“Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry,” Whitehead continued. “These ‘Student Locator’ programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government.”
This raises a very valid concern. Human beings aren't cattle. Contrary to what many high school administrators might think, teenagers deserve the right to not be treated as such. If children are taught to be complacent with their privacy that can absolutely extend into adulthood. It would be a shame to raise a generation of Americans who support the idea that they are not trustworthy and therefore subject to probationary measures.
Approaching an airport security control a while back where security agents where shouting "Remove your shoes, belts and jackets, and move along!" repeatedly gave me the distinct impression that the TSA strongly disagrees with you.
Are they? They're certainly hated by various subgroups but I don't think this is terribly wide-spread. I get the feeling more people think the security theater is for real and is stopping actual atacks.
You know, my understanding is that when the form of our modern US school system was imported from Prussia many of the people advocating it were praising it's ability to turn out the sort of regimented, disciplined people required to staff factories.
John Taylor Gatto has written extensively on this in his books "Dumbing Us Down" and "The Underground History of American Education". For a synopsis, see e.g. this transcript of a speech he gave:
This is a great point, but raises issues around the entire US public education system that often times crosses the line of babysitting vs. education (I know nothing about this school).
Managing a bunch of 15 - 19 YO's is pretty challenging and as schools continue to get their budget raised or cut, based on attendance, it will be more important to manage attendance vs. GPA / performance. Having kids safely in school, with butt in seat in class, will be continue to be a driving KPI.
Human beings aren't cattle, but an education system built around preparing kids for a 9 - 5, factory job, is essentially a cattle farm.
Why should all of the children who are in school voluntarily have their entire learning experience disrupted by the kid who keeps being forced back into school by a truant officer?
I think it 's mostly a question of meaningful consent. Just as a 14 year old cannot consent, legally, to having sex with a 30-year-old, a child cannot really be trusted with the choice to opt out of school.
Money in the public primary and secondary education system — and in the US that is around half a trillion dollars each year — flows according to body count, not learning. You get what you reward.
“These ‘Student Locator’ programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government.”
Out of curiosity, are you more afraid of the government having that goal and enabling that environment or Facebook/Google/Foursquare/etc? Why? I think this is an interesting discussion.
Every time I visit a page with a little FB "Like" button on it, Facebook knows (via a cookie) what page I've visited. They track people even if they don't have accounts. It's not so easy to opt out of that. (I installed ShareMeNot for Firefox but it's not obvious that you can do that.)
That only works until FB (or Google or whoever) starts using IP addresses in their CDN URLs, or Google hard-codes DNS values for Google analytics servers into Chrome, or whatever. ShareMeNot prevents the browser from even trying to fetch the content.
Perhaps it's time the school district brought back the flag salute to better illustrate the relation it wishes to create between citizens and their state.
Judge Whitehead must have never stepped into an office building in the last 10 years. RFID-enabled ID badges are standard at offices around the world and schools are lagging behind if anything.
Ah, but it's one thing to have it done by an employer with which one has voluntarily entered into an agreement; it's quite another to have it done by the government.
You entered into an agreement with this school district. They are testing this out on these two schools. If it passes, the district may put them in the other schools. She is going to a Magnet school, not a standard public school.
> You entered into an agreement with this school district.
If it's a public school, the agreement cannot include anything that violates a student's civil rights. Under the equal access rules currently in force, the fact that a student chooses to attend a particular school is not a factor -- her civil rights must be protected no matter what choices she makes.
True, however she and her parents signed the forms that the school district sent out about the RFID tags and agreed to the terms. Only after the fact did they start to protest it. Why didn't they protest it from the beginning?
Anyways, there is a magnet school literally right next to Taft HS that she could apply to that doesn't have the RFID tags. In fact, she is going to a school that is further away from where she lives and she should be going to the magnet school Comm Arts
I live in the area that this is talking about. I don't necessarily agree with the RFID tags, but claiming religion is a load of crap.
> True, however she and her parents signed the forms that the school district sent out about the RFID tags and agreed to the terms.
Doesn't matter -- it doesn't matter whether there is a signed agreement, only whether the agreement does or doesn't include provisions that violate civil rights. If this were not so, the South could have gone around and gotten all the poor black people to sign an agreement to attend inferior schools or give up the right to vote. They didn't even try this tactic, because they knew it wouldn't make any difference.
I understand that, but you also need to realize Jay HS is one of the worst, underfunded schools in the district. They NEED the money from attendance and that is the only way they get money.
If the govt. would start rewarding schools money not based on attendance alone, this would be a totally different thing.
> you also need to realize Jay HS is one of the worst, underfunded schools in the district. They NEED the money from attendance and that is the only way they get money.
I'm sure you didn't intend to explain how the school, on financial grounds, would be justified in violating the civil rights of the students. It was surely an oversight.
The Fourth Amendment is often cited in cases of this kind -- it has been interpreted in modern times as assuring some protections against unreasonable or unjustified surveillance.
He's talking about the fact they are able to track where the students are "roughly" in the school, and that the RFID badges hold some personal information in them. To which, I'm not sure what kind of personally identifying information is on them other than a UUID. All speculation and snake oil
Yes and yes. I see the issue she's having with the RFID but I also don't understand why she is having such a problem. Her phone tracks her, facebook tracks her, google, etc... it's a problem yes, but I can't do anything about it other than complain.
I think the family just wanted to get a quick window of fame and be able to tell people "Ya, we forced the HS to get rid of those RFIDs."
You can say that about anything in the school system, be it ID numbers, ID cards, parking passes, library computers with porn blockers, or even having to show up every day. Why single out RFID badges as magical antichrist technology when they're just a high-tech way of taking attendance and restricting access to school facilities?
RFID can't either, unless you severely overpower the readers. You'd think the antichrist would be able to come up with something that couldn't be defeated with aluminum foil.
>RFID can't either, unless you severely overpower the readers.
Readers can't be made specifically to cover a larger range?
>You'd think the antichrist would be able to come up with something that couldn't be defeated with aluminum foil.
RFID is cheap. And you don't need something that can't be defeated by aluminum foil. Putting aluminum foil around things is a hassle. People avoid hassles. How many people take the battery out of their cell phones to avoid being tracked?
Have you ever used an RFID badge? You have to practically press them against the reader to get the damn thing to work. If you think the school is somehow hacking them to do any more than that, you need to provide evidence.
Right, but you don't want a student to show up as "present in class" if they happen to pass within hundreds of feet of the door reader. Do you know of any ID badge system that actually reads at hundreds of feet or are you inventing hypothetical scenarios and arguing as if they are reality?
If you're tracking attendance, you're obviously not using too long range a reader. But if you're tracking attendance, is RFID worth using at all? Some human verification of attendance is required, otherwise a single child can simply scan two RFID cards. If human verification is required, then a bar code-driven solution is cheaper and not an underlying privacy vulnerability for the student (i.e. a third party can't scan for it outside of the school).
The underlying issue with RFID in schools is the technology can be used to track people and some believe it's wrong for the state to condition kids into being forced to carry technology that can be used to track them.
It's not just used for tracking attendance, it's used for a lot of other things, like paying for lunch at the cafeteria. Conceivably it could probably be used to control access into school buildings, so only staff, faculty, and students can get in. For those of us who work for a living and carry an ID badge at work, this is more or less what we use them for.
Bar codes are really no better, since they can be scanned at line-of-sight for a remarkable distance. They're less reliable, which is why RFIDs were invented in the first place.
Through the wholly unremarkable combination of having a job, living in a city with a functioning public transit system I sometimes use, being a Zipcar member, and having a credit card, I end up carrying about five RFID's at all times. RFID's are part of the world, not magical antichrist technology that the evil schools are conditioning children into accepting. Schools are a few years behind the technology curve, actually, as they almost always are.
The RFID tags are used for attendance tracking and other various tasks. ALL of the schools in the Bexar county area have students who have to wear ID tags on their shirts. The gang problems here are pretty high, they don't want people that look like students to just walk in and start problems. True, it wont stop a student from just handing an id card to another person to walk around in, but the teacher will record the student as absent and the office will see where the student is if they are in school.
Checkpoints aren't near the bathrooms, but they are in the halways and the last time I heard, they were in the rooms as well.
This is also a test by only these two schools. If it passes, they will use them in the entire county, otherwise they will abandon the project all together.
I don't necessarily believe that she should be using the "Mark of the Beast" excuse. But this does cut REALLY close to invasion of privacy.
Given the hackability of RFID, wouldn't it be faster, cheaper, and more effective to just pull some hijinx and make the school look like idiots? Also, women in tech! :-)
Something that came to mind is if you put an RFID detector near toilet doors and visibly show a count of how many people it thinks are in there, you could easily demonstrate what a terrible violation of privacy it is.
Edit: You could also show who and how often, but I'm scared you'd be arrested...
I think it's time for one of these students to start a webpage which displays how much time each student spends in the restroom. Searchable, and indexed by a person's real first + last name.
If that doesn't make the school realize how appalling this violation of privacy is, then they're too far gone for anything!
In the countries I've lived and worked in, you don't get such a number until you want to file a tax return, so usually somewhere around age 15 (depending on the country)
But perhaps part of the point of the GP is that SSNs (or even citizenship) are not required for attendance. In fact, it is illegal to even inquire about citizenship status due to federal access laws, so even the school asking for then SSN is ... interesting.
This is my home state.. city/county mind you in fact. I can remember back in middle school we were giving our SSN as a way to purchase our food, it was our pin code. Thinking back it makes you think if some of those kids have worst credit then others. Privacy doesn't seem to be a big concern in the state anymore, I was just reading that a few states, Texas being the only one to, wanted to conceded from the United States, I just don't understand it, times are changing.
I must say, I'm extremely worried about the USA, and this article demonstrates why.
Should we really commend someone for being unable to tell the difference between an electronic component & radio transmission system, and the magical 'mark of the beast'?
I'm also pretty sure that forcing people to wear tags is going to be overturned by a judge on the point of religious freedom, not based on a common sense decision.
And so we're overturning a practical cost saving practicality because:
1) One person believes in magical symbols, and can't tell an electronic component from magic.
2) Some people (commenters in this article) believe we're all magical special snowflakes that should never be treated as a 'group', despite the practicalities of dealing with a large group of people at the same time.
Now all we need is for a bunch of nudists to decide that clothes are the mark of the beast. Or concert goers to say that tickets are a mark of the beast. Or flight-attendents to decide that passports are a mark of the beast. Or Hacker News commenters to decide that login details are the mark of the beast.
I think that this girl can tell electronic components from magic perfectly well. It is you, who is unable to understand what she is saying.
Yes, she is using language with religious roots and very expressive 'mark of the beast' phrase. But these are just words, part of the language and culture. Fact that she uses them doesn't make her stupid or insane.
I hesitate to use the words "stupid" or "insane", but she literally believes that a piece of plastic with some microchips is the work of an evil magical being who wants to wait until she dies and then torment her, based on something that sounds like a mistranslated mushroom trip.
People don't always research what's important to their beliefs. I'd even go so far as to say it's more common than not that a person hasn't adequately researched their beliefs, whatever they are. So she might not have even read the book she got this belief from.
Also, people have very different conceptions given vague data. So your interpretation of her beliefs is absurd, as religious scripture is ambiguous. Or more accurately, it doesn't matter whether it is ambiguous or not, as people will make that decision regardless of the ambiguousness of the original text.
I think you've missed the point of my commentary, if you think that's key here. Neither you nor I have access to that information; the school board, teachers, government workers, and parent representatives do, and they made a combined choice to implement this.
They could be wrong (and they have been before, of course) - but this family isn't arguing that. They are arguing on religious and privacy grounds.
Reductio in absurdum: take the "I won't do it because it's the mark of the beast" to it's next level (hacker news comments, library membership, news articles, theaters), and you have a dysfunctional society.
This is crap. How many of us have to where some I similar at work? Don't suspend her for not wearing it, just keep her out if class if she doesn't check in with it. Her attendance will falter in the system and she'll be expelled for lack of attendance. This is not big brother, its what every sane parent wants to know: where is my kid?
> How many of us have to where some I similar at work?
Those with broken souls or those that work in high-security institutions? This is hardly the average experience in an office FFS.
> This is not big brother, its what every sane parent wants to know: where is my kid?
You're joking right? This is completely big brother, and in my mind sane and endlessly controlling aren't compatible concepts. Indicting every other parent who doesn't want to ChildTracker(TM) their kids as insane is by far the most ridiculous part of your comment.
Wanting to know where you kid is at all times and going to invasive lengths to gather that information are two completely different things. If your child is out and unaccounted for, you should be worried. You shouldn't be checking their GPS tracker on your phone to gain that peace of mind. Sane parents have another key skill: self control.
It's a disgusting invasion of privacy, akin to ransacking your child's room to check for undesirable items. Feel free to do it, just don't be surprised when nobody visits you at the home in 20 years. You broke that bond of trust and respect a long time ago and it won't just suddenly re-appear.
I am sure every sane parent also wants to know "who else knows where my kid is" and "with which other third parties this someone else may (knowingly or otherwise) share that information".
Can't they do what my employers have always done? Make you swipe in at the door. That would earn their revenue from the state while not creating a panopticon.
So what does this girl do when she grows up and wants to do things like get a job, use public transit, drive across a toll bridge, or get a passport? RFID is just part of the world now and it's not entirely clear why schools should be any different.
As this gets rolled out to the whole district, has anyone looked into how this plan meshes with COPPA? Seems like a very significant amount of PII will be collected for under-13 year olds on internet connected servers. At the same time, parents are legally compelled to send their kids to school and students are legally compelled to attend. Therefore, how can there be informed consent when there is no choice being offered, since one cannot opt out?
I'm not sure I see the difference between this program and a company that distributes a similar system for employees to track all the same information?
Minors are more easily indoctrinated into accepting that sort of thing. Employers who do this are being just as antisocial and psychopathic as this school district; the difference is that adults are mature enough to say, "This is not right," whereas children will grow up thinking, "This is how the world works, I better accept it."
"Employers who do this are being just as antisocial and psychopathic as this school district"
Because using rfid badges to unlock doors at an office building/control and log access to server rooms, etc is a psychopathic and antisocial thing to do
Most uses of RFID badges for access control have nothing to do with building control or server rooms (and why would you want something as poorly secured as RFID when a smartcard would be equally convenient and far more secure?). Most uses of RFID are based on the same reasoning that leads to the installation of keystroke logging software, MITM devices, etc. -- the idea that employees should be watched at all times, and that the more detail you have about your employees work habits, the better (and you should never have know how to judge the products of their work; after all, that is not the job of a top-level manager).
As an information security professional, I am so glad we use RFID badges. I want to know who is getting into my secure datacenter and when, and be able to revoke that right with the click of a button if things start going pear-shaped with their activities.
RFID is a broad spectrum, not necessarily one technology. Some are more secure than others. Even with the most basic, though, it's pretty easy to clone a key or a keycode as well. Keys can't be revoked if you don't know where they are, and keycode changes require everyone to learn the new keycode. It's a game of give and take.
Well, for one thing, the school is an arm of government, not a private party. We allow private parties to do all sorts of things we don't allow governments to do.
This doesn't change the legal issue in dispute -- whether someone can be compelled to give up a basic civil right in exchange for attending the school she wants to attend.
Is it a basic civil right? To not be monitored in school? Schools have cameras, they have security guards, they have teachers watching you constantly, they have screen monitoring software on the computers, they have locker searches, and all of these have been upheld as Constitutional because in a school, students have no right to privacy.
Whether this particular case (which admittedly is different from other privacy cases I've seen), the girl is choosing to be at this school. The school gave her the option to opt out of the program and just have a normal card, and she refused. The school then gave her another option, which is to return to the school she is legally required to attend rather than the one she is choosing to attend. That seems more than reasonable to me.
A very good question. The answer is that courts decide this sort of thing, and the notion of "civil rights" is a moving target over time.
But if her civil rights are violated, then the fact that she volunteers to be there instead of another school should not be allowed to interfere with the judgment.
How am I so sure? Well, as one example, African-Americans must be allowed to attend the school of their choice, and the argument that they have alternative schools is (in the eyes of the law) insufficient. The south famously argued that African-Americans had their own schools and shouldn't be arguing for admission to other schools. The Supreme Court disagreed.
> The school then gave her another option, which is to return to the school she is legally required to attend rather than the one she is choosing to attend. That seems more than reasonable to me.
Read the history of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, from beginning to end. Then ask yourself whether what you've just said is fair and reasonable.
I agree that I would like the courts to decide on this. We're all armchair observers just making our commentary the way we see it.
I'm not certain that the Civil Rights Act comes into play here, though. The problem there is that the government were mandating that people had to go to different schools just based on their skin color. On the other hand, magnet schools are inherently and legally discriminatory; they discriminate on talent. You're legally required to attend school, but you can qualify for attendance in a magnet school. They're not telling the girl to go back to the girl's school, or back to the black person's school, they're telling her to go back to the same school everyone else goes to, the normal school, the regular school, the legally mandated school. High school is not an alternative school, magnet high schools are. It's not discrimination to make someone go to a school everyone else goes to. Not everyone gets into a magnet high school; she did, and now she's been disqualified. Magnet high schools are not a right.
> I'm not certain that the Civil Rights Act comes into play here, though.
But it does. This person wants to attend a particular school, but that school violates her civil rights as a precondition for attendance. It's a clear violation of the civil rights rulings that were handed down in the 1960s. It would be like requiring people to take a literacy test before voting, but only in particular places. Beyond the civil rights implications, it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
> The problem there is that the government were mandating that people had to go to different schools just based on their skin color.
Yes, but that's coincidental to the legal issues. If the people in question had been women, or another minority, or of a particular religious persuasion, or any number of other traits, the same laws would apply. Race has always been coincidental to the legal arguments.
> On the other hand, magnet schools are inherently and legally discriminatory; they discriminate on talent.
Sometimes true, but a red herring in this case, because the girl is qualified to attend. Because she is qualified, her civil rights become the issue.
> Magnet high schools are not a right.
Actually if it's a public school, yes, it's a right. The reason? If a particular person is qualified to attend this publicly funded institution, then any other equally qualified person should be able to attend also, and if not, the school had better have an excellent reason why not.
If it were a private school, the rules would be different, but this is a publicly funded school, therefore constitutional protections are in force.
I would love to see this kind of back and forth in the opinions of the Supreme Court. You're making some interesting arguments I haven't thought of. Unfortunately with the religious freedom claim, I doubt we'd see this come up.
Plenty of people stand up for what they believe in and go unnoticed. She is doing the right thing. If she stepped down now, the program would be enforced without resistance.
This raises a very valid concern. Human beings aren't cattle. Contrary to what many high school administrators might think, teenagers deserve the right to not be treated as such. If children are taught to be complacent with their privacy that can absolutely extend into adulthood. It would be a shame to raise a generation of Americans who support the idea that they are not trustworthy and therefore subject to probationary measures.