quote: SUTTER, Calif. - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.
The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan.
quote: Each student is required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beams their ID number to a teacher's handheld computer when the child passes under an antenna posted above a classroom door.
Graham also asked to have a chip reader installed in locker room bathrooms to reduce vandalism, although that reader is not functional yet. And while he has ordered everyone on campus to wear the badges, he said only the 7th and 8th grade classrooms are being monitored thus far.
In addition to the privacy concerns, parents are worried that the information on and inside the badges could wind up in the wrong hands and endanger their children, and that radio frequency technology might carry health risks.
Graham dismisses each objection, arguing that the devices do not emit any cancer-causing radioactivity, and that for now, they merely confirm that each child is in his or her classroom, rather than track them around the school like a global-positioning device. The 15-digit ID number that confirms attendance is encrypted, he said, and not linked to other personal information such as an address or telephone number.
Really creepy. I know I'd be the first one pulling my kid out of the school, but am I the only one that is freaked out by this?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Nope, it freaks me out too.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I'm not sure I'd pull a kid out over it. It depends on what the deal was with the school otherwise.
But yeah, that is very freaky. The checking if the kid is in class . . . mildly. The potential other uses (while as a school administration type person I love the idea of getting such info so easily) scare the heck out of me.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Wow, that is creepy. Kind of like that book, what's it called, "Ender's Shadow"?
No, really. Creepy.
Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :
Yeah, and look how well things turned out for Ender and Bean. Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Not a good thing, althopugh I see why it had appeal.
Kwea
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
It's like the Marauders Map, only way creepier. From the movie: "This in the hands of Sirius Black is a map to you."
I would refuse to wear this, probably, if I ever had to. Carrying identification cars, all right, I have to do that anyway. Wear an electronic beeper, no thank you.
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
My question is what is the motivation behind this?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Very creepy. This guy decided to cram new technology down people's throats, whether they like it or not. " The system was imposed, without parental input" A classic example of technological feasability outpacing society's ability to cope with change. And the school stands to gain financially for adopting the system. What crap. I'm with Michael Cantrall, a parent who is bucking the system. I hope he can fight city hall and win.
[ February 11, 2005, 12:33 AM: Message edited by: Morbo ]
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
You're going to have people who say that school is like work, and that the children are employees of the school, after a fashion. That the school's job is to get the students ready to work in the business world, and since there are any number of businesses who already use these kinds of tracking devices, who log what people do on their computers, people are going to ask, what's the difference? What does it hurt? Isn't it for the safety of the children?
Posted by Miro (Member # 1178) on :
Man, and I thought my school was bad. That's just completely ridiculous.
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
Too easy to remove the id tags from around the neck. Maybe it should be inserted in, oh I don't know, the forehead or right hand?
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
quote:What is the difference between this and taking roll the old fashioned way other than the technology?
It is somewhat dehumanizing to be counted like a cow gone to slaughter.
What is wrong with taking roll the old fashioned way? If taking roll takes up so much of the class time that its a problem, then the reason for that needs to looked into and corrected. Although I find it hard to believe that there is an undercontrol classroom anywhere that is a problem.
quote:Do we understand this RFID technology? It doesn't 'watch' kids, it registers that they are attending classes when they pass through the uprights. There is no monitoring whatsoever except in attendence.
And we were doing that just fine before we had this. Using RFID tags for product tracking is going to happen. The difference is that in that context there might actually be gains. In the context of the school there is no gain.
quote:And should a kid dissappear in the middle of the day without consent, it would more quickly initiate a search for the kid.
Right, cause little johnny is going to leave his tracker tag on when he skips. Please, don't be naive.
quote:Its only used at school. It doesn't monitor in real time.
Thats not the point. Its monitoring that is completely unnecessary. Thats reason alone to be against it.
Just because we can do this is no indication that we should.
Incidently where were all of you that are so against this when I posted my thread about RFID tags in UK licence plates last year? It was bad then, and its bad now.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
quote:Graham dismisses each objection, arguing that the devices do not emit any cancer-causing radioactivity
Right. Because I'm sure he's done exhaustive long-term studies on that.
Dude, I'd object to it based solely on my stubborn individualism. I plan to let my future children ditch school on a regular basis.
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
ah Annie, they don't.
RFID tags are solid state electronics that get their powered via induction. Nothing radioactive there.
Sure people question how all the exposure to radio waves that we pump into the air will effect us, but this signal is significantly less than even the one coming from your cell phone.
see here or here or google for how do RFIDs work.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
I wouldn't be worried about radiation - I'd be worried about constant exposure to an electric field. They've done studies that show that things like cell phones and alarm clocks that run on electricity and live close to our bodies encourage tumor growth.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Beyond BigBrother, the problem is two-fold: It takes a considerably more powerful transmission to ping an RFID from many feet away than the inch or less used for merchandise. And constant&continuous exposure of still growing children to that transmission of a higher level of electromagnetic radiation.
Frankly, I don't like the idea of using children as guinea pigs for a technology untested for long-term safety. And the UK's NationalRadiologicalProtectionBoard has expressed concerns of its own about the use of cellphones by children as well as their ever-increasing exposure to other wireless technology.
BTW -- Urban areas such as LosAngeles are reporting extreme rises in autism and AspergersSyndrome. Possibly because parents and physicians are becoming more aware of symptoms due to the vast increase in news coverage and information on the Internet. And parents' have an increased expectation of finding biological roots to behavioural problems. So it may just be that mild cases which weren't recognised before are now routinely being taken in for examination. Or it may be mercury poisoning or other as yet unknown environmental factor (including ever-increasing exposure to cellphones/etc).
[ February 11, 2005, 06:19 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I don't find that I have a problem with this at all.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Annie -- I know of no study that shows that. Linky?
In particular, we'd be in problem because we have a huge amount of a closely related phenomenon passing through us every second. They're called radio waves (and television signals, et cetera).
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
:ahem:
I should say, I would not have a problem with this if the school admins had spoken to the parents and students before hand. But to just force this on kids and parents is a no-no.
I don't see a moral problem with these devices-- can someone who does explain?
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
I do have a problem with it - and I can't really articulate why, although I find I agree with much of what Hollow Earth was saying.
Just the idea of treating kids like livestock is very disturbing. And yeah, would I want someone to be able to pick up a hand held and say "Oh, Adrian is in the bathroom. Now she's walking the hall." Ugh.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Some technical and social notes:
First, unless they made these particularly large, they could be read from at most 4 feet away or so.
Second, this is an extremely large capital investment if they want to do anything except notice when students enter the school and leave the school; the cost of a decent sized, reliable reader is thousands of dollars, and they'll need two per door to be sure, likely.
Third, the administration will begin to rely on this system. Students, being more readily adaptable, will carry each other's tags around whenever they can get away with it. Some teachers will not take attendance, relying on the system (if it counts classroom entering/exiting), so students will just hand their tag to a friend when they want to skip.
Fourth, the last point becomes even more troublesome when one thinks of deliberate manipulation of the system for nefarious ends -- somehow get someone else's tag, and leave yours at home. Go do something bad (say, in the AV room). Leave, then switch out for your tag again. If the admin is relying too much on these tags, unless there's a witness, they'll punish the innocent kid: "Someone stole your tag? Sure they did."
Also, a fairly technical student with a decent amount of funds will almost certainly be able to duplicate a tag, unless its one of the more expensive active tags that does more than just respond. Suddenly that system the school spent thousands of dollars on became worthless.
Heck, forgetfulness by students will likely already give the system enough of a problem for any meaningful security. Unless there're draconian measures in place, students will be leaving their tags all over the place and having to go back for them and such.
There're many other problems as well, but that should get people started .
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
This belies a sense of trust and responsibility in the name some ambiguous safety concern. I think kids should be free to start making the right decisions as soon as possible, and as environments go, schools are already controlld, and I'm cautious anytime kids are taught to be good, on penalty of getting into trouble. *shrugs* I don't know what it's like growing up now, do 12 year-olds take cell phones when they go bike riding?
[ February 11, 2005, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote: The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety.
I would think that most kids wouldn't think about the badges after a while-- thus, as a deterrent for misbehavior, they'd be kind of a wash. It's not like the admins are going to be able to send a shock through you when you try to bully someone out of their lunch money.
Fugu has some good points about relying on the cards too much-- but with training, that tendency can be alleviated.
The article blows the capability of the cards out of proportion, and heavily favors the paranoia end of the spectrum. What do the cards actually do RIGHT NOW? They take a note when a student enters the classroom. That's all. If your kid is wandering the halls, there's no little red blip on the principal's computer tracking her.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:I'm thinking this would be pretty hard for a kid to hack.
You'd be suprised.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
It wouldn't be at all hard for a kid to duplicate a passive tag, all he has to do is replicate the signal response, which is usually trivial. It doesn't matter if I encode "John Jones" as "as52wfgqwv", if my tag always sends back the latter, someone duplicating the tag doesn't need to know that its an encoding of John Jones.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The info is highly encrypted.
Unless this has a challenge/response system built in, and most RFID devices don't, then all the kids have to do is figure out what signal the card emits when the scanner activates it. They don't even have to understand the encoding if they can make an exact recording. It's like overhearing a spoken password - once you do that, all you have to be able to do is pronounce it correctly, even if you don't understand what it means.
It's not something most kids can just do easily, but I guarantee any medium sized highschool has at least one kid who can figure this out and has access to the equipment to do it.
Dagonee
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
exactly, Dags Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Let me guess - you were that kid, right?
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
What ticks me off more than the supposed privacy issues (which don't really bother me all that much, yet) is the financial arrangements between the school and the manufacturer of the devices.
A school should not be a laboratory. Especially not when the parents were not included in the decision making process. I hate the idea of Coca-cola being able to make inroads into schools via corporate 'sponsership;' and this doesn't sound much better.
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:And all kids are gonna make right decisions all the time. Yeah right. (not being snarky, ok?) But we see the evidence of kids making the right decisions all the time. Kids are kids. They are gonna screw up. Just like we do as adults. This just lets them know they are being 'monitored' just a little more closely.
Are we so scared of their screw-ups that we are going to castrate them? I don't know. Adults aren't "monitored" and I don't think that they should be. I also think that school is a decent training ground for young adults and it's a bad idea to take away their sense of propriety and self-control at school. I'd rather raise expectations, not lower them.
[ February 11, 2005, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Space Opera (Member # 6504) on :
I don't want my kids motivation for behaving being the fact that they are "monitored." I also don't want the teachers in their school to learn their names from the picture ID they wear around their necks.
The superintendent sounds like an ass. First he does this without discusssing it with the parents, and secondly he assumes that kids don't want to wear them because they're not "stylish."
And like Scott, I don't care for the finanacial agreement that occurred between the school and the company. If the program "takes off" the school gets more money.
space opera
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I'm pretty sure you don't need a chip to spoof a tag - just a transmitter that can play recorded signals.
Not too hard to put together.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
One can print RFID tags for a few cents each on a printer costing not much over $100. Plus, there are lots of places producing RFID tags, so somebody could likely get one done much cheaper.
edit: that's easily within the reach of most students, even with buying an RFID printer.
[ February 11, 2005, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
Hacking the RFID tags isn't trivial. For starters, most of the cards only respond to a PARTICULAR SiteID sequence, whereupon they will respond with the related bit string.
You'd need some pretty expensive hardware to figure out the SiteID and, depending on how smart the cards are, it's pretty easy to change the SiteID every few weeks.
~~~~~~~
I see no reason why 5 minutes of class time, and more than 5 minutes of the teacher's time should be "wasted" with a manual roll call and the subsequent reporting. Most districts are funded based on attendance, and our legistatures have mandated a certain number of school days per year.
Taking attendance is an administrative burden that has NOTHING to do with the actual teaching and learning. I'd much rather have an automatic roster print a few minutes after the start of each class.
"Hmmm, where's Johnny?"
Also, if the Lunch Line and the various vendiing machines are RFID enabled, you can easily eliminate the problem of kids stealing or "repurposing" lunch money.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:I see no reason why 5 minutes of class time, and more than 5 minutes of the teacher's time should be "wasted" with a manual roll call and the subsequent reporting. Most districts are funded based on attendance, and our legistatures have mandated a certain number of school days per year.
Taking attendance is an administrative burden that has NOTHING to do with the actual teaching and learning. I'd much rather have an automatic roster print a few minutes after the start of each class.
"Hmmm, where's Johnny?"
Also, if the Lunch Line and the various vendiing machines are RFID enabled, you can easily eliminate the problem of kids stealing or "repurposing" lunch money.
Because students sure aren't going to take each other's RFID tags.
And regarding the problem of getting the siteid . . . is that any harder than wandering into a room with a radio receiver tuned to the appropriate frequency?
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
A radio frequency datascope is up around $20K, but the point isn't that the SIteID is impossible to decode, a $0.50 tag can accomplish that, the point is that a counterfeit card would be worthless after a few days, so that sort of attack has a very limited value.
If you want to up the ante a bit, you can use RSA encoded timestamps with Kerberos tickets like Visa and American Express use for their cash cards. The essential point is that the security level can be adjusted to match the risk level - very easily. The number of possible codes in a 128 bit key exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe, so you need a pretty decent computer to crack a Public/Private Key implementation in a useful amount of time.
Kids swapping cards is very easy to deal with administratively. Just display the kids name on a termnial AS they enter the lunch line.
If you're still concerned, using a biometric device such as a fingerprint sample as a part of the RFID reader is a straightforward solution.
First, displaying a kids name as they entered the lunch line would require a significant increase in personnel to be effective.
Second, take a look at the costs for the stuff you're talking about, not to mention the support costs (they have to keep an entire non-RFID system ready to go into usage in the lunch line if it goes offline, for one thing). They're astronomical in comparison to the discretionary budget of a school district.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Telling that the same person went to place A then place B then place C on a camera requires someone to spend a fair amount of time discerning that. Plus, many cameras have limited loops, so the data is lost after a bit.
RFID tags, however, enable a system to check such things computationally, and to store the data for effectively unlimited amounts of time (it taking so much less room to store). These together amount to major concerns which are not present in cameras.
With RFID tags I can see people creating algorithms which "identify problematic behaviors", then running those on the past records of the school's RFID system, then taking kids out of class or otherwise harassing them to discover why they did those things (which the kids likely don't even remember the circumstances for).
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
A four channel Digital Video Recorder only costs about $800, including the use of an ordinary PC to search for activity in a particular portion of the image. So your point about cameras is outdated. It's too expensive to have someone watching the cameras constantly, so Incident Review is the norm, rather than the excepton.
I'm perfectly happy with ID Cards and portal readers in this application. You're the one who's setting straw men on fire.
School attendance isn't a challenging security enviornment, so the security protocols can be minimal. Of course there are ways to beat the system. I probably know several you haven't even considered, but appropriate tools are available to meet security risks that far exceed anything you'll see in an academic environment.
Time and attendance is more costly than you might imagine, but a few glitches and wobbles can be safely ignored so the T&A implementation can be pretty low end.
[ February 11, 2005, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: MarvL ]
Posted by dread pirate romany (Member # 6869) on :
quote: That the school's job is to get the students ready to work in the business world, and since there are any number of businesses who already use these kinds of tracking devices, who log what people do on their computers, people are going to ask, what's the difference?
Not all workplaces electronically monitor their employees, and adults have the choice to work somewhere that doesn't. Unless the parents get upset enough about this to transfer their kids to another school ( and I hope enough do to make this experiment fail), the kids have no choice.
I wouldn't want my kids camera-monitored at school either. Maybe I'm paranoid but I think that would be an invasion of their privacy.
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
quote: Not all workplaces electronically monitor their employees, and adults have the choice to work somewhere that doesn't.
Yeah, you just watch. Pretty soon they'll be requiring driver's licenses before the kids can even drive cars.
[ February 11, 2005, 03:59 PM: Message edited by: MarvL ]
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
MarvL: show me the video camera which can in any amount of time, much less in a very small amount of time per case, analyze the movement of a particular person throughout the day and produce a route map based on it. This would be trivial with a modest RFID system. Don't attribute to cameras magical powers they don't have. Furthermore, tell me how much its going to cost to store the tens of thousands of hours of camera data generated throughout the year? What I talked about is hardly a straw man, particularly as people in control of controlled situations have done exactly that sort of thing on a small scale before. This would make is possible on a nigh-universal scale (within the environment).
However, if you want to talk about straw man arguments:
quote:Yeah, you just watch. Pretty soon they'll be requiring driver's licenses before the kids can even drive cars.
Posted by Miro (Member # 1178) on :
At my high school, you had to scan your id card to get into the building during school hours. You also had to walk through a metal detector and put your bag through an x-ray machine. Thing is, all this high-tech security is easy to circumvent and causes more problems than it solves. I walked into school with a Leatherman once (because I had forgotten to take it out of my pocket), and no one was the wiser. Also, the system caused problems for people like myself who didn't quite have the normal schedule. I took college classes in the morning, so didn't get to school until lunchtime. The number of "tardies" I built up was amusing, but annoying. I almost got detention because of it.
I don't have any experience with RFID tags. Maybe they are the silver bullet to all the problems in schools. Then again, maybe a better way to go about things would be to concentrate on teaching the students, and making school a little less like a prison.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
And we've had the technology to print electrical circuits for a long time. How do you think they make a lot of those anti-theft devices (you know, the square ones with the flat metallic patterns on them)?
If one doesn't need a power source, like an RFID tag, there's no bulk required, really.
edit: I should point out that RFID printers usually work on a preprepared paper which has a sort of "generic tag" on/in it. The cost I've usually seen given for paper + printer material is fifty cents to a dollar per tag.
[ February 11, 2005, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
quote: Fugu13: analyze the movement of a particular person throughout the day and produce a route map based on it ... store the tens of thousands of hours of camera data generated throughout the year?
Incident Review is about WHO was in the area before and during a reported incident. You only need a couple of days worth of storage capacity.
I'm not the least bit interested in using cameras to track people who are going about their normal business. That's a Time & Attendance application that's better handled with RFID.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Incident review is not as dangerous to privacy as the ability to take surveillance data and search through it looking for patterns.
I'm about to run out to dinner, but if you google "prosecutor's fallacy" you should see some of the reasons this is bad.
In other words, if there's an incident being investigated, footage of that incident is likely useful and relevant. The problem is looking through the data to find incidents.
Dagonee P.S., I'm not defending cameras - I have issues with them. But the general tracking of movements is a greater threat to privacy.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Who said anything about Incident Review? I'm talking about misguided social workers.
People who go, "oh, we can find the students we need to help by detecting patterns in their movement" (for instance, overregular trips to the bathroom for a long period clearly means the person is smoking there ).
People do that sort of stuff, and this makes it easy.
Posted by MarvL (Member # 7251) on :
Wired makes the excellent point that the implementation sucked, regardless of the merits of the technology.
Posted by Miro (Member # 1178) on :
From Wired:
quote:office. The server translates the digits into names and sends an attendance list to the teacher's PDA, identifying all of the students who walked through the door. The teacher then visually verifies that the names on the PDA list match the students in the classroom.
Several people have mentioned that this system is worth the "5 minutes" it would save teachers in taking attendence. Apparently not. Really the only use of this system is keeping an electronic record of what is already recorded manually. And making a huge hassle for those who forget their id's.
ETA: I just realized, to use this system would require that everything like permission slips, excuse slips, etc would all have to be made electronic as well. How's that for additional work?
[ February 11, 2005, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Miro ]
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
This is just... ugh.
If anything is un-American, this surely is.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Telp-- not really. The application may or may not make you shudder, but the idea and invention are wholly typical of American ingenuity.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
The way the superintendent went about this does not inspire confidence or trust. If I were a parent of a student in this school, I would be in front of the school board demanding the superintendent's resignation on the simple grounds that he has lost the trust of the parents. That no-one would believe a word the man says about how safe or beneficial this technology is by virtue of the fact that he did the whole deal behind their backs. Period. He's displayed an amazing lack of understanding of who he works for and either the experiment ends or he leaves.
How's that for "over-reacting?" It's not so much about the technology as it is about being responsible and responsive.
As for being freaked out by it, I suspect that if parents had been consulted in advance, they might think it was benign or, more likely a waste of money.
Think about this...a child in elementary school is given a card to wear that costs real money to replace. The kid comes home without it... Ooops. Lost it.
Parent pays to replace it? Not THIS parent.
I'd very soon tell the school to have the teachers collect the tags for safekeeping if I were responsible for my first grader not losing it.
How stupd is this idea, really.
I mean, kids play on the playground. It will get broken. It will get lost.
And why wouldn't the kids trade them? Sounds like fun.
Would the school bullies take away my kid's tag and then I've got to pay for it.
I mean, the practical problems are just amazing in their simplicity and their pervasiveness.
I'd start by asking why we don't spend the money on a human who could improve the education at the school. Surely there must be something we could improve before wasting money on this.
Then, I'd probably want to investigate the dealings between the superintendent and the person selling this equipment. Are they buddies? What process was used to make this decision. Was the usual bid process followed? Why wasn't the school board in on the decision? Was there a meeting I missed???
Ah, this could provide years of fun for someone to obsess over.
I suspect a few people would be very worried about their jobs/re-election before it was all over.
[ February 12, 2005, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Bob_Scopatz ]
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
[ February 17, 2005, 03:08 AM: Message edited by: HollowEarth ]
Posted by suntranafs (Member # 3318) on :
Well done InCom.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:``Technology scares some people it's a fear of the unknown,'' parent Mary Brower told the newspaper before the meeting. ``Any kind of new technology has the potential for misuse, but I feel confident the school is not going to misuse it.''
The superintendent does not deserve this woman's trust.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
.