RFID Tagging Students Is All About The Money
from the chips-for-dough dept
Usually when I think of RFID chips, I tend to think of them being used for safety purposes. After all, my dog is chipped in case she decides to run off for greener pastures or tastier treats (DAMN IT, DOG, I GIVE YOU BACON ALL THE TIME!). But, despite safety often being the front man for using RFID technology, it often ends up being more about the money, such as when we previously wrote about Cleveland chipping citizens' garbage and recycling cans because recycling was a financial benefit for the city.
So reading the Wired article covering a Texas school district's decision to impliment RFID student cards, I wasn't surprised to find that it looks like this is about cash rather than keeping students safe. Now, as you'd expect, proponents of the system, did trot out their "for the children" cannon and set it on full auto.
[District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez] said the chips, which are not encrypted and chronicle students only by a serial number, also assist school officials to pinpoint where kids are at any given time, which he says is good for safety reasons. “With this RFID, we know exactly where the kid is within the school,” he said noting students are required to wear the ID on a lanyard at all times on campus.Unfortunately, as the article notes less vulgarly, that's a big steamy pile of bullshit for two reasons. First, due to lack of encryption and the nature of the technology, any tech-savvy kid can fool the system.
If you're wondering, like I did, why they would allow such a gap in the system through which their safety-minded goals could be subverted, the likely answer is that they don't care. Because this doesn't appear to be about safety at all; it appears to be about federal funding based on attendance.The lack of encryption makes it not technically difficult to clone a card to impersonate a fellow student or to create a substitute card to play hooky, and makes the cards readable by anyone who wanted to install their own RFID reader, though all they would get is a serial number that’s correlated with the student’s ID number in a school database.
Like most state-financed schools, their budgets are tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn’t receive daily funding for that pupil, because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there. But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desk but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student.So, with the chip system, even if a student is not in class and is just wandering around campus, he's counted as being in attendance and the school gets their funding. It's essentially a high tech way to game the federal funding metrics. It doesn't help keep students safe. It doesn't help make sure the kids are actually in class or learning. It's a money grab. And all this, despite the concerns of privacy advocates like the EFF and the ACLU, who signed on to a paper (pdf) blasting use of the chips, citing health concerns over electromagnetic radiation as well as the dehumanizing of children through constant surveillance.
A tip for school districts: if you're going to use RFID chips as a way to get more federal funding while pretending it's about student safety, pretend harder.
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Filed Under: encryption, rfid, students, texas
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Frogs, meet heating water
Gonzalez said John Jay High has 200 surveillance cameras and Anson Jones Middle School, about 90.
�The kids,� he said, �are used to being monitored.�
Oh. Then that's fine. They're used to being treated like inmates rather than students. I guess we'll move along and allow the encroachment of surveillance and removal of rights, whether it's in school, or the airport or on the internet ...
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money money money by the pound!
I Agree, the fact that they are not honest about this is not surprising. I don't see why they have to lie..WHO would care enough to change anything? Just leave the kids alone ffs. IMHO all you can hope for is thy grow up and unlearn ALL of this anyway. Good luck is all me, myself and I have to offer.
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That's educations dirty secret...
It's all about the adults and it's all about the unions and administrators and a system with a structure that is a complete failure. This form of funding is more of an example of this.
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This is a bit over the top - no?
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Yeah, there was absurdity in the public school I went to within the last 20 years, but it wasn't a complete failure. Not all schools are at the level of issuing RFID tags to students. Mine just required us to tuck our shirts in and then didn't enforce the rule for several years. They're not all the same so they're not all complete failures.
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Yes, this is the point. Many students graduate with a good education, some can even afford to go on to higher learning. If it were a complete failure this would not be the case.
Those who espouse the claim that the public school system is a complete failure are probably also pushing their own brand of solution the the problem. In many cases, the details of their solution is troubling.
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*And by that, I mean as an actual profession, not something where you play roulette with toehr people's money.
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I was unaware of this.
One would think many other groups would garner the attention of the haters before teachers. For example, the school administrators certainly would be higher up on this list than teachers - right?
Seriously - I can think of many so called professionals which deserve a higher ranking on the DB list than teachers.
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How does the RFID work in the school?
I see this as a big boondoggle for the RFID manufacturer, or the installer. How different is this from the standard swipe card ID cards that are commonplace in businesses today?
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And if you DO have rfid readers everywhere, where did you get the money for that? Shouldn't you be spending that on improving the education system?
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No. They know exactly where the RFID chip is within the school.
I wonder how long until A Million Moms or some other group decries the use of RFID chips with ties to warnings from Revelations about the "Number of the Beast."
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No need to duplicate
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I'm not sure this is really designed to be foolproof, after all, any kid with half a brain can simply place his card in one location and walk to another and I don't see encryption fixing that loophole. Perhaps implants are a better idea ;)
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It's only a matter of time till this is proposed by our esteemed rubber stamp law makers as a viable solution to a perceived problem that does not actually exist.
The potential health hazards will be swept under a rug thus protecting the greater good of someones off shore bank account.
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The rate of child kidnappings by strangers or parents would be virtually eliminated if the child could be located within a few minutes of an abduction.
As to the privacy and health issues, ask any parent who has lost a child what they would prefer.
Think of the (lost) children...
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Only a dumb criminal would not look for and remove the implanted device. It would be very easy to find, removal by the non medically trained could lead to complications. Possibly a wrist watch w/ embedded device would be less intrusive upon removal and possibly overlooked by the aforementioned dumb criminal.
In addition there are numerous studies on the adverse affects caused by implants. This is not hyperbole, so some research.
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RFID on students
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I smell a lawsuit that will soon be filed against the school district thinking about implementing this process.
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(yet)
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I think there is plenty of reason why the RFIDs are a good idea, although they probably should be encrypted (an probably will be once the scamming starts). I think there is some legal liability at play here too.
Using the system, the schools can show the student is in attendance (or at least faking it), and for that matter can show where on the campus the student is located (which sensor they recently passed by). This would make it much easier to investigate any crime that might occur on campus, as an example.
It might also help the schools to compare in class attendance to "on campus" attendance to address kids who are coming to school but not going to class - and they could potentially spot locations where they are hiding out or going to pass the time they are not in class, maybe helping them to address the issue.
There are plenty of positives. Yes, getting paid is a good thing too, and having a system that allows them to do this more accurately and much more quickly, allowing more classroom time for teaching and less time for attendance taking seems like a win for everyone.
So again, I have to ask: Why so angry?
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2)The system only knows where the card is, not who or what is carrying it.
3)A head count is required to confirm that the number of students present = the number of cards present.
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Using pen and paper, attendance can be taken. One would think that the many video cameras already in place would serve investigative activities better than a simple rfid.
It might help administration if they did not cut the staff to bare bone numbers, thus providing for the ability to spot students ditching class. Oh and they might even have time to actually look at the video being recorded.
There are many positives to keeping staff rather than trading them in for cheap and less effective replacements.
So again, why waste money?
Also, I assume you have a vested interest in this - amirite?
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We're in a fast changing age, and need to be vigilant in guarding our privacy, but need also to to avoid becoming Luddites with a knee-jerk reaction of fear and resentment as technology develops. RFID in your ID is a reality that is here (see TWIC cards for example) and will continue to grow. Limiting the range of these school IDs to school property is appropriate; in your ID is appropriate. Placed under your skin at birth (or, perhaps after an arrest/conviction) perhaps crosses the line ;-).
The reality is that anyone with a cell phone can (not should, but can) be tracked already. Notably, my read on the justification for the RFID in this case seems refreshingly honest: we want to make sure we get all the funding that we're due from the state. They could have easily trotted out "it's for the CHILDREN," "BUT, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS!" or the catch-all "TERRORISM," but they didn't. I have to conclude that these RFID embedded school IDS, while not perfect execution, is theoretically sound and defensible.
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Details on the NISD Tracking System
The tags have no off switch, so the kids continue to emit a 140-foot swath of RFID trackability even after they leave campus. That signal can be picked up by anyone with a bit of RF background who has an interest in tracking kids.
Please read more in our "Position Paper on the User of RFID in Schools" for more:
http://www.spychips.com/school/RFIDSchoolPositionPaper.pdf
In freedom,
Katherine Albrecht, Ed.D.
RFID and Consumer Privacy Expert, Nationally Syndicated Radio Host, and Bestselling Author
www.KatherineAlbrecht.com
www.Spychips.com
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oh boy!
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Late comment
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Student makes millions carrying RFID cards for buddies
Caught carrying 50 cards. Charges $1 per day per card. Student: "This was a light day. Usually I have at least 100."
Officials: "This is terrible. Just terrible. (Now we have to return all that federal money from faked attendance and are out the cost of the system. Maybe we'll just keep quiet so we don't lose all that money--for the children.)"
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If they were smart...
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