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Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

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Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?

The other technologies you listed can't be used to track people in realtime.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#72
post #44
post #5

“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 catt…

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.

As a foreigner, I was shocked to see kids recite the pledge of allegiance when I first came to America.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's talking about the fact they are able to track where the students are "roughly" in the school Isn't that exactly what schools have always tried to do? > and that the RFID badges hold some personal information in them Isn't that exactly the information schools have always had?

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."

>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.

Noone is forced to use a mobile phone nor Facebook nor Google.

>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."

Or they could, you know, care about the issues.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#74
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit your hosts file.

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.

Well if "Google hard-codes DNS values for Google analytics servers into Chrome", your precious ShareMeNot is as useless as my suggestion.

But you do admit my suggestion currently works.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#75
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Pray tell, what civil rights are violated by carrying RFID badges?

Being forced to carry one probably falls under the "unreasonable search" clause of the 4th Amendment.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#76
post #42
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do kids even have SSN's? 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)

Yes, SSN's get assigned shortly after birth.

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.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#77
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?

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#78
post #52
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opt out of Facebook/Google/Foursquare/etc, you can't opt out from your government.

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.)

I use http://www.ghostery.com/.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The other technologies you listed can't be used to track people in realtime.

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.

Re: Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag

#80
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 infe…

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.

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