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Feb. 11th, 2005 05:02 am
Big Brother enters high school
Students kept under surveillance at schoolIt's sick how fascist high schools are becoming. My freshmen year of high school I served a detention because my dad didn't want me to shave yet (that costs money) and they were against school policy. It was my generation of high schoolers that first saw cops all over schools too. I remember when they announced that all doors on the school will be locked at all times during the school day (it was previously an open campus). Even at my old elementary school they used chains and big locks on the exterior doors. Now they're just going to track students' every move. Nice.
Some parents angry over radio device
Sutter, California -- Angry parents, saying their children's privacy rights are being violated, have asked the board of the tiny Brittan School District to rescind a requirement that all students wear badges that monitor their whereabouts on campus using radio signals.
Located between the massive silos of Sutter Rice Co. and the Sutter Buttes, this small town has 587 kindergarten through eighth-graders who are the first public school kids in the country to be tracked on campus by such a system, which is designed to ease attendance taking and increase campus security.
"This is the only public school monitoring where children go, with kids walking around with little homing beacons,'' said Nicole Ozer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer aiding several parents who oppose the badges, which students wear around their necks.
Although all students have identification badges, only seventh- and eighth-graders are being tracked in a test run, according to school officials and representatives of InCom, a Sutter-based company developing the system.
"There is no danger or I wouldn't put it on my son,'' Florrie Turner, a school district employee helping the company develop the software, told the school board at its Tuesday night meeting.
The student tracking system uses radio frequency identification technology used mainly to monitor inventory and livestock.
Ozer said a district in Texas was testing the technology for use on school buses to see that students get on and off.
Several parents in Sutter complained they weren't given a choice about their child participating in the new system and argued that the badges violated their children's right to privacy.
"Our belief is these children have never done anything to give up some of their civil rights. They've never done anything wrong, and they're being tracked," said Michelle Tatro who along with her husband, Jeff, wrote a formal complaint to the school board protesting the program.
Tatro said when her 13-year-old daughter came home from the first day of school in January, when the students began wearing the tags, she had waved the tag in her fist and said, "Look at this. I'm a grocery item. I'm a piece of meat. I'm an orange."
Their daughter was threatened with disciplinary action if she did not participate in the program, according to a letter sent by the district.
[continue reading on sfgate.com]
I suppose in 5 years they'll just install little video cameras in everyone's foreheads ... for security, of course.