As Far As I Can Tell

There’s another interesting story about RFID in the NYTimes: Texas, 28,000 students test an electronic eye. It’s a straight forward example of people willingly trading privacy for a tiny bit of security, fueled by the politics of fear. In short, a community in Texas has adopted an RFID based system to track their children as they go to and from school. The rationale is to prevent kidnapping and ease parental fears, though the district admits to having no cases of kidnapping in their past.

The complete lack of objection from parents or teachers is disturbing. It seems that increasingly people are willing to accept Big Brother technology as long as their not the prole begin monitored. Those in power get to feel “in control”, and the students being tracked are too young, powerless, or uninformed to do anything about it. The thing that kills me is how useless this is. The kids are already getting to school safely, so why implement this costly and invasive system?

“I’m sure we’re being overprotective, but you hear about all this violence,” said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34, the parent of a fourth grader. “I’m not saying this will curtail it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus.”

Paranoia is making people abandon common sense.

…they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, they could see using the technology to track whether students attend individual classes.

They want to embed radio transmitters under children’s skin so they don’t have to call their names for attendance at the beginning of class. Pure techno-lust mixed with fear and irresponsibility.

Update: There’s a great comic strip satirizing this topic over at OK/Cancel.