Don't Worry: It's Just For Kids, Animals and Employees
"The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school." Link
The idea is that they added sensors to around the school entrance. Every child is given a chip, which they carry with them or attach to their backpacks. When the children go in or out past these sensors, their movement is recorded so that school administrators or parents can have an up-to-the-minute display of which children are currently in school.
We already use these kinds of chips to tag animals because the chips are small and can be easily inserted under the loose skin of a dog. More than that, it can be scanned from several feet away so it's easier (and less dangerous) to scan than trying to look at a dog tag.
As this blog says, there are some apparently obvious benefits if this kind of thing helps protect children, especially the youngest children that they're testing this with. But as Joi Ito writes, it can make you want to start wearing tin foil hats to protect yourself. (I read a blog comment somewhere else that said that covering the chips with tin foil blocked them easily.)
Crazy is getting crazier.
Disclaimer: I couldn't find information about how that test case in Osaka is going because most of the links I found were from a flurry or articles all referring to this same news back in July 2004.
5 comments:
This is just too crazy! Now who's going to be paying for all these chips and things, how many are going to be lost/broken/stolen and what's the point? I can just drop my chip on the floor or hide it in a locker or something and then do as I please, then come pick it up at the end of the day. I think it's kinda wacko. Well, for preschoolers, maybe it's better than older kinds 'cause they might not understand, but what happened to the good ol' days when you dropped a kid off at school, they stayed there? At my public school we wnver had problems of children running away.
I heard that part of the problem is an increase in juvenile deliquency, so that may be a motivating factor.
More than that, though, apparently Japan has frequent problems with both kidnapping and rape. From what I understand from a few of the links that I provided, that's part of what they're trying to address with the RFID chips.
Discussion: http://forum.japantoday.com/Rape_in_japan,_how_common_is_it%3F/m_112134/tm.htm
Oh okay then.
It was that easy to persuade you, Aleah? *temples fingers* Excellent. It's all coming together perfectly...
Hmm, safety vs. individual rights, big debate. It's funny how I'm feeling differently about this (as in safety for children) than I feel about things like monitoring of airplane passenger lists. I guess it shows that you're never completely on one side of an argument, the context can change things.
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