Everything Kids Do

Kids Tagged With RFID Chips? The Creepy New Technology Schools Use to Track

Everything Kids Do -- And the Profit Motive Behind It

It can't be called "education."

October 5, 2012 |



The digital tracking and surveillance of school-aged kids has been growing.

Much attention has been given to the phenomenon of corporate tracking
of kids’ online activities, activities that violate the Children’s
Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The law, originally adopted in 1998, requires Web sites aimed at kids
to get parental consent before gathering information about those users
who are under 13 years. Many companies, including a Disney subsidiary,
have violated it. Corporate marketing interests, most notably Facebook,
are fighting proposed revisions to COPPA.

A second front in the tracking of young people has gotten far less
attention. Schools across the country are adopting a variety of
different tools to monitor students both in school and outside school.
Among these tools are RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags
embedded in school ID cards, GPS tracking software in computers, and
even CCTV video camera systems. According to school authorities, these
tools are being adopted not to simply increase security, but to prevent
truancy, cut down on theft and even improve students' eating habits.

* * *

The RFID tag system popularly known as "Tag and Track" is being sold
to schools system across the country by a variety of vendors, including
AIM Truancy Solutions, ID Card Group and DataCard.

In general, these systems consist of a school photo ID card affixed
to a lanyard that is worn around the student’s neck. The ID has a RFID
chip embedded in it. The tag includes a digit number assigned to each
student. As a student enters the school or pass beneath a doorway
equipped with an RFID reader, the tag ID is read, recorded and sent to a
server in the school's administrative office. The captured data not
only provides an attendance list (sent to the teacher's PDA), but tracks
the student's movement throughout the day.

Students and parents in San Antonio, TX, are up in arms over a
decision by the Northside Independent School District to require
students at two local schools to wear RFID-equipped nametags as part of
the Student Locator Project. The two schools, John Jay High School and
Anson Jones Middle School, plan to use the nametags to pinpoint student
locations both at the school and outside its premises. In addition,
students are required to use the microchip ID when checking out school
library books, registering for classes and paying for school lunches.

Pascual Gonzalez, a school district spokesman, said, "We want to
harness the power of technology to make schools safer, know where our
students are all the time in a school, and increase revenues." One
student, Andrea Hernandez, said the badge “makes me uncomfortable. It’s
an invasion of my privacy.”

Local San Antonio news media make clear that something other than
school security is at stake. The local school district loses $175,000 a
day because of late or absent students and RFID tracking provides a
means to improve attendance reporting.

San Antonio is taking its cue from the Houston, TX, school district.
It began using RFID chips to monitor students on 13 campuses in 2004.
Houston’s Spring Independent School District gave 28,000 students RFID
badges to record when they get on and off school buses. The police and
school administrators provided the badges to ostensibly prevent truancy
and child abductions. In 2010, the school reported, “RFID readers
situated throughout each campus are used to identify where students are
located in the building, which can be used to verify the student’s
attendance for ADA funding and course credit purposes.” Student tracking
has reportedly brought them hundreds of thousands of extra dollars.



Source:-
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/unbelievable-ways-schools-are-now-monitoring-children-even-what-theyre-eating