the system.
I don't have a sig.
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
When I was in school (public school, pre-university) there was no student ID. We just went to class, learned, did after school activities (if desired) and then went home. Alas, the public schools have become police states with lockdowns, gates, guards, and metal detectors. No wonder students are not learning.
Heck, I was trusted enough to be given a physical key to get into our computer lab (8 Apple II's) in the afternoon to work on them.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
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.
The condition on that "compromise" was that she and her parents would not share their objections to the program with others (my recollection was that it actually went so far as to ask them to endorse the program, but I may be remembering that incorrectly). In addition, they were not allowed to tell anyone else that they had reached this accommodation with the school district.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison