Monthly Archives: August 2012

SA hospital considering RFID tagging babies

Posted on August 31, 2012 | Leave a comment

This from Engineering News reporting that a private South African hospital is considering RFID tags for newborn babies.

“Securing a newborn with an ankle bracelet and ensuring that all authorised personnel transporting newborns carry tags will enable hospitals to monitor the movement of the babies at all times and put parents at ease, he explains.

“Newborns have been stolen from South African hospitals before. RFID tracking could help in curbing the incidents where newborns are smuggled out of hospitals. “We hope to also offer this product to public hospitals in the future,” says Baetu.”

One would presume then that the case for RFID tagging babies in South Africa must be strong then with high instances of baby snatching.  However, if this is the case then these baby stealing cases are not reported.

I found no instance of newborn baby stealing in South Africa in a normal Google search, or news search on the first 10 pages so I then spent some considerable time in Google news archive to find one article from 2008.

Leave a comment

Posted in Africa, RFID babies, RFID tracking, Tracking children

Tagged ,

Students rebel against RFID

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

No sooner as I start this blog this article crops up ‘Students rally against tracking system‘.

“Students and parents are rallying against new ID badges that track student movement on the campuses of two San Antonio, Texas schools.”

Katheryn Albretch, from Spychips, is lending her weight to the support.

Leave a comment

Posted in RFID children, RFID school, RFID tracking, Tracking children, USA

Tagged , , ,

Introduction

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

This site was set up to log the rise of RFID in schools.  This blog is being written from the UK but will detail the use of children and RFID across the world.

An estimated 4.5 million children in the UK use their biometrics in schools for food, library books, attendance, lockers, etc.  The practice of school children using biometrics started in the UK in 2001.   The first country in the world to use biometrics in schools.  Schools were taking and processing children’s biometrics without gaining consent from parents and in many cases not informing parents that biometric systems were in place in the school.

In the UK in May 2012 the Protection of Freedom Act, clauses 26-28, was passed requiring a school that used a biometric system to inform both parents and to gain the consent of at least one parents in order to take and process a childs biometrics.

This legislation comes into effect September 2013.

With the possibility that schools may now opt out of using biometrics for other registering technology the use of Radio Frequency Identification, RFID, seems to be the emerging technology.

Leave a comment

Posted in RFID school, Tracking children, UK

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,