I found an interesting article about actual schools using RFID tags to track their students, and the privacy concerns of parents and students. I actually went to this school district in San Antonio for elementary school, so I found it especially alarming.
What do you guys think?
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/rfid-chip-student-monitoring/
I do find it slightly frightening that this is something that will become increasingly common. I can understand the need for tracking small children as a safety precaution against kidnappings and accounting for their presence in school.
ReplyDeleteIt might be useful when used as an option for parents to choose for their children. It makes sense for the cards and tags to be a "convenience" but their tracking abilities should remain limited except in emergency cases.
I know that liek most technology, it is easily misused. For this reason, I can see how "Little Brother" is a very likely and sad future.
Part of the issue with RFID tags is that the ability to track people with them is difficult to remove. If you want to be able to use them normally (quick paying at toll roads, gaining access to campus buildings, etc), then it's almost guaranteed to be possible to use them to track you. The convenience of RFID tags stems from the fact that they are passive technology. Beam a signal to them and they beam one back. They can't figure out who sent the signal in the first place.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be one of those things that sounds good in theory but is open to potential abuse. While they certainly provide convenience in many situations, I dislike the ability to track someone, especially in scenarios outside of their intended purpose. But maybe I'm being paranoid after the book we just read.
ReplyDelete