Looks like schools are selling out students in favor of funding. Not surprisingly, the government wants to track school students (already in government indoctrination centers/schools) with RFID chips. Some of the students don’t think it’s too cool, the school spying on their every move in order to get state and Federal funds. Do you want the school and the state tracking your kids? How soon until they implant these devices in their bodies?
Your freedom, and the freedom of your children lessens with each passing day. When your phones, computers, cars, T.V.’s, and even your body are being monitored by the government, your every move tracked and recorded, you will be more compliant and afraid. They are watching you.
Pupil Hernandez, who refused to wear RFID, loses appeal
9 January 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20957587
A Texan student who refused to wear a badge with a radio tag that tracked her movements has lost a federal court appeal against her school’s ID policy.
The radio chips track attendance, which in turn helps secure school funding.
But Andrea Hernandez, 15, stopped wearing the badge on religious grounds, saying it was the “mark of the beast”.
After John Jay High School suspended her, she went to court and won a temporary injunction to continue her studies at the school, without the tag.
The federal court ruling overturned that, saying if she was to stay at the school, she would be required to wear the badge. Otherwise, she would have to transfer to a new school.
The new identification policy at the Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas, began at the start of the 2012 school year.
John Jay High School is one of two schools piloting the programme, which eventually aims to equip all student badges across the district’s 112 schools with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips.
The badges reveal each student’s location on their campus, giving the district more precise information on attendance.
The daily average of the attendance is related to how much funding each school receives.
But Miss Hernandez said the badge was the “mark of the beast”, as described in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
RFID and Auto ID News: Maybe SpyChips Book had a Point, as Students and Parents Protest Personal Tagging at Texas Schools
A Number of Student Tracking Systems are Out There, It Turns Out; Monitoring More than Just Attendance?
Tensions are building in several public schools in San Antonio in which a program to track students through use of RFID tags has set off local protests, as the school punish the kids who do not wear their RFID badges to school.
The new tracking system was announced earlier this year and put into place Oct. 1 at two schools: John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio.
Beyond tracking in the schools, the technology allows a school district, for example, to send automatic “wake-up calls” to students not found to have made the opening bell – but some are taking the systems even further
Students are required to carry new student ID cards that have an RFID chip embedded in them, connected to a reader network that can identify where a student is within the building in real-time.
Auto-ID based tracking systems for humans are actually nothing new. 15 years ago or so, a number of jails implemented tracking systems for prisoners using bar coded wrists bands, which were scanned at inmates entered each area, such as the cafeteria, library, etc. to track their whereabouts. SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore, in fact, says he was modestly involved in such a system in about 1996 for tracking prisoners at the LA County jail.
More recently, several amusement parks have used special RFID enabled tickets to track attendees, mostly to help parents quickly track down their kids when they get lost or separated.
But in the jail example, most people agree prisoners have simply lost most of their privacy rights. In the case of amusement parks, the tracking systems are “opt-in.”
But at the San Antonio schools, the tracking systems are mandatory, and students who do not bring their new RFID-based IDs to school are saying they are being punished to drive compliance.
Many protested against the tracking systems when the program was first announced, and those protests have escalated now that it has been implemented and the enforcement measures are being used.
State school officials say the program was initiated to stem rampant truancy in many schools across Texas, which not only impacts the students but also school funding formulas, in which schools lose money as truancy rises. If the program is judged successful, the RFID tracking system could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students in San Antonio.
Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.
According to a local website, for example, Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, said the school has ignored her pleas to respect her privacy and told her she cannot participate in school elections if she refuses to comply with the tracking program.
According to radio station WND, After Hernandez refused to wear an RFID chip, Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo issued a statement to the girl’s parents: “We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do.” If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, the repercussions will be harsher than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests once the school makes location-monitoring mandatory, he said.
A few other students are said to be refusing to wear the IDs, but Hernandez, with the support of her father, is the focus at present.
This kind of evolution (de-volution?) from using RFID to track goods to tracking people and other invasions of privacy is just what former Harvard professor Karen Albrecht and co-author Liz McIntyre predicted in their book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move, published originally in the early 2000s.
That book caused major controversy, to the point where SCDigest was told at the time that Walmart, in the midst of its then RFID program, would not participate in RFID events if Albrecht was a scheduled speaker.
It appears that such RFID student tracking systems are becoming an actual market. The systems are popularly known as “Tag and Track,” are being sold to schools system across the country by a variety of vendors, including AIM Truancy Solutions, ID Card Group and DataCard.
Houston, it turns out, has had such a system deployed since all the way back in 2004. Austin also has a program, but it is not mandatory. Baltimore’s school system has also deployed a system, and the Anaheim district is testing the system. The Palos Heights School District in Illinois has implemented the program with RFID tags attached to a student’s back pack. How widespread these student tracking systems beyond these and a few others is not clear.
It does not appear that these other programs have generated much public protest, with the exception of Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, CA, where a system implemented in the mid-2000s was uninstalled over some protests and legal action by the ACLU.
Beyond tracking in the schools, the technology allows a school district, for example, to send automatic “wake-up calls” to students not found to have made the opening bell – but some are taking the systems even further, generating fears from some about the reach of these systems.
For example, on Long Island, NY, Bay Shore students designated overweight or obese are being equipped with a wristwatch-like devices that count heartbeats, detect motion and even track students’ sleeping habits. Wow.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation has issued a statement warning about such a possible slippery slope.
“An RFID chip allows for far more than that minimal record-keeping,” the organization says. “Instead, it provides the potential for nearly constant monitoring of a child’s physical location.” It asks: “If RFID records show a child moving around a lot, could she be tagged as hyperactive? If he doesn’t move around a lot, could he get a reputation for laziness?”
AWD says:
Dear Comrades,
The Directorate for Popular Surveillance of the Department of Social Justice announced yesterday that the People’s Court of Texas Oblast has formally rejected a student’s effort to resist mandatory electronic monitoring. This great victory for the Party establishes the legal precedent that citizens may be required to wear tracking devices in connection with mandatory public activities, such as schooling.
The Party struggles to ensure that our Young Socialists receive their appropriate indoctrination through State institutions of learning. Our schools must know the whereabouts of all students so as to answer for them to the Party and receive their proper share of budget allocations within the Five-Year Plan. Radio transmitters are the most efficient way to track student location and verify identification.
And, since the Party has taken responsibility for all medical coverage of the workers and peasants of the USSA through our greatly-desired Obamacare, any potential after-effects from long-term exposure to short-wave radio transmissions emanating from the tracking device (which is worn on a collar around the students’ necks and hanging down to breast level for easy viewing by Party officials) will be fully covered by Obamacare. Students will be comforted in knowing that they will receive free cancer treatments, along with any necessary cardiovascular care, should the Party determine that the radio transmitters may have negative medical consequences. While studies on laboratory mice have proved inconclusive (all of the non-control-group mice inexplicably died from cancer in three trials with these devices, leaving Party scientists baffled). The Party assures us that these devices are perfectly safe.
In fact, these radio devices broadcast a clear, non-encrypted (who needs secrets and privacy in our glorious Socialist Republic?) signal which Party officials can monitor from up to 140 feet away. This will make truancy checks a breeze, since this signal radiates well beyond the average house into the sidewalks and streets, where radio receivers in vehicles can drive by houses and check to see if students are in their homes, either doing homework or watching Party-approved TV programs (for more information on these radio receivers, look for tutorials on YouTube which can help you build your own, making denunciations much easier!).
We should all be grateful that the party cares for our children, even more than we do. How many parents have actually gone to the trouble of installing electronic monitoring devices on their children? No, only the Party cares enough to do this!
Support mandatory electronic monitoring for all citizens! Agitation for surveillance!
(ctr/alt/sarc)
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9th January 2013 at 1:31 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
It happened in Texas too. I don’t know why I expected better. After all, those assholes also made Gardasil mandatory and prayed for rain (how’s that workin out for ya?)
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9th January 2013 at 1:38 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
prayed for rain……
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9th January 2013 at 1:46 pm
Pete says:
Home school!
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9th January 2013 at 1:46 pm
harry p. says:
just another reason to not send your kids to govt schools.
your child’s education is too important to leave to a govt drone.
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9th January 2013 at 1:50 pm
AWD says:
It’s encouraging that the kids and parents are fighting back. The Supreme Socialist Court sided with the government/school, however.
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9th January 2013 at 1:54 pm
Dan says:
And yet another reason you do not let the government raise/teach (brainwash) your children.
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9th January 2013 at 1:56 pm
AWD says:
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9th January 2013 at 2:12 pm
Bostonbob says:
A simple hit with a hammer can disable an RFID card.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-blockkill-RFID-chips/
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9th January 2013 at 2:33 pm
AWD says:
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9th January 2013 at 3:01 pm
flash says:
more and more USSA reminds me of Ayn Rand’s dystopia in Anthem …sheesh
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9th January 2013 at 3:48 pm
Kill Bill says:
“Houston, it turns out, has had such a system deployed since all the way back in 2004″
I really dont this is about socialism or nationalism but authoritarianism and by both main political parties.
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9th January 2013 at 5:13 pm
NickelthroweR says:
I just do not understand why anyone today would send their children to public school. Seriously, name one thing that the state actually does well? It can’t properly regulate Wall St.; its criminal justice system is a joke. Again, look at how the state has mismanaged its finances while you think about how that those are the same people teaching our children.
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9th January 2013 at 6:04 pm
biggtmofo says:
notice it’s all about the money. A company sells a solution to a school system that can’t keep kids in the school and police don’t have truant officers anymore to track the kids. What a surprise. Maybe Alex Jones is right we are being prepared to live in a police-prison state. Track your movements, heartbeat and smell your pee whenever we want. This will prepare the youth for tomorrow. Fuck school.
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9th January 2013 at 9:08 pm
Gene says:
Even though the court ruling went the wrong (evil?) way, Andrea Hernandez is on my personal Honor Roll. 15yrs old and has shown more backbone in this case than my elected reps have shown in just about anything.
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9th January 2013 at 8:14 am
Eddie says:
Someday, if there is a someday, schools, if there still are schools, will once again be under local control. This is the way it should be.
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9th January 2013 at 8:49 am
OF says:
Totalitarian insanity can last longer than you can survive. You guys are long past due serious rebellion…
Remember Hitler´s famous speech? “And now I want to see all those people who used to laugh at us, whether they´re still laughing!!” Brrrrrrrrrrr…..
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9th January 2013 at 1:02 pm