p2pnet - rss feed: RFID spy chips track CA students
p2pnet.net News:- Northern California’s Brittan Elementary School is using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) spy chips to track students who are, “required to prominently display the badges by wearing them around the neck at all times,” says a civil liberties group.
“The device transmits private information to a computer on campus whenever a student passes under one of the scanners,” says the ACLU of Northern California in a letter to the Brittan Board of Trustees.
ID badges include student names, photos, grades, school names, class year and a four-digit school ID number.
Brittan Elementary is in the rural community of Sutter, eight miles west of Yuba City.
“Forcing my child to be tracked with a RFID device – without our consent or knowledge – is a complete invasion of our privacy,” say Michael and Dawn Cantrall.
“Our 7th grader came home wearing the ID badge prominently displayed around her neck– if someone wants to harm my child, the mandatory school ID card has just made that task easier.”
The Cantralls filed a formal complaint against the Brittan Elementary School Board on January 30th after meeting with several school officials.
The ACLU-NC also quotes Jeffrey and Michele Tatro, parents of a 13-year-old at Brittan, as saying: “It is our goal that no child in the United States be tagged or tracked. We want it to be stopped here, in Sutter California, and we don’t want any child to be tracked anywhere. Our children are not pieces of inventory.”
In a letter sent to the Brittan Board of Trustees, the group calls on the school board to recognize the, “serious safety and civil liberties implications” and demands that it, “terminate this ill-advised test immediately.”
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) are also signatories.
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See:-
around the neck - Parents and Civil Liberties Groups Urge School District to Terminate Use of Tracking Devices, ACLU-NC, February 7, 2005
February 8th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go off on some Christian rant. I just couldn’t resist that one. ;-D
February 8th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Instead of frying ants, use that trust magnifying glass to focus sunlight in the rfid chip in the badge. Then your kid can wear the badge and not be tracked.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
Yet another reason to take your kids out of the public brainwashing factories.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Just imagine once the government makes us all were one.
February 8th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Just imagine once the government makes us all were one.
February 9th, 2005 at 8:58 am
The increased use of surveillance techniques by government and other parties should have people worried. We are being tracked regularly and continuously without even realizing it, and as technology advances, the future is going to be much worse.
A good example of what can happen is found today in Israel’s occupation. Here we have a technologically advanced country bearing down with all its weight to crush the free aspirations of ordinary people. Palestinians are without a doubt the most surveillanced people in the world. In the West Bank and Gaza - often regarded as the world’s largest open-air prisons - Palestinians must present an Israeli-issued ID to pass through checkpoints which are widely distributed throughout occupied territory. Vehicle’s license plates (if and when vehicles are even allowed passage) are similarly monitored . This enables the Israelis to continuously track the movements of every single person.
Now let’s fast-forward a few decades into a possible future when the “borders”*** of Israel extend from the Nile to the Euphrates and the government rules a large hostile population. Due to manpower shortages the checkpoint system has been relaxed in some ways compared to the Palestinian model (no more day-long queues), and as a security enhancement all people under Israeli rule are now required to get a surgically implanted RFID that will allow 24/7 monitoring. (In another hundred years or so these implanted devices might even be hard wired into a person’s central nervous system, so they also record and transmit everything a person hears and sees.) ID badges are no longer used, being replaced by retina scans. For people to pass through checkpoints now is as quick as using a grocery price scanner.
The official justification of such intensive surveillance of the entire population will be to prevent crime and “terrorism”, protect children from pedophiles, remove the possibly of adultery wrecking a marriage, and to eliminate any and all vices from society, or anything else as identified by the Ministry of Propaganda. People will be repeatedly assured by the government that the information collected about them will be kept private and never accessed except in extraordinary circumstances.
*** Israel is the only country in the world to never have declared any official borders.
February 9th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Personal information? Give me a break! From what I’ve heard, all the chip does is tell when a child comes and goes from a classroom. As for the name and picture on the badge - if a parent does their job, they teach their child not to go with a stranger. As for tracking, if a kid doesn’t like it, could it be because they are doing something they shouldn’t and don’t want to get caught? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it!
February 10th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
So I have to worry about a camera every time I scratch my bum of pick my nose? What if I want to talk to a friend about a teacher’s misconduct? Now will I have to lie if I am asked why I and another student were in a secluded location? Will I be forced to reveal information under fear of punishment because I was in a secluded place. As for keeping track of students, I thought that was the reason for roll call. Training at home, not oppresive surveillance is the answer.
Kids can be trained to watch out for deviant adults. As far as controlling kids’ misbehaviour, governements have destroyed the ability for parents to legally train their children. Governments have done this through anti-spanking laws and propaganda. Today, in many cases when kids are spanked, they are spanked because parents frustration with their behaviour reached a boiling point (at which point spanking becomes child abuse).
Parants should not have to be afraid to train their children when the need arises (at the first instance of disobeying). When parants spank as soon as the need arises and not as a way to elleviate frustration, they will find that they will rarely need to spank at all. So proper training eliminates the need for oppresive surveillance. I for one, have pulled my kids out of school because I don’t want them propagandized like the Hitler Youth. This goes the same for both government as well as cartel propaganda.