No, seriously, that's what our most skullfucking loony of citizens are up in arms about now. http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/student-expelled-for-refusing-spychip/ Is there anyway we can nuke this site from orbit?
RFID is notoriously insecure. Some smartass kid is probably already planning to fuck with the system, and I applaud the inevitable implementation of a fully interactive Marauder's Map webpage that lets you just arbitrarily change peoples' RFID codes.
Our collected media is currently undergoing a small meltdown over "Cookiegate". Apparently one of the medium-sized political parties with a medium sized election budget used cookies to serve targeted ads at swing-voters. You know, the exact same cookies every single media website uses to serve ads to their visitors - but the media has no clue what cookies are, so words like spyware and the like are thrown about with wild abandon. Depressing.
There are a lot of people who interpret the prophesied "Mark of the Beast" as a microchip embedded in the body that will function as an identifier and link to your financial accounts, etc. Without the mark nobody may buy or sell, etc. The badge doesn't say that. It says "I'm a student at this school and what they say goes and since I want to be a student at this school I'll do as I'm reasonably told".
My kid has to have an identification card with him in the school and I'm ok with that. But wearing an RFID chip? No fucking way. They're not prisoners, not zoo animals and they should have the Constitutional protections that anyone has in a public space. Frankly, if they gave my kid one, the first thing I'd do is smash the chip with a sledgehammer.
What? Schools are responsible for supervising and caring for a whole lot of kids. The supervision is constant and there is no privacy protection for a students location in the school. If a kid is in school they are already in an environment where they should be supervised and their location should be known. Adding a little technology to the mix to let that be done more efficiently isn't a game changer or a privacy invasion. Kids at school should have about zero expectation of privacy regarding their location in the building.
Point of interest - what Constitutional protection is that? It's not unreasonable search and seizure because it is reasonable. It's not a First Amendment issue - no one's rights to speech, assembly, press, or religion are being infringed. Anyone complaining about this is just complaining to be contrary - there is absolutely no provable harm to it, and since there is potential benefit the net result is a positive so people should shut the fuck up.
RFID chips can easily be copied and cracked, not to mention that these chips are taken off-campus because you have to have your badge to get on-campus. So not only is the technology not necessarily secure, the fucking second it could be used to track my kid off campus then it's a no-go.
First, RFID chips aren't secure. For example, http://consumerist.com/2009/07/18/state-department-admits-rfid-passports-are-insecure/. There's dozens of cases where they've been found to be insecure. They can be read by most anyone with the right technology. So the same technology that is used to track kids could be misused by other kids or even people outside the school system entirely. Second, they can be duplicated (hell, you can find how on youtube in 3 seconds). Again, many cases where they've been duplicated. This one bothers me more than the first, because I understand how school administrations work. It would be really easy to steal/clone someone's chip to do something illegal at school and let the other guy take the fall for it. The victim would be guilty until proven innocent. Think that's far fetched? Then you really don't know kids nowadays. Third, as I mentioned before, they're part of an ID card that you need to have to get on campus (at least you need that card in our school system). That means they have the ability to be tracked off campus and that's most definitely an unreasonable search and seizure. So now you have to design a system where the RFID chip only is given at the school doors to get around an unreasonable search because I have every right to not allow that kind of shit in my home. I don't even need a reason - those are my rights. So I'll let you figure out a way to actually hand out the RFID chips to kids every single school day as they enter the school grounds. Until then, take a big swig of shut the fuck up. (Fyi, that last sentence wouldn't have been posted until you went entirely overboard on your last sentence. So maybe next time have a little more respect, asshole.) Fourth, every time technology like this is supposedly used for "good", we find out that it gets misused. For example, there were many different districts caught shortening the yellow lights after red light cameras were installed. Or the school system caught spying on kids in their houses with the cameras on the computers. Or school administrators watching teen girls via the camera systems secretly installed in bathrooms. Virtually every fucking time something like this comes up, it's always "think of the children", then we find out that the benefit to the public is secondary to the benefit of someone else's wallet. I'm not afraid of technology. I have no trust in those who administer it. Fifth, I believe that there's an innate right to privacy as part of "liberty" and I get fucking tired of seeing it eroded at every turn. It's the same reason I don't like school uniforms, red light cameras, the TSA airport checks and much of that bullshit. http://www.aclu.org/blog/content/dont-let-schools-chip-your-kids
No, because I don't respect your opinion. It's cowardly and stupid. You can believe that, but it isn't true.
Can't deal with the issues, so you need to go for personal attacks? Good job! Now go sit in the corner with brett and let the adults do the talking. You lost. Bye-bye!
Just throwing this out there for the "zomg, they're tracking my kids everywhere" crowd: the RFID probably in use has a range of 1 meter. It's an okay way to loosely track people in school that will promptly not work since altering or cloning tags is trivial. But it is not possible for your child's school ID to be used to track them outside of the school unless you assume they're in cahoots with everyone in a massive conspiracy to put RFID readers every three meters linked to the same tracking system. But hey, my highschool converted to smart card IDs that were used for two factor computer authentication like.. twelve years ago now. But yeah Extarbags, mandatory displayed school ID has been pretty common for over a decade. Our schools are pretty much treated like tiny prisons you send your child to.
It's not personal, I'm not saying you're cowardly and stupid, I'm saying the attitude of "We need to hide from the people who are supposed to be watching us!" is cowardly. There's no reason for it. None. Being able to locate a student on school grounds is absolutely reasonable, and not an invasion of privacy because none is expected. They're not being videotaped in the bathrooms or locker rooms, no one's wiretapping their texts or phone conversations (which they shouldn't even be having during school hours anyway because there is literally nothing you need to know during that time that isn't given to you by the school itself) - it's an absolutely reasonable method to keep tabs on students. Like Kildorn just pointed out, RFID is very short-range. As in "we can tell when this card passes within a meter of the sensor". What this would likely be used for - let's take theoretical student Spanky: - 8:10am, Spanky enters through the main door of Building 101. - 8:17am, Spanky enters classroom 101-C for Mr. Schnitzengruben's German II class. - 8:40am, Spanky leaves classroom 101-C - 8:42am, Spanky enters bathroom 101-lv_1 - 8:46am, Spanky leaves bathroom 101-lv_1 - 8:51am, Spanky enters classroom 101-C (possible flag - why did it take Spanky five minutes to get from the bathroom to his class? If this is a pattern of behavior, maybe have a guidance counselor talk to Spanky about why he's loitering about instead of getting back to class) And so on and so forth. Patterns of movement that can be tracked to note anomalies which might present an issue that needs to be brought to someone's attention. If Spanky is asking to use the bathroom in every one of his classes and missing a total of an hour of class time per day -- that's a sign of absenteeism and should be addressed by a guidance counselor. "Hey, is there a reason you're continually leaving every class for about ten minutes? Are the teachers not holding your interest? Do you have a medical condition we should be aware of in case something happens and you need treatment?" It's perfectly reasonable, and provides no benefit to anyone outside the system. The RFID tag wouldn't mean anything to any other sensor that the student would happen to pass within range of.
Yah, because kids don't have breaks or anything? Clearly we have a compelling interest in preventing kids from texting during lunch. Also, where in your scenario is "fucknut kid clones Sparky's RFID card, does shit that's against the rules, laughs his ass off when Sparky gets expelled"? Cause that's gonna happen.
Nice try, but your response is rather lacking. 1. It doesn't address that RFID signals can be intercepted at distances a lot longer than 1 yard. For instance, the passport system isn't supposed to work at great distances, but if you had bothered to read any of the links, you'd find out that they were copied at distances of 30 feet. 2. It doesn't address any concerns that kids could be tracked off school grounds by anyone who built a tracker. 3. It doesn't address why I should allow such a tracking chip in my house or why that isn't considered an unreasonable search. 3. It doesn't address that RFID signals can be copied and forged. Any of those reasons are absolutely legitimate reasons to not want your child to walk around with a tracking chip. You failed to address any of them. Not to mention that I don't give a shit what you think because your opinion is one of a child molester who wants to track little children to rape them. Of course, that's not personal. I'm not saying you're a child molester who wants to track little children to rape them. I'm saying your attiude of "chip the children" is one that would be shared by child molesters who want to rape little children. But then again, you don't respect my opinion, so you shouldn't be bothering to read this in the first place.
I don't think attending public schools is a matter of "I want to be a student at this school." That's a key point in this discussion; this isn't a private or voluntary institution like a parochial school or university. That's why she was able to make a reasonable claim of first amendment rights, specifically speech. (I agree the religion bit is slight, but then again this shit's going down in Texas and I wouldn't have expected them to go pro-Antichrist!) I'd expect that this point requires more than just asserting it. It's like saying "torture isn't cruel and unusual punishment because we do it often, and so it is by definition not unusual!" Even if you think the claim to religious freedom is baloney, consider the potential abuse to freedom of assembly. Jesus, you really feel strongly about this. Why not take it down a notch. Hooting and hollering hasn't convinced anyone and your assertions have been made without even a line of argumentation other than how stupid everyone else is. RFID is completey, totally, demontrably, scentifically shown to be insecure. It is fucking worthless. And school administrators, the same caliber of human who thought putting in remotely-engageable video cameras in laptops (hurr hurr no potential for abuse there!) will be using a spreadsheet to get more money (your tax dollars at work). Not to mention the cost of installing such a system district wide. So what's this about net positive? Here, from the article: The primary intent of the tracking cards is not to increase student safety but to increase state funding to the district. Seems legit! The stated intent of the tags is to decrease truancy; because their existing hordes of video cameras aren't enough. You can't effectively do that with 1m range chips without running trackers throughout the entire place, which must include the outside grounds and as the article said even bathrooms. The alternative, of course, is that their effective range is much farther and that's where the real problem starts. Note also the article said the school was willing to give this student an ID card without the RFID chip. So basically it doesn't even matter as long as the school board can take their "analysis" to the state and get a cool couple million.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I wouldn't advocate using it as the sole method of security. Say some fucknut kid clones or steals Sparky's card and then gets pegged as leaving school grounds at 10am. The office might go "Hey, Sparky didn't have a parent's or doctor's note..." and the next day calls Sparky into the office to explain. Sparky says "I was in class" - and the teacher backs him up. Okay, no harm no foul. All of those are also things that can be done with the Mark One Mod Zero eyeball. If someone wants to stalk your kid, it's not going to be any easier if the kid's carrying a RFID card because at the range needed to pick up that info, you can see them. It's not some episode of 24 where Jimmy Kiddiefister can sit in his basement and pull up the exact location of his lunchtime snack on his laptop. It's only an unreasonable search in your house if someone is actually searching your house. Which, if the school only puts the RFID detectors on school grounds, is a moot point. The card would have absolutely no function in your house. Now, if the school had a truant officer driving around with a medium-range RFID detector looking for kids - that could very well be considered unreasonable search and seizure. I don't feel that knowing a child's whereabouts on school grounds is unreasonable. Hell, I'm all for turning schools into a Panopticon.
Once we acclimate them to the surveillance state as children, they will become much more compliant to it as adults! Hey! RFID reader! Leave those kids alone!
No one's ever explained to my satisfaction why a surveillance state - when run by ethical and honest officials - harms me in any way. If anything, it encourages people to make sure the right folks get elected to positions of authority.
You really don't get it, do you? You've again failed to address points brought up my me and others regarding security and duplication. Your entire point seems to be "if the schools don't abuse it, then it's fine". That's not the point. The point it a school system wanting kids to wear a chip that can be easily abused by both the school system and others. You've not addressed the abuse potential at all. For example, I'm not comfortable the school system scanning that my child is in the bathroom and in Stall 2 taking a dump. You've also tried, unsuccessfully, to pooh-pooh the ability for outsiders to track kids. You've failed to address the duplication issue. The one area you tried to address is "it's only an unreasonable search in your house if someone is actually searching your house", which is ludicrous. The chip isn't magically disabled once they leave school grounds. It still can be tracked. It can be tracked at the mall, while a child is walking down the street and in your house with the right equipment. A person has every right to say no to that. By making a student wear the chip, they are extending their reach beyond the school grounds, even if they're not actively tracking it at that moment. And they're extending it into the homes of the parents of those students. While you may not value your privacy, some of us actually value ours. So maybe you shouldn't be surprised when some of us fight to maintain it even if you're willing to give it up willingly.
The whole point of a surveillance state is to generate incriminating material government can use to compel individuals to engage in actions contrary to their wishes. And to ensure a steady supply of incriminating material, laws are written in a vague manner so as to ensure maximum interpretability when deciding whether or not to charge a particular individual. And then that whole mess of bullshit can be used to launch a civil asset forfeiture case against your assets, allowing them to be taken and sold whether or not you personally are charged with a crime (let alone found guilty).
Unfortunately, despite everyone's best intentions, unethical and dishonest people slip in. Or people who believe they are being ethical, but are objectively wrong (meaning, they disagree with me). Your description of Sparky's day freaks me the fuck out even though in principle I agree the schools have the obligation to know what's up on campus to protect students. Students do have some constitutional rights, although quite limited while on campus. I'm not sure if the pervasive tracking would be held a violation or not; I'm guessing the courts would uphold it. Having an RFIID chip that merely indicates if you leave campus I might be ok with. I can't decide.
The slow, creeping erosion of privacy in daily life is terrifying. The wholesale destruction thereof, as in this scenario, is even more so, particularly when there are people like Nute cheering it on. This is disgusting. We didn't need fucking student RFID tracking before and we don't need it now, there is no good reason to require this whatsoever and I hope every single one of these fucking things gets mysteriously damaged every time they're issued.
The 1m range thing was outside schools, which implied "off school grounds", they'd need to both put up readers at McDonalds doors, and hook them into their tracking system somehow. Realistically, this would be a reader on every doorway tracking student movement. "Student Y left door Z at 11:45" Useless due to cloning/altering the RFID, or even just putting the fucking thing in tinfoil, but my point with the range is that they're really short for most applications that would fit in an ID card, and up to about 10m in something a bit larger but still smallish. Anything larger than that requires an external power source, or operates on bands restricted for use. RFID is a crazy short range technology on purpose. It's useless and will provide no metrics or reduction in truancy, but I just don't get the Big Brother Tracking angle more than the "this is a pointless application of technology and waste of time". I guess I just don't get what they're trying to solve, or why this would solve it. But I never really understood the displayed at all times student ID thing, because my school never had an issue with strange students showing up and trying to pretend to be students or whatnot. Would be nice if we used this money to pay for more useful technology to educate students instead of imprison them.
What if "Spanky" wants to go out at lunch and get "baked"? I guess you could let your friend carry the RFID, and they'll "think" you're still at school.
All right, fair enough. I will stipulate that right now - the system as it is, sans-RFID, works to a satisfactory degree for keeping kids where they're supposed to be within an acceptable margin of error. I believe that increasing scrutiny and surveillance can improve safety, and that I believe any costs and risks involved are acceptable. You find those costs and risks unacceptable - and we differ on priorities. I'm assuming that you're a parent, so I can see where if you're going to err, you'd rather err on the side of known safety versus potentially more safety/potentially more risk. That's absolutely reasonable, and I can understand your position a little better now. I personally think that most of the paranoia about privacy isn't warranted. Perhaps I'm naive, but I tend to fall on the side of "if someone's going to take action against you, they have a reason for doing so". Now, that reason may not be valid or legal, but in those cases the fault lies with the person, not with the system. Simply because surveillance can be misused by unethical individuals does not make it in and of itself unethical or dangerous. On the other hand, the same argument could be made for a gun - it's not dangerous until it's loaded and pointed at someone - and given that I dislike private gun ownership, this incongruity might make me sound like a bit of a hypocritical prat. Hm. Perhaps my arguing position is not as strong as I thought it was.
Despite my quote, I'm pretty sure it's not a deliberate Big Brother thing in this particular instance. Also *point and laugh at the Mark of the Beast thing* The way schools get funds in California (and perhaps elsewhere) is by number of bodies in the classroom each day (eg, the absence of one kid for one day decreases the funds the school gets from the state by a certain amount). I suspect the actual purpose of this is to be able to give the state (or the state to be able to insist on) verifiable numbers of kids on campus each day. Every time we've glanced at RFID for our library books it is prohibitively expensive, so I'm guessing it would cost a lot to put monitors at every door on campus. If the purpose is to verify attendence, I'd guess that the primary monitors are at the edge of campus (probably along with the metal detectors for guns and knives). The fact that this particular instance of this particular tech is most likely harmless doesn't mean I am on board with the trend to increase monitoring of people's movements for government and/or commercial use, though.
Parenthetically, RFID for library books and products is a potential good use of the tech. I'd love to be able to figure out where Irritating_Patron_01 hides the books he wants to read the next day.
I believe that privacy is inherently right and good and that infringements thereof should require serious justifications.
Minors have considerably fewer legal rights than adults, and schools are considered in loco parentis.
