Reading, Writing, RFID 650
supabeast! writes "Wired has a story about a public charter school in Buffalo that now tracks student attendence with mandatory RFID tags. The school's director said 'All this relates to safety and keeping track of kids...Eventually it will become a monitoring tool for us..' In the future the system will expand to '...track library loans, disciplinary records, cafeteria purchases and visits to the nurse's office...punctuality...and to verify the time [students] get on and off school buses.' I think that we can all stop calling the privacy advocates paranoid now."
Security cameras... (Score:3, Insightful)
And the problem is???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're really unlucky, you might still be alive when that happens.
Next: the workplace (Score:4, Insightful)
School budgets? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've got endless budgets for in-classroom cameras, RFID name badges and seminars about file-sharing but never enough for field trips, athletic equipment or buses.
It just never seems to improve.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when they get out? "Wicked, I'm not being tracked anymore! I can do whatever I want to do, consequence free!"
I have strong feelings about technology 'absolving' humans from learning about responsibility and accoutability, and the merits of making the right choice when you're not forced at RFID-tag-point to do so.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if its used for a reasonable purpose.
Re:Workaround: (Score:4, Insightful)
Paranoid you say? Paranoid like a fox! (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple this with zero-tolerance policies (Score:5, Insightful)
and our kids are totally fucked. I predict an entire generation of useless paranoid humans who can't bear any responsibility, because of their paralyzing fear of irrational and inequitable punishment.
Even without these tags, I remember the animosity generated among kids when someone gets away with something (beats the system) while other kids get caught red-handed (brought a Swiss army knife to school, because, well, it's useful for stuff).
turnabout (Score:2, Insightful)
</rant>
Re:Workaround: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, whether or not kids should be tracked is a different debate. I don't think there's any doubt that the idea is good on that level. What parent wouldn't feel more secure leaving their kids at school with this in place? Of course it's smart.
But becoming accustomed to being tracked everywhere, anytime, all the time is something that children shouldn't have to grow up blindly accepting.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting children used to Big Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
The privacy advocate (implying most people aren't concerned with privacy) is exactly right. This move's effect (and probably its purpose) is to prepare children to accept ubiquitous monitoring and tracking, so they don't resist it when the cameras are installed on every city block in a few years.
My age group will be ridiculed as paranoid when I complain about the corporations/government start keeping detailed logs on everything I do, everyone I see, everywhere I go, etc. etc. After all, GovernCorp is only doing this for our protection, to keep the TERRORISTS away!!!
Watch as your children are taught to love Big Brother...
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:may I be first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Students have to touch a kiosk screen and then, it can only read your tag at less than 20 inches. So, this makes it just another form of swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard. Having been a teacher, I can tell you this would be wonderful. Automating the roll taking process would save lots of time each class period dealing with absent, late, and excused kids.
Now, in my opinion, they are going a bit overboard with tracking lots of unnecessary information, such as when they boarded the bus. And even with this being just another form of card swiping, all this electronic tracking may still ruffle privacy activists feathers. But one things for sure, it's definitely not 1984.
The real reason this is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
If my daughter's public school ever decided to do this, I will be the first parent to refuse to allow my daughter to carry the device.
An important reminder: the Consitution is not suspended just because you are in school. It still applies, despite what some control freaks would have you believe.
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:1, Insightful)
Freedom of association?
With these tags, the school administration gains the ability to automatically track social interaction between individuals and groups.
When one kid commits suicide, they can bring in everybody who he interacted with recently for counseling.
They can track the geeks and other loaners and single them out for closer monitoring and socialization normalization.
The list of potential abuses is endless.
does the constitution apply to minors? (Score:2, Insightful)
-----
Constitutionally Institutionalized
by daniel mcdonald
I am the unpatriot,
for not standing behind
the man blind.
You are the patriot;
for idling in line
no questions in mind.
Re:As a parent... (Score:3, Insightful)
So...Unless a little scanner gnome follows the kid around at all times, how exactly is this different than swiping a time card or something? Kids in school are already tracked six ways from Sunday:
Get to school? Attendance sheet checkoff.
Don't get to school? Parents called to check on you.
Take out a library book? Scan school ID card.
Want school lunch? Swipe card again.
Use a computer? Log in with personal username.
Doctor's Appointment? Sign a log when you leave, and have your parents called to confirm the appointment.
Etc.
Hopefully you get the idea. RFID tags may not be a good thing, but claiming that they somehow destroy school "privacy" is utterly silly.
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
That Joe is a troublemaker. Hmm, Janie seems to hang out with him a lot, it's right here in the movement logs. Better bring her in and ask her some questions....
How Will The Kids Track RFID? (Score:2, Insightful)
At my school, when a kindergartener had to bring an important piece of paper home to his parents, they stapled it to his shirt so that he wouldn't lose it on the bus.
I'm in college now and have lost an embarrasing number of plastic mugs in class.
If schools can get kids to keep track of their RFID devices, I'll be impressed.
This is ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:School budgets? (Score:3, Insightful)
All I know is a lot of kids in school now don't know how to read and aren't being taught how to read.
Our schools are failing to educate our students.
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Some parents find this distressing.
KFG
Re:The real reason this is bad (Score:3, Insightful)
No. The real problem is, when they grow up, they will be the government. And having grown up with these and similar monitoring schemes, they will have little problem in instituting it.
Re:School budgets? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is irrelevant. The whole point is to prevent history repeating itself. The greivances listed in The Declaration of Independence is beginning to look like a checklist.
The representative government prescribed by the Constitution is one that was intended to be resistant to corruption not corruption-proof. It is still up to the People to keep the country free for their children and grand children.
Re:Security cameras... (Score:1, Insightful)
We trust our kids will be safe when we send them to school. Allowing technology to help will be great. I imagine that the system they use is no different than the RFID badges that many tech companies use, including the one I work at. You scan as you enter and/or leave an area, so your general location can be located at any time. In fact, since the readers (according to the article) require a touch in addition to the proximity, it is actually less of a passive act.
As my daughter gets older and starts to drive, she may not have a cell phone. I would love to recieve an e-mail or call from the school saying that class has started and she has not yet scanned into the building. Tha way I can go see if she had car trouble on the way. Or the staff can do a quick search if she did not return from lunch but still shows in the building. Maybe she is sick in the bathroom or something else is wrong. Or worse yet, a fire is in the building, they can tell if students are trapped in an area, even if it isn't their normal classroom, so the fire department can concentrate on getting them out ASAP.
To reiterate my original point the RFID tags are doing nothing more than the staff could (and should) track without them, but they are either too busy, or in the case of my old school, too lazy, to do the functions themselves.
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got no problem with them using them. I've got no problem with somebody handing me one. Hell, I use one at work to get me in and out of buildings. It's an RFID in my wallet everywhere I go all day long. If they want to keep track of me, using my cellphone logs to tell where I was would be a good way.
My only issue would be if they are used to track physically where the children are in the building at a specific time. So if little Johnny was in the wrong place at the wrong time it can't be used as judge and jury when it comes time to discipline kids (well the RFID says you where there little Johnny). That'd be wrong. To take attendence with, and use to track what kids bought in the lunch line? Geez, do any of you people use a credit card? You realize that this isn't much different then the clock you punch into at work, and the credit card you use to pay for stuff.
I'd be more worried about them tying the proxy logs of where the kids visit on the web in the library then this.
The part I'm curious about is what do you have to do if the kid loses the card? What if they don't have it that day. Is there a way to override it? Is there a way to deal with it?
Kirby
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Technology like this is yet another excuse parents will use to be lazy, whether they realize it or not. As more aspects of behavior are codified into arbitrary systems and enforced by tracking devices, we merely become parts moving about in a de facto machine of regulation. Getting around the regulation will have sufficiently high barriers that people will assume the low-energy path and play along in their miserable barely tolerable lives.
Re:Security cameras... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is for my own's sake. I trust my children. I don't trust yours.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, children have every right that adults have. It is up to adults to teach children how to live within those rights responsibly.
Re:Security cameras... (Score:5, Insightful)
It should scare the HELL out of everyone to have this going on. It starts small with things you really don't object to because on the surface they seem to help... so you give up a little freedom for security, then a little more, then a little more, until something happens that you think is going too far then you find out you no longer have a choice in the matter because you gave up your right to decide bit by bit. We all need to take responsibility on our OWN shoulders, grow up and get everyone elses noses the hell out of our business. People in the Soviet Union are more free than we are! But if you like being under constant scrutiny you can always move to China.
"1984" is alive and well in 2003 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think their tone will change?
What I want to know is... (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, that's great that they want to know who is in the building and what time they got there, but it strikes me as odd that teachers could not perform the same duties using a pencil and piece of paper.
The focus of education is on academics, not punctuality. Unless every child there is doing Calculus, reading through one of the top 100 literature lists, knows where France is on a map, can dissect a pig, is able to competently complete a line rendering, and knows all that junk they teach you in home economics, the people behind this system are wasting these kid's time and their parent's money.
Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them! (Score:5, Insightful)
"School" as we know it was designed to train the children of subsistence farmers to be effective factory workers. Rather than getting up at dawn, working with their families at their own pace, and doing whatever it was subsistence farmers did for fun, the Industrial age required workers trained to wake up at the same time every day, respond to stimuli such as whistles ordering the start and end of the working day, and so on. A few generations of such schooling later, and it's become our cultural norm. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, the notion of schooling was nothing short of, well, revolutionary.
Fast-forward to today. We have Industrial-era schooling in an Security-era economy. Your post ("I don't see why kids should have it any better") is evidence of this - you seem to think that having the Panopticon in the workplace and government is a Bad Thing. And yet, you're learning; you're adapting, as evidenced in your next paragraph:
> When you have kids you'll take whatever steps are necessary to protect them. If that means they have to live without much privacy for 18 or so years of their life then so be it! They have approx. 70 more to have all the privacy they want.
Actually, they won't. But you're correct that the RFID-chipping of kids is a Good Thing. Just as you know no limits when it comes to keeping track track them for their protection, your employer and government has an interest in your well-being. Granted, the interest isn't as overarching as the relationship between parent and child; more like rancher and cattle. But show me a rancher who doesn't take care of his cattle, and I'll show you a rancher who's out of business in a year.
But back to school. We moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and we designed schools to raise children who would take us there. We now stand at the transitional generation from the industrial age to the security age. By getting the kids accustomed to the Panopticon at an early age, they'll graduate from school better-prepared to take part in the security society.
300 years ago, old farmers probably hated having to get up at oh-dark-hundred to go to the factory as much as you seem to dislike your zero-privacy expectation at work.
As a result of our transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society, we have a wide range of consumer goods ranging from broadband pr0n to advances in medical treatment that have doubled the human lifespan and nearly tripled the useful part of the human lifespan.
Today, you and I grumble, and your kids might even chafe (initially) at being chipped. Within a generation or so, our presecurity culture will also be abandoned, and 300 years from now, our descendants will look on us and our presecuity culture as just as primitive as we now imagine our preindustrial subsistence-farming ancestors.
The logical next step (Score:5, Insightful)
The original supporters of public education were largely supporting it for the purpose of subjugating the public. They saw mandatory public education as a means to subvert those of higher intellect, and to "level the playing field" so that people would be more easily managaged. Additionally, it was seen as a tool to sundivide people, and to cause folks to see artificial social barriers (such as age) where they were not, by dividing them up into such age-based groups.
When you consider that people throughout our history have been doing college-level work at around 12 (Benjamin Franklin, anyone?), this isn't in the least bit inconceiveable. Franklin wasn't a savant or anything like that - he had quite a few contemporaries: Washinton, Jefferson, Adams and the like. They also started adulthood at a younger age. (Franklin was a printer's apprentice at 12, and was doing graduate-level work, ot a degree, at that time).
When you contrast this historical treatment of education, vs. modern situations, where there are often intelligent people that do poorly in school, or simply do medicorely because they don't have the desire to invest themselves in something that is incredibly slow paced, and teens in general feel distant and confused, it's no small wonder.
This is just one step closer towards the Governing class being able to truely and completely subvert people: we're well on our way to thoughtcrime. I give he US (and maybe other countries too?) no more than 20 years until there is mandatory RFID-taging of every student, and maybe 30 years for every citizen - all globally locateable. All in the name of "stopping terrorists", and the easier management and control of the populace.
Doesn't make those "crazy" biblical philosophy folks seem that far off with the "mark of the beast". I guess now would probably be the right time to mention that Christianity has a strong centric emphasis on the individual, if I wanted to be flamed and start the trolls a' rolling.
Concept of Security (Score:5, Insightful)
And they're doing this in the name of security, correct? So, every time he loses his ID card, you have to drop what you're doing to act on it, pony up $20.00 and he misses a day of school? What if the local bully decides to take his card from him every week? Is this really a sensible solution at all? If he loses his ID on the day of a big test, does he get the chance to make it up? Can you think of ways this could be abused?
It sounds like you need to reconsider the school your son attends. When their need to track him trumps his learning, the system needs revision.
Virg
Re:Paranoid you say? Paranoid like a fox! (Score:2, Insightful)
seem far fetched?
The article was right, once we have taught children that this is acceptible behaviour then they will think this is the norm and that it is allright. Eventually when they are grown up they will implement worse things.
Soon there will be no freedom.
If you dont fight for your rights someone will come and take them away.
DoublePlusUnGood (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh the irony.
Good to see the guys at MiniTrue working hard..
Paternalism in Government is the Issue (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rights come with responsibilities. Children are inheriently irresponsible, precisely because they are children, thus they lack rights. Until they come of an age to take care of the associated repsonibilities they do NOT have the rights an adult has.
You live in fantasy land if you truely believe children have every right an adult does.
Even the Bill of Rights is limited in it's application to children.
It is the job of the child to earn those responsibilites, and the adults should nuture and enable the child to be able to handle responsibilities. However, should the parent not do so, the child is at fault when they come of majority age if they do not appropriately live withing the rights and responsibilities.
A child should learn to deal with those rights and responsibilites irrespective of the parents and the upbringing they receive. The fault lies with the child, not with the parent. While we may condemn the parent for the lack of parenting, when the child becomes an adult, it is the former child whom is punished, not the adult that failed to instruct the child.
Kirby
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Telling kids that "drugs are bad" a couple times per year is in no way the same as tracking their movements continuously.
Trust me, kids will both understand and know that tracking them is a violation of the rights of an adult. However, it's very important that kids learn that kids aren't adults, and they don't have the rights adults have. They get them as they earn them.
Which rights would those be? Life? Liberty? Persuit of Happyness? If people needed to "earn" the right to vote we wouldn't have such sleezeballs in office. Hell people don't "earn" any of the rights you mention, they just get older.
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2, Insightful)
Like most nerds, geeks, dorks, whatever, I got nailed occasionally by one of the other students. Because this happened fairly regularly (in other words, more than once a year). The faculty got tired with my complaints and just tried to get the situation out of their hair as soon and easily as possible. This ment that anyone could do pretty much anything and get away with a slap on the wrist. Such notable exploits include, being assaulted (almost sexually, I was smart enough to fight back just before it got that far) while using bathroom and being threated with weapons such as small knifes. The teachers and administrative staff knew about these things right after they happened without cameras and tracking tags.
The people that perpetrated these actions admited to doing so to the teachers and/or administrators. Nothing happend. I mean absolutly nothing other than a quick "don't do it again" scolding. To aggrivate the situation, since the faculty knew I liked to complain so much about others abusing me, they made a special effort to "correct" me whenever I did anything out of line.
Re:Misleading story (both wired and slashdot) (Score:3, Insightful)
In the article:
"Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system would be abused.
"(It's) the same as swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard, both of which are commonplace occurrences," Straitiff said."
(then, later in the article)
""It's as private as anything else can be when your information is stored on a server," he said."
- - -
So okay, it's no worse than mag-strip cards or photo ID cards AT THE POINT OF ENTRY TO THE CLASSROOM.
But suppose, just suppose, your server gets compromised. Happens every day, as we all know, to banks and other supposedly high-security establishments, so it's safe to say that school databases can and will be compromised.
Now, the person who compromises the server gets names, addresses and faces from the database, prints them out in a handy reference*, then sets up a little scanner at a nearby arcade to read the tags of kids as they come in. Certainly conceivable.
The person then hangs out at the arcade during school hours and, when one of these kids shows up while ditching school, the abductor walks up to the child and loudly announces in a voice of authority "Jimmie Johnson, you should be in 3rd period right now! Come with me." The child assumes the person is a school authority (after all, they recognized them and knew their name, right?) and goes with the adult.
The child is taken into a car (people don't stop them; after all, this person recognized the kid, and the kid isn't fighting it, right?) and is driven somewhere secluded where they are molested and killed.
The whole point of this isn't that you get tracked -- it's that you get tracked WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE, and that RFIDs allow anyone who comes within reading range of the tags to read information from it.
At least having a photo ID in a pocket or a mag-strip card in your pocket means nobody can track you without getting it out of your pocket first -- so if some adult starts claiming they know you, but don't know your name, you can start screaming bloody murder in hopes than an adult will intervene and prevent your abduction.
Sigh.
*Arguably, this could be done without the use of RFIDs, since a person could break into the server and print this data out and this would be sufficient. However, without RFIDs the abductor would need to stand near the entryway holding the printout and checking out faces, which would be highly suspicious behavior. With RFIDs, the perp could sit in a car nearby and wait for the scanner to pick up one of the kids. They cross-reference it with their printout, then go into the arcade without holding any reference material -- and march straight towards the child in question. It's a lot more commanding and authoritative, and much more likely to be believed by witnesses in the vicinity.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:1, Insightful)
You have your thinking on backwards. "You have nothing to hide if you are innocent" = guilty until proven innocent. In the US, we are innocent until proven guilty. If people are, by default, innocent then there is no need to monitor them all the time.
No sparrow falls (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to the good ole days... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also this begs the question, if the RFID requirment is so harmless, then what are you going to do when a kid or parent refuses,
How much you'd want to bet that they'd call the parents extreme!
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
The laws regarding participation in government are relevant to the operation of government and not so much to individual liberty. The other laws regarding cars, alcohol, and guns are merely naive attempts at protecting chilren from responsibility and only postpone the inevitable lessons they will learn about life. These laws actually are only subtly different to what is going on with the RFID tracking devices. The RFID tags are just one more way to subjugate children into a second-class.
Further, the age-based laws that you cite are generally regarding priviledges that can be assigned largely independently of age. However, our society has decided to take the lazy route in setting the criteria, which is very unfortunate but telling about human nature when defining new ways in which the government will operate.
Fundamentally, however, it stands that children do have the same rights and individual liberties as adults, and they should be respected for their humanity.
Even the Bill of Rights is limited in it's application to children.
Where? I'd like to see you point out which amendment is constrained by age in the Bill of Rights.
Why it's bad -- thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
First there are the people who are breaking the rules, and who vaguely claim "privacy" as the reason to cover up their real reason. Unfortunately, these people just give ammo to the other foolish idea that "if you are doing the right thing, you have nothing to worry about".
The second group thinks it through a little deeper, and realizes the long term dangers of each little encroachment. What are the possible abuses? They will occur. What then?
If every movement of a child is tracked, who might want that data? Parents? Advertisers, even? Suppose the budget just didn't come through this year. Why provide the temptation for abuse? Suppose Johnny's aunt works in the main office, and isn't too keen on him dating that black girl because "it just isn't right". Funny how she's always suddenly walking past whenever they're together. Or suppose the administration decides to take a proactive approach to discipline by keeping an extra close eye on any student with any problematic history... including notifying the parents of the new friends that Johnny makes while trying for what he thought was a "fresh start" in high school. Is that right? How did Johnny's name even get on that list? Was that his aunt's doing? Or did a jealous classmate hack the central computer? Hey, it's like in the War Games movie, but you can do a hell of a lot more than just change your grade!
Now consider the psychological effects of living under a constant watchful eye. Keep in mind that you are not really acting morally until you do the right thing when you are NOT watched... that's really what matters. When do the students get to practice that?
Have you ever been driving alone on a road where you *knew* for certain that there were no cops for miles? Many teenagers (and some adults too..) would drive like maniacs, until the time they hit a deer, or nearly soiled their pants when that cardboard box in the road came out of nowhere... and they realize the reason for the speed limit laws. Learning that there are reasons behind most rules is part of growing up, and if the only reason for obedience is "because I said so, and I'll KNOW if you break the rules", won't it take a very long time for a kid to grow up?
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and your analogy with cattle & ranchers? You got it backwards. We are the ranchers and the politicians are the cattle. We tell them what to do, they listen to us. Yeah, it may seem like it's getting close to what you described, but once the pendulum swings over enough, it'll swing back and the people will be firmly in the driver's seat.
And with regards to children, how are little kids gonna be able to grow up and realize that not all people are bad people, if they start with the assumption that all people are bad people, even fellow students? Potential relationships will be lost, friends won't be made, etc all because tommy is a yellow threat while jimmy is red.
The worst thing is your comment reads like you are ok with all of this stuff going down. You've just resigned yourself to living in a place where freedom is a memory, and privacy an afterthought.
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. I'm not threatened by your willingness to pick up a gun to defend what you perceive as your rights. There are very few of you, your numbers are shrinking, and should your kind actually start firing that gun, your lives will be shortened quickly.
In our presently insecure society, the security meme propagates extremely well. It is outcrowding, and will continue to outcrowd, the privacy meme. People need to be led. They're willing to give their lives for security, never mind their privacy. Once the privacy meme has been effectively neutralized and a secure society established, there'll be a few stragglers, but they'll be recognized as paranoids or sociopaths, and given medical treatment to help them overcome their affliction.
> This boils down to our right to be anonymous in our speech and in our beliefs. Lack of privacy means lack of anonymity. A lack of anonymity means a lack of freedom in speech. A lack of freedom of speech means that we no longer control our own lives.
Anonymity (or even Slashdotesque pseudonymity) does not mean that you are not accountable to others for your actions, words, or thoughts. Privacy is not a shield for lawlessness; anonymity is not a shield for privacy.
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them (Score:1, Insightful)
Best Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone else spot this one?
Huxley [huxley.net], anyone?