
Texas Students Revolt Against Mandatory RFID Tracking Chips - toomuchcoffee
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=40802
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viraptor
It's just a standard card with RFID embedded, right? Unless I'm wrong here,
the cards can be read by the standard scanners mounted on the doors. So rather
than some creepy "tracking device", they'd have to be used for registering
entry/exit from a classroom explicitly - pretty much the same as any big
office... Which doesn't seem to make much sense to me, since they can move
around without scanning the card (enter behind another person) - this happens
even in many workplaces where everyone is supposed to scan their tag on entry.

Another strange part is that when looking at attendance, this seems even
easier to hack - just give your tag to someone else so they can scan it.

Am I missing something here? Are there RFID tags that work on longer
distances?

Edit: Found some long-range RFID solutions out there. Other points remain
though... seems easy to game and many offices already use it.

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uptown
Think EZ-Pass for humans where there are sensors throughout the building
mapping the location of each person. Wouldn't matter if you entered behind
another person or not as your location could still be discerned with enough
readers.

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sxp
I've always found the selective paranoia of technophobes to be strange. I
would bet that the kids who object to the RFIDs are probably carrying
smartphones that can be tracked just as easily:
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/255802/this_smartphone_tracki...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/255802/this_smartphone_tracking_tech_will_give_you_the_creeps.html)
These RFIDs are even easier to disable than cell phones since they can just be
kept in a metallic pouch when not needed, but it's much more difficult to keep
a smartphone in airplane mode all the time.

These people remind of other technophobes who are afraid of radiation from
WiFi and cell phones for "health reasons" but don't have a problem with
sunbathing. The school should just invest in some science and technology
classes rather than trying to argue with these people.

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naner
The RFID tag IDs are explicitly being used for tracking student location by
faculty _and_ are mandatory. Smart phones are neither mandatory nor is
location information available to school faculty. It isn't really the same
thing.

The school system is doing this because they think it will improve attendance
and earn them more funding from the state. They obviously didn't educate
people very well (a lot of misconceptions were apparent in the video) and I
don't think this is going to necessarily improve attendance, either.

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DenisM
The phone is continously broadcasting wifi and bluetooth MAC addresses, it's
as good as any other radio beacon for tracking.

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Evbn
But for some key difference: aiplane mode, and schools not having
Bluetooth/wifi trackers running.

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cwilson
Oh to be in school again when this type of technology is being introduced to
day to day life. Am I the only one who, rather than being outraged, is
thrilled at the potential hacking opportunities and other shenanigans this
introduces? The fun that could be had...

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felipemnoa
<http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Marauders_Map>

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Miner49er
Just put the chip in the microwave for a few seconds. It won't do any
noticeable damage, and it will destroy the RFID.

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schiffern
Actually that leads to visible marks on the RFID.

Much easier to hold the card up to the light and find the chip, then snap the
traces by bending it. I did this at summer camp to great effect. I had to get
a new card so I could get into the building.

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lesterbuck
I renewed my passport about a year early as the chips were going into the new
versions, though I hear a little percussive maintenance solves the problem
when it arises again.

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stillbourne
These are HID cards we use them all the time to get into secure areas at work.
When I was in college we used cards with mag strips to get in and out of our
dorm rooms. How is this any different?

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pepsi
Most schools already have an ID scanner at the entrance to every building,
some even use their IDs as a stored-value system for purchases on (or even
off) campus. They already know every time you enter a building, log on to a
campus PC, do your laundry. With that combined with CCTV all over campus, how
does this actually make things worse for the student?

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sadfaceunread
So if this is being used to track attendance what is to stop someone from just
carrying their friends id for the day through the EZ-pass at the entrance?

If a student lobs their id over the fence, then walks out of the campus is the
system going to think they were at school all night?

Seems very problematic to implement an EZ-pass style system.

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valdiorn
RFIDs have a range of, what... 2 feet? So unless this is some new super-high-
tech kind of RFID, it's a key, not a tracker. It's used to access the school,
you swipe it when you go to class. There is nothing that makes this technology
capable of tracking you out in the street. This is stupid.

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ams6110
Nearly all offices of any significant size do this already, using badges† to
unlock various doors on the premises. By tracing your badge as it is swiped at
various doors, they can pretty much determine everywhere you've been on any
given day.

† or codes, or biometrics, etc.

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kabdib
Faraday shields in 3, 2, 1 . . .

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nathanpc
“It makes me uncomfortable. It’s an invasion of my privacy”

That's bullshit. Its not by any means a invasion of privacy since you're in a
school, which may already have cameras to track you. This is for the good of
the students.

Here in Brazil we have these and they are great for the school and the
students, no invasion of privacy, and helps the school to know if you're in or
out.

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acabal
This post is a great example of how rights are eroded slowly. 20 years ago
having cameras tracking your every move in a school would have been a strange
proposition, and a system to precisely track and record your every move on
campus would have been considered insane. Today cameras are accepted as
normal, and a tracking system doesn't sound so bad anymore. Really scary
stuff.

If you told a person 20 years ago that the government would be taking naked
pictures of you before you got on an airplane, they wouldn't have believed
you. Now our children will grow up thinking that's normal, and when their kids
have to agree to have a government-owned tracking camera installed in their
homes to verify their behavior one month prior to their flight, that will not
seem so outrageous either.

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jfoutz
Schools have always taken attendance, and not being able to locate a specific
student at a random time is, well, bad.

If Principal Vernon didn't catch you, did you still break the rules?

The house camera thing sounds expensive.

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acabal
Schools have also managed to more or less solve the problem for centuries
already without cameras or RFID tracking.

House cameras do sound expensive. They also sound ridiculous. But just a few
years ago, mandatory naked pictures of your body before boarding a plane
_also_ sounded ridiculous. And they cost $170,000 each[1], which I imagine
doesn't include maintenance and salaries for the operators. That sounds
expensive.

[1] [http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/a-few-facts-about-tsas-
ful...](http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/20/a-few-facts-about-tsas-full-body-
scanners/)

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jfoutz
Total recall is more than 20 years old, and they had full body scanners
entering mass transit. Granted, that's a movie. It never really happened. But
people were exposed to the idea a long time ago.

I don't think the idea was as far fetched as you're making it out to be.

 _edit_ (sorry)

There's also the whole issue of schools having the issue solved. I don't think
that's true. Schools and classes are getting bigger. I'm not sure how
trustworthy a roll call is in a class of 40. There are ways to mitigate that,
of course, but why waste minutes a day when you can just slap on a cheap
technical fix. The old way literally wastes days of instruction by saying
'here'.

 _edit, again, because i'm an ass_ (sorry)

If you're putting your kids in the hands of the state, it seems odd worrying
that the state is monitoring their behavior closely. It's not like kids have
rights. The state is charged with care of those kids, maybe it's a bizzaro
solution, but it's a strictly audited and accountable solution.

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Evbn
I don't know about Brazil, but all US residents have rights guaranteed by the
Constitution, including children, and now black people and even women.

