Judge Issues Temporary Order Blocking Expulsion For Refusing To Wear RFID Tag 305
An anonymous reader writes with an update about the student refusing to wear an RFID badge in Texas. From the article: "A district court judge for Bexar County has granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) to ensure that Andrea Hernandez, a San Antonio high school student from John Jay High School's Science and Engineering Academy, can continue her studies pending an upcoming trial. The Northside Independent School District (NISD) in Texas recently informed the sophomore student that she would be suspended for refusing to wear a 'Smart' Student ID card embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking chip."
From the original article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Number (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:From the original article... (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed the part where the school also required that the parents and student must vocally support the RFID program, even with a crippled badge.
You also missed the part where wearing said badge -crippled or not- implies acceptance of the program to the other students, forcing compliance.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can understand her (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:1, Insightful)
That's courageous of you to have no problem with someone-who-isn't-you being required to wear a badge. But what's the upside of making them wear the badge?
Turns out the school had no problem with the student not wearing the badge, too! There is no upside; the conflict is about nothing. They outed themselves as requiring the badges for no reason and .. shit, you just can't make up stuff this crazy. If the father of the student is to be believed...
Re:From the original article... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a student is absent more than X days, the school is denied funding for that student (and it's easier ot just expel them and wipe their hands clean than anything).
They schools also play games where students get transferred to another school, so that they don't count on the rolls and the clock is reset for the second school.
Ultimately, education starts at home.
Re:From the original article... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, as others have pointed out, it would require them to endorse it.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
, the Code of Conduct superseded legal rights. You can sign away legal rights in a contract.
Utter bogus bullshit. You BELIEVED that nonsense? It's been ruled, again and again, that you cannot sign away any of your rights with a contract. No TOS, no code of conduct, no contract, no employer's regulations, NOTHING supersedes your rights as established by law. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to be secure in your person and your home, all of that is LAW, and nothing supersedes it.
Good God, how can ANYONE roll over and play dead, just because some arrogant bastard tells them to? This is America, not some warlord's regime in the outback of Africa.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
The lawyer taught you wrong. You cannot sign away your rights. Tone? Did you say tone? Try this: do some loan sharking. Get some chump to agree that if he doesn't pay you back, you can break his knees. Get it in writing. Get a nice, legal contract, get it notarized, witnessed, get all the trimmings for your contract.
When he fails to make a payment or two, go visit him. Bring your ball bat, or whatever, and inform the police that you may need some protection while enforcing your rights under the contract. Tell the cops that you expect your client may resist having his knees broken.
Try it. The contract supersedes his rights, isn't that what you just said?
If your claim about a lawyer teaching you that shit is true, you need to get your tuition back. The rat bastard LIED TO YOU!!
Re:From the original article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I fear that your attitude will be the prevailing one. In the future I foresee myself being the outcast because I /don't/ share everything about my entire life on Facebook/Twitter/Whatever, because I don't let my cellphone announce where I am at all times.
I'm not worried about the government tracking me. Hell, if they want to, they will. There's not a lot I can do about it. It's everything ELSE tracking me. It's vast databases containing vast amounts of information about all of us. It's large corporations who use you and I as products.
Look, I hate getting those things in the mail addressed to "Resident". But I hate even more the ones addressed to me directly, from people I've never heard about. And how do those happen? Because someone somewhere took YOUR privacy and sold it.
You say "you are no one". Untrue. You are data. Data people can use. Data people can make money off. If you're ok being treated as a product, that's your business. I am not.
I'm sorry.... I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the student's religion requires that they not wear such articles, then I think it's a pretty clear case that the student should not be going to that school.
Schools, even public ones, are permitted to have dress codes, and wearing a specially issued id tag on your clothes while you are on school property is really not that big a deal. There's shouldn't be concern about being tracked off of school property because because one's location through RFID can only be tracked if they are in close proximity of an RFID reader that understands what the tag is, and who it belongs to. The RFID readers which are connected to the database of RFID tags owned by the school aren't going to be anywhere but on school property, so that's the only place where one is ever going to be tracked.
There should be no more concern that this could be used to invade somebody's privacy than an RFID card issued to an employee to get into a company building during non-office hours could reasonably represent a privacy invasion for that employee.
Re:From the original article... (Score:5, Insightful)
The student was offered a security card with no battery and chip, but still refused. I'd have some sympathy if the college hadn't offered this option
And you'd have some sympathy for Rosa parks, if the driver hadn't offered her the option of standing, instead of leaving the bus?
It might be work, if the college promised to have no battery, chip, or RFID in the cards of all students.
Otherwise, it's just a continuation of the status quo.
Attempting to work out an exception for the person with the courage to refuse and mount a legal challenge with great personal cost, without changing the rules for everyone, doesn't rectify the social injustice; it just results in a situation that is even more unfair,....
Oh, and also.... if you have one or two people with no RFID chip, they will be easy to track.
I'm surprised they don't work out a deal with that company that lets business monitor foot traffic in their stores by tracking individual cell phones.
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Then is there never a time to say "enough?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Science (Score:0, Insightful)
They're doing the best they can do at the moment while staying legal, rather than be a complete moron like you and frying property that isn't theirs. You're just as bad as the "idiots in charge", except they seem smarter than you...
Outside Agencies (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that if each kid is required to carry their RFID card whenever they are in school they will also carry that card the vast majority of the time. Now I own a store and want to know when a certain student enters my store what prevents me from installing RFID readers in my store and reading the cards and developing a database from there.
For example: when ever card number NNNNN is in the store I have more shoplifting so I ban the student carrying that card from my store with no proof they stole anything.
We could go on from there.
Re:From the original article... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother"
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The school wants the kids to fake attendance. That th secret here. US schools are paid by attendance. Teachers taking roll call is too hard to fake without overt fraud. An electronic system allows (and greatly motivates) the students to devise systems to fake attendance, which the school can then act surprised about when the system is discovered. Much better money that way.
Re:Simple Science (Score:2, Insightful)
They're doing the best they can do at the moment while staying legal...
So exposure to certain, harmless forms of EM radiation is now illegal because it might damage the school property that you are required to wear? Not to mention the possibility of using a passive metal screen to simply block the signal as some do with passports...seems you were not smart enough to consider that possibility even when it was pointed out to you.
Re:From the original article... (Score:3, Insightful)
But this RFID card is mandatory, which is the problem.
Attending this school is a choice, their religious beliefs are what are an issue here.
Re:From the original article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not being tagged like a criminal or an animal is a religious belief?