Reading, Writing, and RFID Chips: A Scary Back-to-School Future in California | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

If readings are taken often enough, you could create an extraordinarily detailed portrait of a child's school day โ€” one that's easy to imagine being misused, particularly as the chips substitute for direct adult monitoring and judgment.


In general, I'm a pretty big fan of the EFF and their pro-privacy stances. Here, I'm not so sure. As I anecdotally experience my community, we're expected to hound kids in ways that nobody considered thirty years ago. I used to wander around on my bike for miles, play at the creek and in the woods, and travel to places I would have never visited if my parents had always been able to keep me within earshot.

Could RFID tracking bring back some of the possibilities for developing a sense of independence in our kids? I mean, honestly, who cares if folk know where I am at all times? I remember joining Peek Maps, which kept a constantly updated map with my [Peek's] location on it at all times. Honestly, who is going to misuse that? People ready to rob my house, sure. People who want to run me off the road, as if I were as important as a 00 agent. Cheating spouses. Honestly? Come on, whose life is that dramatic, and what are the chances that the number of people influenced by these crimes would rise with instant, free geolocation of everyone?

And, naturally, that's not what's going on here. The students' location isn't known to everyone (which could be worse in some ways), and, in theory, harder to exploit. Who cares? Now I'm concerned here that the gov't would label some kids as those whose behaviors require the tags and tracking, as the EFF story suggests here. But rather than worrying about who is ADHD, I'd rather get them all tagged than just a select few.

I'm still convinced that in 100 years, we'll feel naked if our location isn't available to all of our friends, and occasionally compromised and given to those we don't know so well. Oh noes! They know where I've used my credit card! They know the websites I've visited! OnStar is following my car, even when I don't pay the subscription fee!

Well, duh.