10 ms·

Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker

311 points by iProject 14y ago

namank 14y ago
Cameras connected to cops and it's being paid out of the educational budget?
- quink 14y ago
  The direct quote: > The school has already installed over 200 CCTV cameras in an attempt to curb truancy, some of which have a live link directly to the local police department, Whitehead said. I can't even begin to... this is... I have no words.
  - rorrr 14y ago
    Sounds like a prison system
    - ghostDancer 14y ago
      Is a reeducation system but beginning at the same time as education. Orwell must be proud.
  - mercurial 14y ago
    Personally, I like this one too (from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-school-changing-rooms http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-sch...): > More than 200 schools across Britain are using CCTV cameras in pupils' toilets or changing rooms, according to figures obtained by anti-surveillance campaigners, who warned that the research raised serious questions about the privacy of schoolchildren. > A total of 825 cameras were located in the toilets or changing rooms of 207 schools across England, Scotland and Wales, according to data provided by more than 2,000 schools. [...] > Responses from 2,107 secondary schools and academies showed they used 47,806 cameras overall, including 26,887 inside school buildings. That's an average of 22 cameras per school, so clearly there is progress to be made, but cameras in the lockers and bathrooms must be worth more points.
    - ixacto 14y ago
      Pedo bear approves...
- lopatin 14y ago
  What a complete waste of money. It's as if they actually expect the cops to sit down and continuously monitor all 200 cameras all day. Horrible waste of tax money on two fronts. Also, say some cop does happen to see a kid walking out of school at 1:30. It's not like he's going to get all alerted and call the school to figure out the situation. No he's going to think "There goes some kid ... probably called out by his parents" and that's the end of that.
  - csense 14y ago
    Of course this means they just need to spend more money on more technology. You have to start integrating the cameras with face recognition, RFID chips, and of course you have a system that knows when every student is SUPPOSED to leave. (Of course, this necessarily means both a permanent record and live feed of e.g. every student's medical appointments will be created.) And then of course if there aren't enough officers to monitor the cameras continuously, that means you have to increase taxes to hire more officers. After all, they're American heroes, being strong and brave to protect the innocent -- we all need to do our bit to support them. And think of who they're protecting in this case -- the children! Everyone's concerned about the welfare of children... HN, this is why I hate politics.
    - javajosh 14y ago
      I don't see why we're so uptight about children's safety anyway. Sure, some get kidnapped and murdered, or molested or beat up or whatever, but 99.999999% of kids seem to do okay. Sure, it sucks if your kid is one of the .0000001%, but there's a lot of things that suck in this world if they happen to you, but they are so uncommon that we don't (and shouldn't) waste any time worrying about them.
      - namank 14y ago
        Lol. Because a life isn't a statistic.
      - csense 14y ago
        Expressing concern for childrens' safety activates the "child-in-danger = I'd-better-do-something" reflex that evolution's built into us. Therefore, politicians, marketers, and other "spin" people who want to build support for a certain agenda will say "We need to do this to protect your children." Because it works -- it convinces people emotionally, if their reasoning capability is poorly developed or not engaged. Most people are statistically illiterate; they don't understand probability. And our intuitions about this sort of thing were evolved when news spread by word-of-mouth; they do very poorly in an age where everybody hears about very rare events thanks to worldwide radio, TV and Internet coverage. Bruce Schneier has a very insightful essay on this topic [1]. [1] http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html
TeMPOraL 14y ago
> "Other non-believers think John was a bit too fond of funny mushrooms and shouldn't be taken too seriously." This kind of remark, regardless of author's beliefs, doesn't sound like a very good journalism style. (Also I guess it's a reference to Pantheocide from Salvation War series, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Salvation_War http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Salvation_War)
- mercurial 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_tabloid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_tabloid
- civilian 14y ago
  So, the journalist maybe didn't say it respectfully, but there is a strong possibility in there. John was originally proselytizing in Rome, but the Romans got pissed off at him, so he was exiled to the island of Patmos. Amanita Muscarias grew on that island! And if you read trip reports (or, trip yourself?) you'll find that Amanitas give very extreme religious imagery. So if you compare the imagery from modern day Amanita trips with what was written in revelations... you realize that it's very possible that St. John was writing a trip report. And because of that day's lack of understanding about drugs and those experiences are produced, he would chaulk it up to a message from God. ## edit: more links http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/ http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/ http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.review.pdf http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.r... However any references to amanitas or mushrooms are not in the wiki article for the Book of Revelations.
xutopia 14y ago
Although I'm not pushing religion on anyone I feel like it should be mentioned that the religious ground she mentions might have something to do with this part of the Bible: "He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead." Revelation 13:16
deleted 14y ago
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- Tipzntrix 14y ago
  To some people, religion is more important than privacy. In fact, in all religions I can think of, it is taught that religion is more important than privacy.
iamdave 14y ago
Students need the lanyard to use the library or cafeteria, vote in school elections, I graduated from high school nearly 10 years ago, we had ID cards with magnetic stripes. I graduated from college with some additional voluntary coursework four years ago. We had cards with magnetic stripes and QR codes. Both worked in the function of identifying the student, and swiping in the mess hall as currency. Quantity wasn't a problem even with a student body count of nearly 5500 in a high school, our student numbers started with 0000 and were (iirc) 18 digits long. So here's my question: why was RFID aggressively pushed if tracking wasn't an explicit understated purpose, when there is tech perfectly capable of performing the duties outlined?
- kennywinker 14y ago
  I would guess most of the vendors of these types of systems are going RFID. Magnetic stripes are fragile, as anyone who's had their visa de-magnatized can tell you. They are also perceived as "less secure", as anyone who knows anyone who's had their visa card "skimmed" can tell you. For these reasons alone, RFID is where the puck is going to be. Then on top of that you add in you can sell institutions on tracking packages and analytics software and all that crap? I'm sure you can still buy mag-stripe versions of all this, but the people who do this are probably pushing RFID hard.
  - iamdave 14y ago
    I would guess most of the vendors of these types of systems are going RFID Actually this makes sense, didn't think of that way. However, comparing security issues of credit/debit cards with student ID badges doesn't work; I'm not suggesting they don't exist, but on the whole are less likely in the setting we're looking at.
    - kennywinker 14y ago
      I was mostly thinking of the perception of security. Everyone knows you can clone a mag-stripe card cheaply and easily. I assume you can do the same with RFIDs (and you don't even need physical access to do it, right?) but I think people assume they're safer.
mercurial 14y ago
This reminds me of this case where the school was spying on students with the camera of the laptops they loaned them. Seriously, what are these people thinking? That 1984 was an instruction manual?
- derwiki 14y ago
  It brings to light once again what fucked up incentives/goals schools are pursuing, if it's not the safety/privacy of their pupils. I remember when my high school installed surveillance cameras and a friend wrote an article, "Masses of Apathy", for the student newspaper about how it was so passively accepted. The principal of the school wrote a response scathing him for what amounted to disagreeing about students' privacy. Unsurprisingly, the cameras are there to this day.
kintamanimatt 14y ago
Most important part of the article: "What’s happening now is going to spread across the country," Whitehead said. "If you can start early in life getting people accustomed to living in surveillance society then in future it'll be a lot easier to roll these things out to the larger populace."
- mtgx 14y ago
  That's kind of how it happened in UK with the CCTV cameras, I think. I don't think that future generations will be bothered by them anymore, unless the Government does something terrible and oppressive with them and the people find out and revolt about it. Then they might be up for discussion again, and someone who opposes them could get enough political support to remove them.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I'm not sure if I oppose CCTV cameras or not. Sure there's a creepy element to it. OTOH they are all in public places and the footage is not released to the public without some reason (in contrast to basically anyone just recording with a phone). People always say they want more police on the street, so if each of these cameras was replaced with a uniformed policeman watching the street would this be better or worse?
    - maaku 14y ago
      > People always say they want more police on the street, so if each of these cameras was replaced with a uniformed policeman watching the street would this be better or worse? Better, unequivocally. Why wouldn't it be?
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        I mean specifically from a "civil liberties" point of view, i.e your are being watched either way but CCTV happens to be cheaper (though less effective).
z0a 14y ago
"...and it allows the school to track their every movement throughout the day." Seriously, is this necessary?
mhb 14y ago
How do cameras prevent truancy better than taking attendance?
- Androsynth 14y ago
  taking attendance doesnt allow you to boast about how you are being proactive. It also isn't a reason to ask for a big budget increase.
- alecperkins 14y ago
  It's less about ensuring that students are at school, but ensuring that they are counted. The school district receives funding from the state dependent on attendance. That's what is meant in the article by "it's all about money". With the cameras and now RFID, they can record that the student is on the premises even if they are not in the homeroom for attendance taking. (There are legitimate reasons a student may miss roll call.)
drivebyacct2 14y ago
This would be so much more interesting and supportable as a privacy issue. Instead the first upholding of this policy will be in the face of religious superstition and will tarnish future attempts to resist or address this policy. This is infuriating to me, as I fought the precursor to these policies when I was in highschool to the point that I had organized a protest with enough people that I was basically threatened until it dissipated. Now, more than ever, we treat our schoolchildren EVEN MORE like prisoners except that we still spend far more on prisoners than we do our education for our youth...
- iamdave 14y ago
  "I feel it's an invasion of my religious beliefs," she told InfoWars. "I feel it's the implementation of the Mark of the Beast. It's also an invasion of my privacy and my other rights."* FTA. I get that it's popular to automatically dismiss something when you catch so much as a whiff of religious overtones, but the student did in fact also mention privacy as an issue of why she refused to wear the badge.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    My point was merely that complaining about the "Mark of the Beast" is a good way to get people to roll their eyes. I certainly think this policy is a horrible precedent but ultimately I think a secular redress involving something that could actually be upheld would be a better focal point. This, "my religious belief is as good as anyone elses" is a can of worms, a dangerous discussion and will derail from the immediate problems with these policies. They turn places of education into centers of control and survelliance. There is so vastly much wrong with treating humans like this, let alone students, that I cringe that criticisms will be dismissed because of the particulars of an individual's religion. (Aka, I agree with you, my fear is that this being a religious issue rather than a privacy issue will be over all detrimental to actually fixing these policies. Hope that explains things more.)
    - iamdave 14y ago
      Point is valid and taken, however the comment made here[1] actually makes the counter-point I was preparing to after reading your response. Essentially, sure-the lean towards religion is slowly moving back in the other direction towards pragmatic and progressive thinking; does not mean we shouldn't give it consideration when we (I, not sure about yourself but definitely the case in the expelled Texan student) live in a country that has a founding document that explicitly cites religion as a guaranteed freedom. === [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820028
deleted 14y ago
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nickbarone 14y ago
(Jumping ship from the other link to the same story) Success metric fail. Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it? A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school. So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?
- csense 14y ago
  Despite plenty of attention and funding, test scores continue to get worse. It's pretty clear that we have no idea what the solution to the education problem is. So it makes the most sense to try as many different things as possible until we stumble on a solution by accident. So let every school try their own thing. Publish long-term metrics. Let parents choose where to send their children. Standardization and centralization of school funding are part of the problem at this point. Tests are great at measuring -- until they become standardized and high-stakes, at which point the pressure causes teachers to start spending all their time "teaching to the test." Also, many people have an incorrect assumption that every child has the same destiny. The very name of Bush's education masterpiece, "No Child Left Behind," implies that you'll dumb things down to the level of the worst student in the class. High school career counseling often pushes college on students who simply aren't cut out for it, while perfectly honorable but less prestigious life destinations, like the military or skilled trades, are starving for new recruits.
- westicle 14y ago
  Given that technology is supposed to increase efficiency (meaning fewer can do the work of more) I'm not sure that jobs are a great measure of educational success, or even the ideal goal of education. We've seen the transition from almost all of society being involved in primary production to a small minority working in "big agriculture". Broad swathes of industry (construction, manufacturing, transport & logistics) being replaced by machines. Why do we assume there will even be a demand for labour which meets the needs of 90%+ of the population in 10 years time? Often the counter-argument raised to this point is that "other jobs" will replace those which become defunct through new technology - instead of someone picking the crops by hand, they will maintain the harvesting machine. It seems to me there is a natural ceiling on the amount of productive work available before people simply end up rent-seeking/extracting value without creating anything in return - ie. trading futures on those crops, suing one another for selling dubious financial products which benefit no-one, and acting as social media liaison officers for the agro-business, financial services firm and law firm in question. In my view optimising the education system to produce these outcomes (and then congratulating ourselves when everyone is gainfully "employed") misses the point by a fair margin.
gnosis 14y ago
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877
rizzom5000 14y ago
I think the thing that annoys me the most about this, is the money. We constantly hear from politicians and their constituents that we should spend more on education, that our students don't compete well with the rest of the industrialized world and more money will solve that problem, despite the fact that we spend more per student than anyone else -- and then this is what they turn around and spend it on. And they are spending it on things like this without showing us any need for it. And will they ask for money to improve education in schools in the next elections? Yes they will.
Tichy 14y ago
Why don't they just track the mobile phones? I worry about the religious thing. Maybe she really is just that religious. On the other hand maybe claiming religious conflicts is much easier and likely to succeed than trying to argue rationally. And that would be a worrying trend.
- lnanek2 14y ago
  A lot of schools don't allow mobile phones...
philwelch 14y ago
If you work at any big company, or any company with a secured office building, you have to wear or carry some sort of RFID badge, sometimes two. If you drive across a toll bridge or down a toll road, you need an RFID sticker on your car. You carry RFID cards to use public transit or Zipcar. I don't know what my point is, except that this kind of thing seems like part of the modern world, and it's not that strange to see schools implement it.
mdonahoe 14y ago
Are the school's administrators similarly tracked? Does the principal wear a badge around their neck? Can students use a directory to see where in the building their friends are, or where to find a particular teacher? I wonder if a surveillance society could work if everyone was allowed access to the information. Opt-in systems seem to work better. Twitter, foursquare, facebook, etc. would be pretty terrible if they were government mandated.
- krapp 14y ago
  wonder if a surveillance society could work if everyone was allowed access to the information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk tl;dw -- it does.
nhebb 14y ago
A judge has granted her a reprieve [1] based on freedom of speech and freedom of religion grounds. The student claimed it violated her religious beliefs. I don't begrudge anyone the right to practice their religion, but I do wish it had been based on her right to privacy. [1] http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-reprieve-in-forced-tracking-chip-case/ http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-rep...
- Evbn 14y ago
  Privacy is not a legal right in general, beyond some particilar subclasses like searches and seizures.
  - charonn0 14y ago
    Perhaps it ought to be?
  - MereInterest 14y ago
    No, it's there, just not explicitly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
  - Zigurd 14y ago
    That's a general error, such as claiming there is no right to travel, or freedom of movement in general. You have the "sense" of rights backward. The reason internal passports would be unconstitutional in America would be that the restriction of freedom of movement is not a power delegated to the federal government. That's why in the BoR it has words to the effect "this is not an exhaustive list of your rights."
  - RollAHardSix 14y ago
    I respectfully disagree. Although, this only refers to the government...well schools are government too lol...but you know what I'm getting at, I would think that whether it's the school or the government would yield no major differences in the outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) ...Although if the device only tracks around the school and not 24-hour...that's another layer to be considered. Very complicated matter from a legal standpoint. As for my personal ethics, I'd tell my daughter to take it off.
robotjosh 14y ago
The student refuses to wear the id even with the tag removed. Can someone explain to me what she is protesting against? Why shouldn't schools know where the students are on campus and when students enter and leave campus? Attendance would be much better if parents could be called immediately when kids leave campus to skip. Kids could be kept safer since its harder to get away with violence with a log of everyone's location on campus.
- jrockway 14y ago
  The problem is that this system doesn't work. If a kid wants to skip school, she'll just give her friend the her tag to scan.
  - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
    It's even simpler than that. All this card can offer is a system for tracking when and where it's scanned. Being a very short range technology, unless they make all doors/exits RFID only, they can still simply leave and noone would be the wiser.
javajosh 14y ago
The privacy violation here is clearly of the second order. It is not the position of students which is private, but what can be inferred from their positions in aggregate. Your position data combined with data that you don't have can often say a lot about you. Part of me is fascinated to see exactly what you can infer from the data. Can you detect drug usage? Sexual activity? Perhaps even some psychological problems like anti-social behavior? Should parents want perfect information about what their kids do, even if just at school? Does the impersonal nature of this data's acquisition and inference erode the sense of connection and trust between a parent and child? Although my own reaction to the news of the RFID policy was visceral and negative, I have to admit I sort of want to do the experiment and see what happens. I suspect that, as usual, the result will not be what anyone predicted.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  At best I think you can infer who eats lunch in the cafeteria or who enjoys going to the library.... personal behaviors like drug use and sexual activity couldn't really be inferred without other sources of data.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Trigger the parking lot sensor == drugs. Bleachers == sex. Proximity to known offenders, etc.
    - clavalle 14y ago
      Where are they going to put the close proximity bleacher sensor? The parking lot sensor? These things are not good with open spaces. I suppose they can re-design things to reduce the points of entry for these places but I doubt it. Especially considering that you can defeat it by removing your lanyard temporarily or giving it to your friend that is going to the library.
trendspotter 14y ago
Related news on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819832 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819832 (94 comments) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 (12 comments)
nekojima 14y ago
Not wearing an RFID badge later in life will severely restrict this student's employment prospects, as they are very prevalent in many workplaces now. Would be interesting to know if her parents have to wear RFID badges where they work.
catshirt 14y ago
this is not that different than the suspensions we'd receive for not wearing identification lanyards introduced my senior year in high school. it seemed absurd even before the introduction of RFID. on one hand, this seems more absurd to me. on the other hand, this is a public school, where your privacy is limited anyway. do the privacy cons really outweigh the security pros in this case? i do realize the general arguments presented in security vs privacy. but i wonder it's not any different if we're talking about children in a public institution?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Imagine what will happen when bullies and other predators figure out how to track people with it.
devopstom 14y ago
Wear it, but not before putting it in a microwave oven for a minute on high.
hapless 14y ago
I went to a high school with metal detectors, reinforced doors, armed guards, dogs, cameras, central electronic locking, road and pedestrian checkpoints, and, yes, ID badges. As a high school student in the late 1990s, I was more closely monitored than your average prisoner. So my takeaway from the article is pretty specific: Bullshit. Carrying a school ID badge with an RFID chip on the school's campus is no great injustice. It's trivial compared to the routine degradations inflicted on a public school student. Somehow, this makes it to court, while the routine problems are ignored. It's OK to treat students like prisoners, right up until new technology is involved. The RFIDs are the scary part, not the guards, weapons, bars, and locks.
- mitchty 14y ago
  As a counterpoint to you and someone that went to high school at the same time in the US. I experienced none of what you did.
  - hapless 14y ago
    My high school was in a wealthy area with ~4,000 students. Economies of scale apply. When this becomes the "standard of care" at smaller schools, you'll just see other budgets slashed to provide these dubious "services."
    - brown9-2 14y ago
      Mine had 1600 students and probably a higher median income and none of those things. I would guess problems of crime have more to do with this than economic status or size.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - acuozzo 14y ago
      > My high school was in a wealthy area with ~4,000 students. That "standard of care" you experienced seems more appropriate for an inner city public school than one in a wealthy area. Food for thought.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
QuantumGuy 14y ago
I graduated from that school last year and I totally agree with her decision about refusing to wear it not her justification. In case anyone is wondering John Jay only exists still due to a magnet school called John Jay Science and Engineering Academy. The magnet school boosts test scores and attendance to a acceptable level for the state. This RFID Tracker is one last attempt at saving the school from being shut down.
Osiris 14y ago
The problem here is the way the school is funded. The reason that the school put forward is that the school's funding is based on the number of kids marked as in attendance in first period so they are using this system to increase those numbers by locating students already on campus but not in class. So root cause here is the funding model. That's what needs to be changed. Funding should not be based on a variable number of students that happen to be at school on a given day. There are a number of fixed costs in running a school that the current funding model doesn't take into account. So if you're pissed at this you should be more pissed at WHY they implemented it in the first place.
darklajid 14y ago
Unreadable, prevents pinch/zoom. Are there FF Addons to acccount for that level of (insert swearword)? I cannot even begin to imagine why anyone would think that this is a good idea. Wired, really? Edit: To answer my own question: Yes, the addon 'Always zoom' fixes utterly broken and annoying sites. Like this.
anigbrowl 14y ago
The Hernandez family, which is Christian, told InfoWars that the sophomore is declining to wear the badge because it signifies Satan, or the Mark of the Beast warning in Revelations 13: 16-18. Not this shit again.
rmc 14y ago
USA really needs to implement the EU's Data Protection Directive....
rdl 14y ago
I would be somewhat more tolerant of "required to wear RFID badge" if it were done for safety purposes -- for instance, to maintain accountability over a group 5-6 year olds, or on a trip, or if someone was "special needs" (emotionally/mentally disabled) and prone to running off. There are lots of advantages of RFID/NFC over magstripe or 2d barcode, even for simple applications like cafeteria payment -- faster reads, and the readers themselves are far more robust. Issuing the cards with an RF shield envelope pretty much solves legitimate complaints. It turns it from a passive monitoring technology to something active, and it's maybe ok to require people to badge-in to get access to places with expensive or stealable assets -- badge into the computer lab, library, etc.
Mordor 14y ago
They already track our mobile phones - what's the big deal?
diminoten 14y ago
The US government doesn't have a right to know where you are at all times, but the guardian of a child does have that right, or so I thought. What's wrong with that?

311 points by iProject 14y ago

namank 14y ago

Cameras connected to cops and it's being paid out of the educational budget?

quink 14y ago
The direct quote: > The school has already installed over 200 CCTV cameras in an attempt to curb truancy, some of which have a live link directly to the local police department, Whitehead said. I can't even begin to... this is... I have no words.
- rorrr 14y ago
  Sounds like a prison system
  - ghostDancer 14y ago
    Is a reeducation system but beginning at the same time as education. Orwell must be proud.
- mercurial 14y ago
  Personally, I like this one too (from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-school-changing-rooms http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-sch...): > More than 200 schools across Britain are using CCTV cameras in pupils' toilets or changing rooms, according to figures obtained by anti-surveillance campaigners, who warned that the research raised serious questions about the privacy of schoolchildren. > A total of 825 cameras were located in the toilets or changing rooms of 207 schools across England, Scotland and Wales, according to data provided by more than 2,000 schools. [...] > Responses from 2,107 secondary schools and academies showed they used 47,806 cameras overall, including 26,887 inside school buildings. That's an average of 22 cameras per school, so clearly there is progress to be made, but cameras in the lockers and bathrooms must be worth more points.
  - ixacto 14y ago
    Pedo bear approves...
lopatin 14y ago
What a complete waste of money. It's as if they actually expect the cops to sit down and continuously monitor all 200 cameras all day. Horrible waste of tax money on two fronts. Also, say some cop does happen to see a kid walking out of school at 1:30. It's not like he's going to get all alerted and call the school to figure out the situation. No he's going to think "There goes some kid ... probably called out by his parents" and that's the end of that.
- csense 14y ago
  Of course this means they just need to spend more money on more technology. You have to start integrating the cameras with face recognition, RFID chips, and of course you have a system that knows when every student is SUPPOSED to leave. (Of course, this necessarily means both a permanent record and live feed of e.g. every student's medical appointments will be created.) And then of course if there aren't enough officers to monitor the cameras continuously, that means you have to increase taxes to hire more officers. After all, they're American heroes, being strong and brave to protect the innocent -- we all need to do our bit to support them. And think of who they're protecting in this case -- the children! Everyone's concerned about the welfare of children... HN, this is why I hate politics.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    I don't see why we're so uptight about children's safety anyway. Sure, some get kidnapped and murdered, or molested or beat up or whatever, but 99.999999% of kids seem to do okay. Sure, it sucks if your kid is one of the .0000001%, but there's a lot of things that suck in this world if they happen to you, but they are so uncommon that we don't (and shouldn't) waste any time worrying about them.
    - namank 14y ago
      Lol. Because a life isn't a statistic.
    - csense 14y ago
      Expressing concern for childrens' safety activates the "child-in-danger = I'd-better-do-something" reflex that evolution's built into us. Therefore, politicians, marketers, and other "spin" people who want to build support for a certain agenda will say "We need to do this to protect your children." Because it works -- it convinces people emotionally, if their reasoning capability is poorly developed or not engaged. Most people are statistically illiterate; they don't understand probability. And our intuitions about this sort of thing were evolved when news spread by word-of-mouth; they do very poorly in an age where everybody hears about very rare events thanks to worldwide radio, TV and Internet coverage. Bruce Schneier has a very insightful essay on this topic [1]. [1] http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html http://www.schneier.com/essay-401.html

TeMPOraL 14y ago

> "Other non-believers think John was a bit too fond of funny mushrooms and shouldn't be taken too seriously." This kind of remark, regardless of author's beliefs, doesn't sound like a very good journalism style. (Also I guess it's a reference to Pantheocide from Salvation War series, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Salvation_War http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Salvation_War)

mercurial 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_tabloid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_tabloid
civilian 14y ago
So, the journalist maybe didn't say it respectfully, but there is a strong possibility in there. John was originally proselytizing in Rome, but the Romans got pissed off at him, so he was exiled to the island of Patmos. Amanita Muscarias grew on that island! And if you read trip reports (or, trip yourself?) you'll find that Amanitas give very extreme religious imagery. So if you compare the imagery from modern day Amanita trips with what was written in revelations... you realize that it's very possible that St. John was writing a trip report. And because of that day's lack of understanding about drugs and those experiences are produced, he would chaulk it up to a message from God. ## edit: more links http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/ http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/ http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.review.pdf http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.r... However any references to amanitas or mushrooms are not in the wiki article for the Book of Revelations.

xutopia 14y ago

Although I'm not pushing religion on anyone I feel like it should be mentioned that the religious ground she mentions might have something to do with this part of the Bible: "He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead." Revelation 13:16

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Tipzntrix 14y ago
To some people, religion is more important than privacy. In fact, in all religions I can think of, it is taught that religion is more important than privacy.

iamdave 14y ago

Students need the lanyard to use the library or cafeteria, vote in school elections, I graduated from high school nearly 10 years ago, we had ID cards with magnetic stripes. I graduated from college with some additional voluntary coursework four years ago. We had cards with magnetic stripes and QR codes. Both worked in the function of identifying the student, and swiping in the mess hall as currency. Quantity wasn't a problem even with a student body count of nearly 5500 in a high school, our student numbers started with 0000 and were (iirc) 18 digits long. So here's my question: why was RFID aggressively pushed if tracking wasn't an explicit understated purpose, when there is tech perfectly capable of performing the duties outlined?

kennywinker 14y ago
I would guess most of the vendors of these types of systems are going RFID. Magnetic stripes are fragile, as anyone who's had their visa de-magnatized can tell you. They are also perceived as "less secure", as anyone who knows anyone who's had their visa card "skimmed" can tell you. For these reasons alone, RFID is where the puck is going to be. Then on top of that you add in you can sell institutions on tracking packages and analytics software and all that crap? I'm sure you can still buy mag-stripe versions of all this, but the people who do this are probably pushing RFID hard.
- iamdave 14y ago
  I would guess most of the vendors of these types of systems are going RFID Actually this makes sense, didn't think of that way. However, comparing security issues of credit/debit cards with student ID badges doesn't work; I'm not suggesting they don't exist, but on the whole are less likely in the setting we're looking at.
  - kennywinker 14y ago
    I was mostly thinking of the perception of security. Everyone knows you can clone a mag-stripe card cheaply and easily. I assume you can do the same with RFIDs (and you don't even need physical access to do it, right?) but I think people assume they're safer.

mercurial 14y ago

This reminds me of this case where the school was spying on students with the camera of the laptops they loaned them. Seriously, what are these people thinking? That 1984 was an instruction manual?

derwiki 14y ago
It brings to light once again what fucked up incentives/goals schools are pursuing, if it's not the safety/privacy of their pupils. I remember when my high school installed surveillance cameras and a friend wrote an article, "Masses of Apathy", for the student newspaper about how it was so passively accepted. The principal of the school wrote a response scathing him for what amounted to disagreeing about students' privacy. Unsurprisingly, the cameras are there to this day.

kintamanimatt 14y ago

Most important part of the article: "What’s happening now is going to spread across the country," Whitehead said. "If you can start early in life getting people accustomed to living in surveillance society then in future it'll be a lot easier to roll these things out to the larger populace."

mtgx 14y ago
That's kind of how it happened in UK with the CCTV cameras, I think. I don't think that future generations will be bothered by them anymore, unless the Government does something terrible and oppressive with them and the people find out and revolt about it. Then they might be up for discussion again, and someone who opposes them could get enough political support to remove them.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I'm not sure if I oppose CCTV cameras or not. Sure there's a creepy element to it. OTOH they are all in public places and the footage is not released to the public without some reason (in contrast to basically anyone just recording with a phone). People always say they want more police on the street, so if each of these cameras was replaced with a uniformed policeman watching the street would this be better or worse?
  - maaku 14y ago
    > People always say they want more police on the street, so if each of these cameras was replaced with a uniformed policeman watching the street would this be better or worse? Better, unequivocally. Why wouldn't it be?
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I mean specifically from a "civil liberties" point of view, i.e your are being watched either way but CCTV happens to be cheaper (though less effective).

z0a 14y ago

"...and it allows the school to track their every movement throughout the day." Seriously, is this necessary?

mhb 14y ago

How do cameras prevent truancy better than taking attendance?

Androsynth 14y ago
taking attendance doesnt allow you to boast about how you are being proactive. It also isn't a reason to ask for a big budget increase.
alecperkins 14y ago
It's less about ensuring that students are at school, but ensuring that they are counted. The school district receives funding from the state dependent on attendance. That's what is meant in the article by "it's all about money". With the cameras and now RFID, they can record that the student is on the premises even if they are not in the homeroom for attendance taking. (There are legitimate reasons a student may miss roll call.)

drivebyacct2 14y ago

This would be so much more interesting and supportable as a privacy issue. Instead the first upholding of this policy will be in the face of religious superstition and will tarnish future attempts to resist or address this policy. This is infuriating to me, as I fought the precursor to these policies when I was in highschool to the point that I had organized a protest with enough people that I was basically threatened until it dissipated. Now, more than ever, we treat our schoolchildren EVEN MORE like prisoners except that we still spend far more on prisoners than we do our education for our youth...

iamdave 14y ago
"I feel it's an invasion of my religious beliefs," she told InfoWars. "I feel it's the implementation of the Mark of the Beast. It's also an invasion of my privacy and my other rights."* FTA. I get that it's popular to automatically dismiss something when you catch so much as a whiff of religious overtones, but the student did in fact also mention privacy as an issue of why she refused to wear the badge.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  My point was merely that complaining about the "Mark of the Beast" is a good way to get people to roll their eyes. I certainly think this policy is a horrible precedent but ultimately I think a secular redress involving something that could actually be upheld would be a better focal point. This, "my religious belief is as good as anyone elses" is a can of worms, a dangerous discussion and will derail from the immediate problems with these policies. They turn places of education into centers of control and survelliance. There is so vastly much wrong with treating humans like this, let alone students, that I cringe that criticisms will be dismissed because of the particulars of an individual's religion. (Aka, I agree with you, my fear is that this being a religious issue rather than a privacy issue will be over all detrimental to actually fixing these policies. Hope that explains things more.)
  - iamdave 14y ago
    Point is valid and taken, however the comment made here[1] actually makes the counter-point I was preparing to after reading your response. Essentially, sure-the lean towards religion is slowly moving back in the other direction towards pragmatic and progressive thinking; does not mean we shouldn't give it consideration when we (I, not sure about yourself but definitely the case in the expelled Texan student) live in a country that has a founding document that explicitly cites religion as a guaranteed freedom. === [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4820028

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nickbarone 14y ago

(Jumping ship from the other link to the same story) Success metric fail. Then again - What is the success metric for education? Attendance is (IMHO) pretty terrible, and standardized testing hasn't worked out the best - so what is it? A classic answer (but still, probably not all that great of one) is jobs upon graduation - but that doesn't help in elementary school. So, how would you go about turning such long-term metrics as "employment in ten years" into short term metrics, to figure out what to do next week?

csense 14y ago
Despite plenty of attention and funding, test scores continue to get worse. It's pretty clear that we have no idea what the solution to the education problem is. So it makes the most sense to try as many different things as possible until we stumble on a solution by accident. So let every school try their own thing. Publish long-term metrics. Let parents choose where to send their children. Standardization and centralization of school funding are part of the problem at this point. Tests are great at measuring -- until they become standardized and high-stakes, at which point the pressure causes teachers to start spending all their time "teaching to the test." Also, many people have an incorrect assumption that every child has the same destiny. The very name of Bush's education masterpiece, "No Child Left Behind," implies that you'll dumb things down to the level of the worst student in the class. High school career counseling often pushes college on students who simply aren't cut out for it, while perfectly honorable but less prestigious life destinations, like the military or skilled trades, are starving for new recruits.
westicle 14y ago
Given that technology is supposed to increase efficiency (meaning fewer can do the work of more) I'm not sure that jobs are a great measure of educational success, or even the ideal goal of education. We've seen the transition from almost all of society being involved in primary production to a small minority working in "big agriculture". Broad swathes of industry (construction, manufacturing, transport & logistics) being replaced by machines. Why do we assume there will even be a demand for labour which meets the needs of 90%+ of the population in 10 years time? Often the counter-argument raised to this point is that "other jobs" will replace those which become defunct through new technology - instead of someone picking the crops by hand, they will maintain the harvesting machine. It seems to me there is a natural ceiling on the amount of productive work available before people simply end up rent-seeking/extracting value without creating anything in return - ie. trading futures on those crops, suing one another for selling dubious financial products which benefit no-one, and acting as social media liaison officers for the agro-business, financial services firm and law firm in question. In my view optimising the education system to produce these outcomes (and then congratulating ourselves when everyone is gainfully "employed") misses the point by a fair margin.

gnosis 14y ago

Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877

rizzom5000 14y ago

I think the thing that annoys me the most about this, is the money. We constantly hear from politicians and their constituents that we should spend more on education, that our students don't compete well with the rest of the industrialized world and more money will solve that problem, despite the fact that we spend more per student than anyone else -- and then this is what they turn around and spend it on. And they are spending it on things like this without showing us any need for it. And will they ask for money to improve education in schools in the next elections? Yes they will.

Tichy 14y ago

Why don't they just track the mobile phones? I worry about the religious thing. Maybe she really is just that religious. On the other hand maybe claiming religious conflicts is much easier and likely to succeed than trying to argue rationally. And that would be a worrying trend.

lnanek2 14y ago
A lot of schools don't allow mobile phones...

philwelch 14y ago

If you work at any big company, or any company with a secured office building, you have to wear or carry some sort of RFID badge, sometimes two. If you drive across a toll bridge or down a toll road, you need an RFID sticker on your car. You carry RFID cards to use public transit or Zipcar. I don't know what my point is, except that this kind of thing seems like part of the modern world, and it's not that strange to see schools implement it.

mdonahoe 14y ago

Are the school's administrators similarly tracked? Does the principal wear a badge around their neck? Can students use a directory to see where in the building their friends are, or where to find a particular teacher? I wonder if a surveillance society could work if everyone was allowed access to the information. Opt-in systems seem to work better. Twitter, foursquare, facebook, etc. would be pretty terrible if they were government mandated.

krapp 14y ago
wonder if a surveillance society could work if everyone was allowed access to the information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk tl;dw -- it does.

nhebb 14y ago

A judge has granted her a reprieve [1] based on freedom of speech and freedom of religion grounds. The student claimed it violated her religious beliefs. I don't begrudge anyone the right to practice their religion, but I do wish it had been based on her right to privacy. [1] http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-reprieve-in-forced-tracking-chip-case/ http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-rep...

Evbn 14y ago
Privacy is not a legal right in general, beyond some particilar subclasses like searches and seizures.
- charonn0 14y ago
  Perhaps it ought to be?
- MereInterest 14y ago
  No, it's there, just not explicitly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
- Zigurd 14y ago
  That's a general error, such as claiming there is no right to travel, or freedom of movement in general. You have the "sense" of rights backward. The reason internal passports would be unconstitutional in America would be that the restriction of freedom of movement is not a power delegated to the federal government. That's why in the BoR it has words to the effect "this is not an exhaustive list of your rights."
- RollAHardSix 14y ago
  I respectfully disagree. Although, this only refers to the government...well schools are government too lol...but you know what I'm getting at, I would think that whether it's the school or the government would yield no major differences in the outcome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) ...Although if the device only tracks around the school and not 24-hour...that's another layer to be considered. Very complicated matter from a legal standpoint. As for my personal ethics, I'd tell my daughter to take it off.

robotjosh 14y ago

The student refuses to wear the id even with the tag removed. Can someone explain to me what she is protesting against? Why shouldn't schools know where the students are on campus and when students enter and leave campus? Attendance would be much better if parents could be called immediately when kids leave campus to skip. Kids could be kept safer since its harder to get away with violence with a log of everyone's location on campus.

jrockway 14y ago
The problem is that this system doesn't work. If a kid wants to skip school, she'll just give her friend the her tag to scan.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  It's even simpler than that. All this card can offer is a system for tracking when and where it's scanned. Being a very short range technology, unless they make all doors/exits RFID only, they can still simply leave and noone would be the wiser.

javajosh 14y ago

The privacy violation here is clearly of the second order. It is not the position of students which is private, but what can be inferred from their positions in aggregate. Your position data combined with data that you don't have can often say a lot about you. Part of me is fascinated to see exactly what you can infer from the data. Can you detect drug usage? Sexual activity? Perhaps even some psychological problems like anti-social behavior? Should parents want perfect information about what their kids do, even if just at school? Does the impersonal nature of this data's acquisition and inference erode the sense of connection and trust between a parent and child? Although my own reaction to the news of the RFID policy was visceral and negative, I have to admit I sort of want to do the experiment and see what happens. I suspect that, as usual, the result will not be what anyone predicted.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
At best I think you can infer who eats lunch in the cafeteria or who enjoys going to the library.... personal behaviors like drug use and sexual activity couldn't really be inferred without other sources of data.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Trigger the parking lot sensor == drugs. Bleachers == sex. Proximity to known offenders, etc.
  - clavalle 14y ago
    Where are they going to put the close proximity bleacher sensor? The parking lot sensor? These things are not good with open spaces. I suppose they can re-design things to reduce the points of entry for these places but I doubt it. Especially considering that you can defeat it by removing your lanyard temporarily or giving it to your friend that is going to the library.

trendspotter 14y ago

Related news on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819832 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819832 (94 comments) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877 (12 comments)

nekojima 14y ago

Not wearing an RFID badge later in life will severely restrict this student's employment prospects, as they are very prevalent in many workplaces now. Would be interesting to know if her parents have to wear RFID badges where they work.

catshirt 14y ago

this is not that different than the suspensions we'd receive for not wearing identification lanyards introduced my senior year in high school. it seemed absurd even before the introduction of RFID. on one hand, this seems more absurd to me. on the other hand, this is a public school, where your privacy is limited anyway. do the privacy cons really outweigh the security pros in this case? i do realize the general arguments presented in security vs privacy. but i wonder it's not any different if we're talking about children in a public institution?

mkr-hn 14y ago
Imagine what will happen when bullies and other predators figure out how to track people with it.

devopstom 14y ago

Wear it, but not before putting it in a microwave oven for a minute on high.

hapless 14y ago

I went to a high school with metal detectors, reinforced doors, armed guards, dogs, cameras, central electronic locking, road and pedestrian checkpoints, and, yes, ID badges. As a high school student in the late 1990s, I was more closely monitored than your average prisoner. So my takeaway from the article is pretty specific: Bullshit. Carrying a school ID badge with an RFID chip on the school's campus is no great injustice. It's trivial compared to the routine degradations inflicted on a public school student. Somehow, this makes it to court, while the routine problems are ignored. It's OK to treat students like prisoners, right up until new technology is involved. The RFIDs are the scary part, not the guards, weapons, bars, and locks.

mitchty 14y ago
As a counterpoint to you and someone that went to high school at the same time in the US. I experienced none of what you did.
- hapless 14y ago
  My high school was in a wealthy area with ~4,000 students. Economies of scale apply. When this becomes the "standard of care" at smaller schools, you'll just see other budgets slashed to provide these dubious "services."
  - brown9-2 14y ago
    Mine had 1600 students and probably a higher median income and none of those things. I would guess problems of crime have more to do with this than economic status or size.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - acuozzo 14y ago
    > My high school was in a wealthy area with ~4,000 students. That "standard of care" you experienced seems more appropriate for an inner city public school than one in a wealthy area. Food for thought.

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QuantumGuy 14y ago

I graduated from that school last year and I totally agree with her decision about refusing to wear it not her justification. In case anyone is wondering John Jay only exists still due to a magnet school called John Jay Science and Engineering Academy. The magnet school boosts test scores and attendance to a acceptable level for the state. This RFID Tracker is one last attempt at saving the school from being shut down.

Osiris 14y ago

The problem here is the way the school is funded. The reason that the school put forward is that the school's funding is based on the number of kids marked as in attendance in first period so they are using this system to increase those numbers by locating students already on campus but not in class. So root cause here is the funding model. That's what needs to be changed. Funding should not be based on a variable number of students that happen to be at school on a given day. There are a number of fixed costs in running a school that the current funding model doesn't take into account. So if you're pissed at this you should be more pissed at WHY they implemented it in the first place.

darklajid 14y ago

Unreadable, prevents pinch/zoom. Are there FF Addons to acccount for that level of (insert swearword)? I cannot even begin to imagine why anyone would think that this is a good idea. Wired, really? Edit: To answer my own question: Yes, the addon 'Always zoom' fixes utterly broken and annoying sites. Like this.

anigbrowl 14y ago

The Hernandez family, which is Christian, told InfoWars that the sophomore is declining to wear the badge because it signifies Satan, or the Mark of the Beast warning in Revelations 13: 16-18. Not this shit again.

rmc 14y ago

USA really needs to implement the EU's Data Protection Directive....

rdl 14y ago

I would be somewhat more tolerant of "required to wear RFID badge" if it were done for safety purposes -- for instance, to maintain accountability over a group 5-6 year olds, or on a trip, or if someone was "special needs" (emotionally/mentally disabled) and prone to running off. There are lots of advantages of RFID/NFC over magstripe or 2d barcode, even for simple applications like cafeteria payment -- faster reads, and the readers themselves are far more robust. Issuing the cards with an RF shield envelope pretty much solves legitimate complaints. It turns it from a passive monitoring technology to something active, and it's maybe ok to require people to badge-in to get access to places with expensive or stealable assets -- badge into the computer lab, library, etc.

Mordor 14y ago

They already track our mobile phones - what's the big deal?

diminoten 14y ago

The US government doesn't have a right to know where you are at all times, but the guardian of a child does have that right, or so I thought. What's wrong with that?