Category Archives: 2.45GHz

France – Bluetooth tracking kids in school

Posted on September 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

(* Nov 2019 – Klassroom aquired Newschool in September 2019 https://medium.com/@klassroom/klassroom-annonce-lacquisition-de-newschool-philippine-dolbeau-rejoint-l-équipe-en-tant-que-coo-3c05ff976)

According to this article a school in France are requiring children to wear radio frequency Bluetooth tracking devices. Well, the school would like the children to wear the Bluetooth devices supplied by the start up company NewSchool – if they don’t wear the device, or if they loose it, the kids have to pay a fine of 10 Euros (£9 or $12). Not really much choice there then.

The school using the radio frequency tracking device is the Lycée Rocroy Saint-Vincent de Paul, a private Catholic high school in Paris.

According to the BBC ‘French school in row over tracking pupils electronically‘ more than 3200 people have signed a petition against the school RFID tagging their pupils, with one pupil’s plea over twitter.

From: https://bbc.in/2Q1xUnj

Not only will the school be able to track the kids every move, soon parents (and puzzlingly students themselves) will be able to too!
“Our NewSchool Teachers app is available for teachers only. Soon, we will release an application for students and parents of students. Patience so 😉”.
There is also a “Good Points” Reward package that comes with the NewSchool app, presumably for students that are compliantly tracked.

Philippine Dolbeau is the 18 year old founder of NewSchool, and happened to be a pupil of the Lycée Rocroy Saint-Vincent de Paul private school where this RFID tacking system is being enforced September 2018. This is how her website describes her:

“Philippine is an 18-year-old entrepreneur, founder of New School, and “Most Innovative Woman of 2017”. She is recognized by much French national media as being the youngest entrepreneur of France. Philippine created her startup at the age of 15, while still studying at the lycée. While asked to create a pretend startup, the young teenager decided to go beyond the limits given and decided to make of NewSchool a real-life business in September 2014.”

One thing Philippine has failed to learn is the complete inappropriateness of
a) tracking each student with a Bluetooth device
b) fine them for not wearing the device
c) consent issues (duh) and
d) health issues increasingly being aired with regards to wireless technology and it exposure, especially at close hand. (Wonder what her public liability insurance is like?).
She might have been the “Most Innovative Woman of the 2017” but for this??? Mmm…

Bluetooth transmits at 2.4GHz either at a range of 10, 100 or 1000 (1km) meters. Given that this school wants to track students within the school, gym class, drills and field trips presumably the 10 meter device isn’t going to hack it. More on Bluetooth data from the NordicSemi blog:

Undoubtedly more to come on this…

Image of the Bluetooth tracking device from https://www.laquadrature.net/fr/new_school

The agenda to RFID track your child, giving away free chips

Posted on January 5, 2016 | Leave a comment

In November 2015 Richmond Sausages, a subsidiary of Kerry Foods, spent £3 million on an ongoing campaign to distribute 200,000 Bluetooth tracking chips, free RFID chips, to be claimed via packs of sausages. The aim of the Sausage and Chip campaign is to make meals times less stressful if a children’s toy, teddy, has gone missing… and this would sell their sausages why?

I have to say as a parent myself a child losing a toy at meal time (whether or not sausages are present) has never been an issue and I can never recall any conversation with another parent where losing a toy has been an issue, especially at meal times.

The company supplying the Bluetooth GPS chip is a company called B-on who lists the Amigo watch, for tracking children, amongst its three products. The watch can set up geo-fencing ‘safe-zones’ incorporating a pedometer to track your child’s activity.

B-on also supplies other tracking devices for adults, health monitoring and fitness tracking. Having said that I cannot find the Amigo Watch for sale anywhere online. Apart from a few articles published last year by Wired and TechCrunch the Amigo Watch has virtually no online presence apart from the B-on website where there is no facility to buy.

Maybe the Amigo watch never got off the ground and the company now has to give away their product in another form because there is no market for it? Perhaps B-on made a few hundred thousand watches that haven’t sold, and to lure the unsuspecting public into using a tracking product… ‘needing’ a tracking product, they have ‘repackaged’ the watches into tracking chips to hang round a child’s loved toy.

It is a nudge, especially for a young child. The message? RFID tag the stuff we love.

You can imagine the conversation “…but why don’t you tag me Mummy? You love me as much as I love Teddy don’t you?”. Clever.

So why would Richmond, a sausage manufacturer, spend millions of pounds giving away free RFID tracking devices essentially aimed at children? Splashing out £3million is a hefty amount of profit margin from sausages sales to recoup, plus 200,000 RFID tracking chips. It just seems odd?

RFID Journal – People should remain at least 1 meter (3.3 feet) from a RFID reader/antenna

Posted on November 10, 2013 | 1 comment

The RFID Journal is one of the world’s foremost sources of RFID news globally and has reported positively on the benfits of RFID tagging children and teachers in schools with active RFID. On the 4th November 2013 this question was asked on their ‘Ask the Experts Forum’ – Are there any health risks with prolonged exposure to ultra high frequency (UHF) radio frequency (RF) fields?

Interesting then when Mark Roberti, the Founder and Editor of the RFID Journal, then advises in his response that:

“people should remain at least 1 meter (3.3 feet) from a reader.“

Really. How is it okay for the RFID Journal to report positively about schools tagging children and teachers wearing ultra high frequency (UHF) active RFID tags, effectively endorsing the wearing of active RFID chips, when they also comment on the very potential health hazards of radio frequencies?

In the USA Northside Independant School District RFID tagged their student population with active 433MHz RFID tags from 2012 until 2013. In Germany students and teachers wear active RFID tags compatible with wifi 2.45GHz, in the US the same tag is being worn by teachers. West Cheshire College students in the UK wore ultra wideband (UWB) active RFID tags around their neck in a lanyard, emitting a 6.35-6.75GHz radio frequency every second, from 2010 until 2013. West Cheshire College admitted to viewing students in “peer groups” with their RFID real time location system – so not just for registration or safety reasons then?

Daniel Engels, “Director of the University of Texas at Arlington‘s Radio Frequency Innovation and Technology Center, and an associate professor in the college’s Department of Electrical Engineering” was quoted in a previous RFID Journal article from June 2009 entitled ‘Can RFID be harmful to the human body‘ stated that:

“The basic result of all of our work is that really close proximity to UHF [ultrahigh-frequency] RFID readers [antennas] has potential health issues”

Should we be tagging children and teachers with active RFID when the International Agency for Research on Cancer/World Health Organisation (WHO) has classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as a possible carcinogen to humans, causing cancers and tumors? Erm… I think that would be a no!

Maybe schools be prudent and ready themselves for possible litigation claims in the future…