This seems a little extreme...!

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RFID Chips in School Uniforms Track Students

Fri Oct 26, 2007 8:16AM EDT

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How would feel about this: Tracking chips in kids' school clothing so that school officials can know their whereabouts during the school day?

Oh, it's happening. Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program. Information Week reports that the kids attend Hungerhill School for ages 11-16 in Edenthorpe, England.

Add the RFID chips to increased video surveillance and fingerprinting of kids, and this is a heavily tracked generation—for safety's sake.

That extra peace of mind for adults comes with a heavy loss of privacy for kids. Do you agree with David Clouter, a parent and founder of the children's advocacy group Leave Them Kids Alone, who says taking all these precautions has the effect of treating kids like criminals? Or do you agree with the parents who have OKed the pilot program who do not find it egregiously intrusive?

One possible side effect: Uniform sales may pick up as kids try to procure extra non-RFID-tagged clothing. As security expert Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

LINK: U.K. Kids Get RFID Chips in School Uniforms [Information Week]

Why would they want to keep track of kids if they are right there in the school? Or maybe this is a cover up for something far more sinister?

It's all incremental, so it's easier to impose upon a population.
One of the best marketing ploys ever was to coin the phrase, "It's for our children's safety!", and others like it.
Really tugs at the heartstrings!

I wouldn't want it for my daughter. She's 14 and seems to have done well, albeit in a very small and pretty safe school system.

The thing is... knowing kids as we all should by now (having been one at sometime in our lives)... how hard do you think it would be for a kid to circumvent a system like this?

Yeah, like the article said, they are already noting that a child would merely have to swap shirts or whatever article of clothing was micro chipped, with someone else. Next they will say that they are justified to micro chip the person's body, for their own safety. Aren't they actually doing this with severely autistic children? They have already done this with my cat. It was a condition to my adopting her from the pound.

Could that type of chip be disabled by running a bulk-eraser or other powerful magnet over the uniform? That's what I'd do.

Not sure how that would affect a chip in someone's body...

Yeah, but if you disable the chip or switch clothes, you'd better make sure you're not actually at school and they can't find you. You're pretty much trapped into keeping the chip if you'd want to continue attending that school.

Like all ideas for powerful control, it can be very helpful (like finding missing persons or criminals) if those in control are good people, or very harmful and oppressive those in control are evil.
I do hope England isn't gradually becoming a police state.

Every purchase made, every credit card transaction, every phone call, every bank withdrawal, every payment, every plane ticket, toll booth clearing, every doctor's visit, every pharmaceutical prescribed - is being MONITORED, collected and filed away under YOUR PERSONAL DATA. Tabs are being kept on us here on this site. What did you think?

There's only one kind of freedom - and that's freedom of the mind. Nobody can take that from you without your consent.

Not to be rude, but aren't the chips used for dogs/cats for identification purposes only? Not for tracking their movements?

It is rather harsh though, I would most definetely not want someone chipping me and watching my movements, there is so little privacy as it is.

On another note, why are they chipping children? I would prefer if they were using their resources to track the movements of dangerous criminals as opposed to schoolchildren.

Aren't those esentialy the same?


(Before someone misunderstands me, I'm being sarcastic )

Satellites are supposed to be for telecommunications, and are used for spying ..technology like anything else can be used for good or evil.

It sounds iffy, first the washer and dryer, ironing, electronics are touchy at best.

What part of the uniform?

Hardly anything is childproof.

This is disturbing. I prefer freedom to safety. And I doubt this practice would have any effect on safety anyway.

Oh gosh, as if I weren't paranoid enough.

What really frightens me, is if they can do this with school uniforms, how do we know if they haven't done this with other articles of clothing, without telling us?

All in all we're just another brick in the wall.

I agree. This *is* extreme.

Tim