Japanese Schoolchildren to be Tagged with RFID 684
oostevo writes "CNET has reported that Japanese schoolchildren in the city of Osaka will be tagged with RFID tags. Apparently this is in addition to the trial program in Tabe that The Register reported earlier, where parents can track their children on their way to school."
Fun in the school (Score:4, Informative)
2. Change it for yours when you're out of school.
3. Enter the max. number of shops/places considered "dangerous" for you in one day.
4. Restore your RFID before going home.
5. Make fun of the poor bastard the next day of class
No profit but lots of fun
Used in the US for years, but for cattle (Score:4, Informative)
With a few slight mods to the screen formats, the Online Herd Management System should be applicable to schools.
Thank God (Score:3, Informative)
Obscure Simpsons reference.
Seriously though, one has to wonder about the ethics of something like tagging humans. The example I think of is the debate in ethics about 'coercion'... which is usually wrong except in rare circumstances such as protecting your own children. RFID tracking might be fine if a parent wants to have it for their young children, but under no circumstances could be mandated for adults (which I would argue, is more like 13 and older)
It's called "reducto ad absurdum" (Score:4, Informative)
Denmark? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:With all due respect (Score:3, Informative)
I know some flamebaiter below you already mentioned this typo, but it's kind of funny in the context of the story.
Re:Anime makes sense to me now (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Error correction (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, the the Kinki Bureau of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (an organization you probably would not refer to as "school authorities," which happens to be located in the city of Osaka, Osaka prefecture) will be testing RFID tags with the cooperation of an elementary school in the city of Tabe, Wakayama prefecture.
You can read an accurate article here. [japantoday.com]
How Japanese Students Get to School (Score:5, Informative)
Almost no kids in Japanese public schools are driven to school by their parents. It is not against the rules, but is generally discouraged. Public schools generally do not have buses, though some students will take a bus if their parents can afford it and they live far from school. Middle and high school students might bike or take a train, but those are often off-limits for elementary students, who must either walk or come by bus (Kids generally go to the local elementary/middle school, but there are exams for high school, which might require a long trip every day).
In my small rural town (pop. 7000), and in many other places, elementary and middle school students who are walking/biking must follow certain routes to and from school. Teachers are posted at locations along the route to check up on the students. But, they can't be everywhere. The middle school in my town has recently had problems with middle-aged men approaching female students. Students are out in the open for a much longer period of time than in the US and are thus bigger targets.
That said, I don't want to see my students given RFID tags. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it became very popular here. Elementary and middle school students already have tags with their full name and the school's name on it which must be worn at all times. Also, nearly all middle and high schools have uniforms. With all this required attire, it's hard for students to go someplace after school that they're not supposed to be, and this is part of the point. People will even sometimes complain to a school if they see its students doing something they don't approve of. There is already a lot of monitoring in place here, and I don't see this as being a big shift.
Related article -
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle
PS - It's not that important, but the CNET article is poorly written and unclear. Osaka city and Wakayama prefecture are completely seperate places, but someone who knows very little about Japan might think that Osaka city is the small "town" in Wakayama where the RFID tags are being tested. Anyone have a better article?
Re:But Where's the Danger? (Score:3, Informative)
I thought Japan was an incredibly safe country.
Yes, was. And still is by the rest of the world's standard, I expect, with a national crime rate around 1.5% IIRC. But as another poster mentioned, the smaller crime rate makes incidents stand out all that much more when they do happen. (For example: residents of e.g. Washington D.C. or Chicago, when was the last time you were surprised by reading about a murder in the newspaper? Yet such events come as a severe shock to the Japanese.) In particular, there has been a relative rash of schoolchild kidnappings recently, and this is probably one of the motivating factors in implementing tracking systems like this. There are others as well (though on a private scale), such as GPS "beacons" that can transmit the child's location over the keitai network.
Re:progress (Score:5, Informative)
Battle Royale [imdb.com]
The basic plot is this... students have rebelled against the government and "adults", so the govt invoked the battle royale act. Each year, one class of year 9 school students is shipped to a remote island and told that they have to kill each other off. They're all 'tagged' with exploding necklaces that also function as tracking devices for those monitoring the "game". If any more than a single student remains alive after the final (third) day, all the necklaces explode...
It comes down to whether you could kill your own friends...
Re:People may complain but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Media attention to the contrary, kidnapping isn't that common, and when it does occur it's usually done by a parent or relative. The introduction of Amber Alert programs has greatly increased media coverage of kidnappings; an unfortunate side effect of this is a mistaken perception that kidnappings are common and increasing occurrances.
Banning school athletics programs would save far more children's lives. So would banning automobiles, eliminating all foods that include potential allergens, and placing all children in gated institutions until 18, just to think of a few examples.
Maybe things are different where you live, but everywhere I've been, children who are prevented from learning how to handle risk tend towards one of two extremes. Either they react by doing incredibly stupid things (unprotected sex, reckless driving, etc.) and tend to get hurt, or they have no idea how to handle adult risks and responsibilities once they grow up and are no longer safely ensconced in bubble wrap.
I do realize that when people have children, the genetic imperative hijacks behaviour to varying degree. Maybe this made sense back when society was simpler, risks more easily understood and addressed, and the capacity for smothering and control limited. That does not make it a rational or effective strategy for raising children to be functional adults in today's society.
Patrick Henry did not learn the courage to utter "give me liberty or give me death" by being raised by parents whose mantras were "think of the children" and "if it saves just one child...".
Re:How Japanese Students Get to School (Score:2, Informative)
Not only could I find a better article, I couldn't find any Japanese media covering this story.
I was able to find a news article(Japanese) [nikkei.co.jp]from a week ago that a Osaka based company called NAJ is going to offer such service starting August, but that is hardly news, because company like Dai-Nihon printing already has such prodct.
The Register article writes of a "telecom ministry" but IIRC there is no such ministry in Japan. Maybe they meant the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which does some RFID research regarding privacy issues [soumu.go.jp] on their own in joint with the Ministry of Public Management and Home Affairs (link Japanese).
I wonder where CNET/Register got their story.
what it's like in Japan (Score:2, Informative)
"This is happening here because of an epidemic of kidnappings and murders in the last few years. Parents are really scared. Just this week there were two stories in the news, one a middle aged school teacher who tried to abduct two girls, and the other a 50 something policeman caught in molestation. Every week brings more stories. It has me scared too.
"On top of that, the 'youth culture' here is really out of control. Parents are just scared silly that their kids are heading into Tokyo to work the streets for quick yen. The girls selling sex, of course, and the boys doing muggings and the like.
"There are real problems and parents are desperate for any kind of solution."
Re:progress (Score:2, Informative)
I recall hearing about a supermarket that experimented with tracking devices in the shopping carts (can't remember where). It recorded your path through the store, how long you spent in front of any particular display, etc. Then when you got to the checkout line and produced your loyalty/discount card - it attached your name to your shopping behavior.
Given the number of people that use credit/debit cards instead of cash, anyone with access to the data can already find out a lot about your movements. Take a trip - it's possible to determine where you went, where you ate, where you stayed, how long you stayed, etc. No RFID required.
I got my first personal taste of how much information about my life is available when my wife and I were expecting our first child. About 6-7 months into the pregnancy we started getting junk mail for diaper services, coupons for baby formula, and baby food, as well as other baby related advertising crap. After the birth, one company even sent a birthday card that had the birth date and sex of our child on it. Turns out the doctor's office was selling their patient list to a number of companies.
Fun stuff.
Re:progress (Score:3, Informative)
A minor correction - a GPS receiver doesn't track anything. Each GPS satellite broadcasts a signal that contains a time stamp. The clocks on the satellites are synchronized to the nth degree, but because of the distance, the time stamps vary by a tiny amount by the time they reach the receiver. By comparing the variances, the receiver calculates the distance from it to several satellites, and with that information it triangulates its position relative to the satellites.
Having said that, it's also quite common to have a transmitter sitting beside the GPS receiver, that sends out a tracking signal. That's how things like Lojack work - they use GPS to fix their position, and then send that position to Lojack. But the tracking signal is a separate thing, not part of GPS.
Remember, GPS was designed by the military, and it was an important part of the design that to make the receiver entirely passive, so things like submarines could get a fix on their position without broadcasting that position to the Bad Guys at the same time.
Re:Makes sense for Japanese parents (Score:5, Informative)
In all the countries of the world, except the United States of America and Somalia, they do.
Article 16 [unicef.org]
1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.
Re:progress (Score:3, Informative)
When I was at school a common thing that teachers would do when they did not know who was the guilty party in breaking the rules was to punnish the whole class. It seems to be that the Battle Royal Act is an extension of that kind of logic.
Lets bask in your hate why don't we (Score:4, Informative)
That's funny, because there was nothing anti-american in my post. I simply named the 2 countries on earth who refused to ratify the declaration on the rights of children.
so, you're saying that kids of Iran, Iraq (two years ago), Afghanistan (3 years ago) Syria, and the like all have a right to privacy?
Yes, they had a right to it.
Maybe their rights were being violated...but they had rights.
Where's the UN on the Sudan? Rwanda?
When the genocides started in Rwanda in 1994, the U.N. tried to move in with a peacekeeping force, but the move was blocked by the U.S. because they didn't think the deathtoll of hundreds of thousands of africans was high enough to risk U.S. soldier casualties that might result from their participation.
Where's Unicef on female genital mutilation?
Here. [unicef.org]