RFID Tracking Children

Ravenwood's Universe has commentary on this article on RFID tracking students in schools.

Angry parents, saying their children's privacy rights are being violated, have asked the board of the tiny Brittan School District to rescind a requirement that all students wear badges that monitor their whereabouts on campus using radio signals.

Located between the massive silos of Sutter Rice Co. and the Sutter Buttes, this small town has 587 kindergarten through eighth-graders who are the first public school kids in the country to be tracked on campus by such a system, which is designed to ease attendance taking and increase campus security.

"This is the only public school monitoring where children go, with kids walking around with little homing beacons,'' said Nicole Ozer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer aiding several parents who oppose the badges, which students wear around their necks.

Although all students have identification badges, only seventh- and eighth-graders are being tracked in a test run, according to school officials and representatives of InCom, a Sutter-based company developing the system.

"There is no danger or I wouldn't put it on my son,'' Florrie Turner, a school district employee helping the company develop the software, told the school board at its Tuesday night meeting.

The student tracking system uses radio frequency identification technology used mainly to monitor inventory and livestock. [Emphasis mine.]

Well let's start with the flawed statement that it will ease attendance and increase security.
Let's consider the effectiveness of these IDs. These are mobile equipment, meaning they aren't permanently attached, so they will be abused in many different ways.
1) These IDs will be traded back and forth. Students will trade them and the only way they'd be effective is if someone verifies the photo against the input that the receiver gets from the RFID. But since they are trying to justify the use of these RFID IDs with claiming that the teacher won't have to perform attendance, thus having more time for teaching, they have failed.
2) Clustered. IDs will be gathered together, by collusion or force, by one or more people and will then be able to spoof a large group moving or being involved in an offense. So, as a device of prevention of violence or vandalism, its a total wash.
3) Not carried at all. Students can wear them out of the room, drop them in a convenient cache site for future pickup, and then proceed to do what they wish. Again failing in tracking and control.

As for the "homing beacons" statement, that is just rubbish. This is all based on RFID and they don't emit anything unless they are stimulated by a standing station. The reach of these things isn't very large right now so the homing beacon statement is just trying to scare people.

The whole requirement to carry will only work for those that don't choose to violate the system. Those that do violate the system, will easily dodge any related controls unless some old fashioned human catches them. As monitoring systems go, this is a complete and utter farce.

There is a lot of discussion on student's privacy in all of these discussions, but I'm not convinced that should be a primary argument in the discussion. I'm saying this because if you work in any business that has any form of security, you will be having to have a similar identification that you have to have with you at all times. Most of these IDs are secondary purpose keys, which at minimum, will identify when you arrive into the facility. To say that having to wear these IDs will teach children that they have no right to privacy is ludicrous. There are place in life where you don't have that right. Stop whining and get used to it. Or go live under a rock somewhere.

I haven't even mentioned the costs. How much does the equipment cost? How much does it cost to maintain? How much does it cost to manage/administer the system? You will have to have someone put people into the system, remove them from the system, replace lost/damaged badges. What is the net monetary cost of a system that won't work?

Bruce Schneier discusses a similar tracking system for school bus' in this blog entry.
His analysis is excellent and I think fully applies to this whole discussion. In the comments section there is an entry that states that they are missing the point. The point truly is that the system is to protect the school district and not really protect the children. Read the entry toward the bottom by "Ken." I think he seems to be missing quite a bit about reality.