
Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker - iProject
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/student-suspension/
======
nhebb
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-
rep...](http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/22/christian-student-wins-reprieve-in-
forced-tracking-chip-case/)

~~~
Evbn
Privacy is not a legal right in general, beyond some particilar subclasses
like searches and seizures.

~~~
pcote
The Row v. Wade decision inferred a constitutional right to privacy within the
14th amendment. If this right exists, then it makes no sense to limit it to
specific subclasses.

~~~
derleth
> Row v. Wade

I believe that's what anglers fight over.

(It's Roe v. Wade, as in Richard Roe, John Doe's old friend, a classic fake
name used by the courts for various purposes. In this case, it was used to
protect the identity of the woman seeking the abortion.)

~~~
lotharbot
See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe>

It's interesting to note that "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade revealed her identity
just a few days after the trial ended. She later became a high-profile pro-
life activist.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey>

------
kintamanimatt
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."_

~~~
nickbarone
Sticking my foot out - Panopticons are not a bad thing. They're actually a
really good thing, because they, theoretically, let you get a lot more
security without losing a lot of liberty (instead, you lose privacy).

The problem people have - universally in my limited experience - is with the
people and institutions behind the cameras, not the cameras themselves. If
CCTV is Big Brother, isn't neighborhood watch something like Little Brother?

~~~
mcantelon
>Sticking my foot out - Panopticons are not a bad thing.

East Germany is a historic example of why surveillance states aren't a
positive thing.

>If CCTV is Big Brother, isn't neighborhood watch something like Little
Brother?

Neighbourhood watches aren't centralized and funded to the degree that state
surveillance is.

~~~
viraptor
> East Germany is a historic example of why surveillance states aren't a
> positive thing.

Street CCTV is not the same as a microphone hidden in your light switch,
without you knowing about it. Not nearly the same thing.

~~~
mcantelon
The ability to eavesdrop through cell phones, even where they're not making
calls, is pretty similar (although probably more effective) to the capability
of bugging light switches:

<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html>

Street CCTV can augment traditionally eavesdropping intel, tracking movements
and, from that, extrapolating relationships and activities.

~~~
viraptor
I'm not even sure what this thread is about anymore, sorry. Passive CCTV is
one thing. Massive spying on unrelated civilians is another. Bugging
criminals' phones if you have a warrant is yet another. I don't believe any
reasonable discussion can take place if you throw every possible reason and
means of recording anything into one bucket.

There are different uses and different situations. People can have different
opinions about them too. I believe for example that CCTV is exactly as legal
as anyone taking a photos / movies of the police for example (and the other
way around), while bugging phones by law enforcement needs to be very tightly
regulated. But those scenarios should have very little in common.

~~~
mcantelon
>I'm not even sure what this thread is about anymore, sorry.

The thread started with someone positing that panopticons aren't a bad thing,
hence the mention of East Germany (a low tech attempt at a state panopticon)
and segued to discussion of the modern state's surveillance capabilities in
comparison with East Germany.

>I believe for example that CCTV is exactly as legal as anyone taking a photos
/ movies of the police for example (and the other way around)

They both fall under similar laws, yes, but the big difference between ad-hoc
amateur surveillance and centralized, automated surveillance is the capability
of realtime analysis of location, association, etc.

------
iamdave
_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
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.

~~~
cbhl
RFID chips are fragile in different ways (try holding three in front of a
reader at once). When NFC enabled chip and pin cards first came out (and RFID
enabled e-passports for that matter) came out, there were concerns that these
cards could be skimmed from hundreds metres away as opposed to skimming
requiring the card being placed in a modified payment terminal.

~~~
csense
> there were concerns that these cards could be skimmed from hundreds [of]
> metres away

Why is that no longer a concern?

I would certainly be concerned about it.

Even if the cards can't be cloned from a distance, couldn't they still be
tracked from a distance? Could the school actually be helping stalkers follow
students unobtrusively?

~~~
TeMPOraL
It is, and the cards still can be cloned. You just need a big enough antenna.

See: [http://hackaday.com/2012/05/27/reading-rfid-cards-from-
afar-...](http://hackaday.com/2012/05/27/reading-rfid-cards-from-afar-easily/)

\+ I recall someone else building a big antenna that allowed to read cards
from range of meters.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Reminds me of the "bluesniper", which was basically a Yagi antenna on a rifle
stock, meant for sniffing Bluetooth devices from a distance.

------
hapless
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
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
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
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.

------
mercurial
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
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.

------
xutopia
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

------
TeMPOraL
> "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>)

~~~
civilian
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/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.r...](http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pdf/amanita.muscaria.review.pdf)

However any references to amanitas or mushrooms are not in the wiki article
for the Book of Revelations.

------
mdonahoe
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
_wonder if a surveillance society could work if everyone was allowed access to
the information._

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk>

tl;dw -- it does.

------
rizzom5000
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.

------
nickbarone
(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?

~~~
westicle
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.

------
z0a
"...and it allows the school to track their every movement throughout the
day." Seriously, is this necessary?

------
philwelch
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.

------
mhb
How do cameras prevent truancy better than taking attendance?

~~~
alecperkins
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.)

------
QuantumGuy
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.

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

~~~
quink
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.

~~~
mercurial
Personally, I like this one too (from
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-
sch...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/11/cctv-cameras-school-
changing-rooms)):

> 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
Pedo bear approves...

------
javajosh
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
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
Trigger the parking lot sensor == drugs. Bleachers == sex.

Proximity to known offenders, etc.

~~~
clavalle
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.

------
rdl
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.

------
Osiris
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.

------
nekojima
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.

------
robotjosh
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
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
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.

------
gnosis
Related:

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

------
darklajid
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.

------
trendspotter
Related news on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819832> (94 comments)
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4819877> (12 comments)

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

------
anigbrowl
_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.

------
catshirt
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
Imagine what will happen when bullies and other predators figure out how to
track people with it.

------
diminoten
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?

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

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

------
drivebyacct2
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
_"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
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.)

~~~
lobotryas
>something that could actually be upheld

Are you implying that the First Amendment (ie: religious freedom) is not
something that can or has been upheld in court?

I understand the concern you voice, however in doing so you come across as so
intolerant of religion that you're unwilling to even consider working with
religious people when your goals coincide. Moreover, you seem to think that
only one legal strategy is correct and only one legal strategy can be
exercised at a time in order to challenge a rule or a law. I sincerely hope
you represent the minority of HN and that most users are much more tolerant
and inclusive.

~~~
wnight
A religious defense only helps religious people. Worse though, it perpetuates
the idea that certain classes of opinions are more worthy than others.

Clearly secular solutions are more valuable because they help everyone. I'm
very tolerant of religious people finding safety under my umbrella even though
I find their belief odious.

~~~
kaybe
>A religious defense only helps religious people.

Anyone can claim religious reasons, there is no religion police (yet). To me
it reads like she objected for privacy reasons and the religious phrase given
is just an argument they think might be accepted more easily. (I might be
wrong, but it is a possible scenario.) - (Which is a sad thing in itself.)

------
Tichy
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
A lot of schools don't allow mobile phones...

