SHOCKINGLY AWFUL: US school districts begin RFID tagging of students for surveillance

Now the US is sticking tags on children to track their movements. Soon it will be embedded circuitry in every driver's license.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20461752

Andrea Hernandez was expelled from school when she stopped wearing the tag that revealed where she was on her school campus.

The tags were introduced to track students and help tighten control of school funding.

A Texan court has granted a restraining order filed by a civil rights group pending a hearing on use of the tags.

ID badges containing radio tags started to be introduced at the start of the 2012 school year to schools run by San Antonio's Northside Independent School District (NISD). The tracking tags gave NISD a better idea of the numbers of students attending classes each day - the daily average of which dictates how much cash it gets from state coffers.

'Mark of the beast'
Introducing the tags led to protests by some school students at John Jay High School - one of two schools out of 112 in the NISD catchment area piloting the tags.

Ms Hernandez refused to wear the tag because it conflicted with her religious beliefs, according to court papers. Wearing such a barcoded tag can be seen as a mark of the beast as described in Revelation 13 in the Bible, Ms Hernandez's father told Wired magazine in an interview.

NISD suspended Ms Hernandez and said she would no longer be able to attend the John Jay High School unless she wore the ID badge bearing the radio tag. Alternatively it said Ms Hernandez could attend other schools in the district that had not yet joined the radio tagging project.

The Rutherford Institute, a liberties campaign group, joined the protests and went to court to get a restraining order to stop NISD suspending Ms Hernandez.

Ms Hernandez refused to wear a name tag containing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip
A district court judge has granted the restraining order so Ms Hernandez can go back to school and ordered a hearing next week on the NISD radio tag project.

The Rutherford Institute said the NISD's suspension violated Texan laws on religious freedom as well as free speech amendments to the US constitution.

"The court's willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go - not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled," said John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute in a statement.

Mr Whitehead said student tagging and locating projects were the first step in producing a "compliant citizenry".

"These 'student locator' programmes are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government," he said.

 

The Rutherford Institute's got this one. I think they're going to end up giving the ACLU a run for their money.

People should think about contributing to them.

 

It's very important to have an accurate count of this. Funding depends on it. The district I work for has a program to track this as well.

It's called "taking attendance".

What an idiotic premise to try and sell this on. I can see them promoting it for student safety maybe -- but for attendance numbers?? Give me a break.

Mr. Whitehead is a bit of an alarmist. RFID tags are very short range. It's not like a GPS locator or anything.

It's still a stupid idea in my humble opinion but not for the reason that the conspiracy nutcases think it is.

 

This sounds like a terrible idea.

 

Thank you. I thought I'd have to be the first voice of sanity on this. No tracking device can work without a power source and cards with embedded chips have a range that extends no further than it's magnetic field. You can't track people by embedded chips unless those chips are swiped at an access control point. The reason this crap is so believable is because people still believe in magic. It's not dissimilar to when XRAY's were first discovered and people were terrified of the technology because they thought it would be used to see through people's clothing. People have this image of technology that more closely mirrors science fiction than science and they let their imaginations run wild. And the "conspiracy nutcases" as you put it are stupid enough to believe anything, even this.

True intelligence is a rare gift.

 

What is even more surprising is that they are allowing this in Texas. WTF! Come on Texas I thought you were my peeps.

 

Absolute madness.

 

Love this idea!! Everyone should be tagged!

 

And Bush put tracking chips in his guns for the walkabout...but that's not the point made. The point is tracking kids at all and conditioning them against the parents wishes.

Sheesh, Mike.

 

What's next,, branding students like cattle? Hey,, it is Texas by the way

 

How are kids being "tracked" except for time and location every time they swipe a reader? This isn't live tracking, it's access control. In many places I've worked, I had to swipe an employee ID card at multiple points so there is an electronic record that I was there. I'm sorry, but this isn't the final gasps of freedom being extinguished, it's just an access card. If kids go to public schools and the public schools have the legal responsibility to keep track of these kids, they may do so however they choose. If you don't like it, pull your kids out and put them in private school (like I did).

 

WRONG!

We are NOT limited to close proximity radio emission from circuitry.

An electric circuit can glow with any desired radio-frequency when presented with the right oscillating electric fields. Several of them are intertwined to produce a unique code. The electric field can be emitted from any 2 points: On a doorway. In a hallway. At the lunches counter. In a bathroom.

The child walks by and the movement of the RFID tag through the electric field causes small amounts of current to flow through the RFID which emit themselves as a radio frequency in the code established on the child's RFID tag.

It is INVOLUNTARY tracking as it does NOT require the child to swipe a card, but it knows whenever they go through certain points.

A pair of RFID's in the games pit, for example, can be used to detect when Billy and Sally are attempting to make baby Steve, who MAY NEVER BE BORN due to US Government meddling.

Most of US would never have been born if you go back far enough to a US Police pig who was there to investigate your Car's back seat, or to a US School Warden who was there to RFID track your parents back stage into the school auditorium and stop them from developing love.

Tracking the childrens' whereabouts will be used for MUCH MORE than attendance when it proves worthwhile for the US Tyranny to enforce its absurd rules and draconian controls over the child population. Then, we are next. We are all next. An RFID tag in every driver's license.

The US Police ALREADY track your cell tower records, and can access your GPS information about everywhere your phone has been. They track your purchases to know where you've shopped. They track your car positioning. They READ YOUR LICENSE plates with their cameras. They track your phone communications. They track your emails. They track your network communications. **THEY ARE PROBABLY READING THIS RIGHT NOW**

It is certainly not YOUR society! It is certainly not a place built for you, but against you! Their only interest is to keep you Alice long enough to milk as much money from you as possible while you SUFFER in support of THE WORLD'S LARGEST SOCIALIST ENTITY on the planet and feed your money into the ONLY FIRST CLASS "PEOPLE" in the US: THE €£¥#%^* CORPORATIONS. Who by the US Supreme Court's own statements HAVE SUPERIOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE MONEY TO SPEAK.

 

Your "mark of the beast" hysteria falls on deaf ears no matter how big your font or how often you use caps. There's nothign awry about schools keeping track of where kids are on school grounds. It's especially important that they do during a lock down when a fugitive with a gun is in the area, or a fire drill, or any number of other vicissitudes by which the whereabouts of every child becomes a tantamount concern. This isn't the slippery slope to unbridled tyranny, it's just the rantings of somebody who has had way too much caffeine.

 

Exactly. Our middle school kids carry an ID card with a (GASP) barcode on it that they swipe when they go to the cafeteria and when they check out a library book.

AND as a district tech person, I can tell you that even these pretty simple systems have enough hiccups on their own that there is no was to feasibly track every movement of every student everywhere. It would be difficult enough just restricting it to the campus.

Too much science fiction thinking going on in the conspiracy nutter world.

Well, you're wrong. If you had even a pedestrian understanding of the technology, you wouldn't be so paranoid about it.

And why are you worried about it anyway if you don't live in the US?

 

That would at least make sense for Texas and frankly I am not opposed to branding them. If the cards are just used at access points then I don't have that much of an issue with it but if they can track them real time there is just something creepy about that.

 

Even passive tracking within the campus is fine since it not only records attendance at specific classes, but also their presence in case of fire or shooting...

 

This is a great idea for illegal immigrants crossing the border! Anyone see the movie The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger when they were incarcerated with tracking devices around their necks? If anyone tried to escape their heads would explode!

 

WRONG!

The RFID tag is NOT LIKE a swipe card. RFID is INVOLUNTARY compliance tracking. It tracks your location without swiping. The RFID technology works at extended proximity to detectors, we can now recieve detection from several meters.

It is EXACTLY like putting a tracking tag on a child and tracking their position relative to arbitrary waypoints, because THAT IS WHAT IT IS.

YOUR COMPARISON TO SWIPE CARDS IS FALSE. MY COMPARISON TO **WHAT IT (*)(*)(*)(*)ING IS, IS MORE ACCURATE**

If some people would grow a brain, I would not need to use so large of fonts.

 

Repeat whine thread.

Don't like your kid carrying an ID then send to private school or home school them

 

Which is my solution. I have a 9 year old boy in private Catholic school and my 4 year old in a private prearatory school like Head Start but lightyears better. I recommend that millions of parents all over the country pull their kids out of the government schools and give them a real education that will benefit them for life.

 

So it can track from 15 feet away. Big deal.

It's still going to be isolated to the school campus which on some campuses could be quite a help for student safety.

It's not like they can be tracked everywhere they go 24/7.

Do you think these "arbitrary waypoints" are going to be located outside the school's campus? Is it bad for the school's administration to know where students are while they are on campus?

 

Don't like it? Send them to the next school.. the next city.. The next STATE.. The next COUNTRY.. The next €£¥#%^* PLANET..

HOW FAR AWAY WILL YOU SEND YOUR CHILDREN BEFORE YOU ADDRESS THE RAMPANT PROBLEMS HERE AT HOME.

The alternative does NOT exist for many people. Why should they pay, and why should YOU pay, because of a Tyrannical US Government and its citizen-funded school Tyranny and disgusting food crap.

FIGHT THE PROBLEM. BATTLE TO DEFEND YOUR RIGHTS, AND THE RIGHTS OF YOUR CHILDREN. Because year-on-year, they are CHIPPING, CHIPPING, CHIPPING away these rights, and ALREADY THE US GOVERNMENT IS A BREACH-IN-CONTRACT OF ITS FOUNDING PROMISE: We the people. People. PEOPLE!!!

 

Uh huh....getting a little hyper now...

 

Wrong!

 

What purpose does tracking ANYONE serve? Is privacy completely gone???? If so, we need major revolution.