Schools tracking our kids with RFID?

education, educational tools

I just read the article on naked security about the US schools tracking students with RFID chips and had to see what everyone thought.

A Texas school district in the US is putting tracking chips into new, mandatory student IDs to keep tabs on students’ whereabouts at all times. from: US schools track teens by putting chips into students’ ID cards

 

I can see the pros and cons to this.  Though most of the pros I see are for preschoolers and Kindergarteners that might inadvertently get left on the bus.   I’ve had that experience of my now 19 year old, not getting off the bus and having to find him.  (Finally located at the bus garage and sent back to the house) – I’ve also heard all the stories of kids sent to the wrong house, left in the bus garage and so on.  In those cases being able to find your child immediately (because that sort of situation instills panic) is a good thing.

For teenagers though, what exactly does the school think this is going to help them with.  RFID only works near the readers, so in this case it’s most likely only good on school grounds.   The article says that it will help keep unauthorized kids off school property. How exactly does it do that?  Really it’s just tracking the kids that are supposed to be there, not the kids that aren’t.  Really do they get many gate crashers at the high school? Additionally I think the only way to tell if there are un-RFIDed kids wandering around is to take a count of kids showing up in the system, and a count of how many are actually in front of you.  Each student is to wear the id around their neck visibly but that part is probably easy to duplicate. – If you really wanted to drop by and blend into the school.

I found a large number of articles with opinions on this. I think they were all against RFIDing our kids. What do you think?  The RFID chips do not have an on/off switch, so in reality they can be read anywhere your child goes with the ID.  There are RFID wallets you can get to block the signal, but many families don’t know they exist.   How much information do you want accessible as your child roams the neighborhood?

 

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