Category Archives: Attendance

A child consenting to be tracked should be given a choice, and what about the parents right to know who is tracking their children?

Posted on October 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

Tracking capabilities as shown in their supplier’s video ‘Optimizing the Learning Experience with a Zebra Tracking Solution”

When a UK college recently used a RFID real time location system to track students on their campuses in Chester and Ellesmere Port from 2010 – 2013. Apart from whoever thought this was a good idea somewhere in the tiers of the college management, how did the college manage to persuade the thousands of students it tracked, that this was a good idea too? How did the students consent to staff being able to “… look at them [students and staff] in groups, such as peer groups.” Locations being seen in, possibly toilets, showers, school nurse, etc?

In a reply to a Freedom of Information request, this is how the college gained fully informed consent – apparently “Information relating to the RFID tags and their purpose was covered during College induction/ enrolment.”

When pressed further on this consent gaining process the college refuses to answer questions. Only when the Information Commissioner’s Office intervenes it is revealed quite how the college considers meaningful consent is gained from students to be tracked by an RFID tag ‘bleeping’ it’s whereabouts every second – “we can confirm that the induction process is covered verbally with students. It is fair to assume that information about RFID was also communicated verbally to students”.

Erm, is that consent?

The college refused to answer a Freedom of Information request, December 2012, and upon an internal review *still* could not answer one question, which was a simply yes/no answer, as to whether or not staff were RFID tagged – astonishing. Yet when pressed by the Information Commissioner’s Office, in July 2013 (full report here) the college replied, ‘staff badge tags remained inactive and were not in active use for any purpose. Staff who had a RFID badge for first aid purposes also had inactive badges’ (why would staff carry an inactive RFID for first aid? and why not state that initially?)

It’s difficult to see what is happening here – either a shocking inability of knowledge or lack of awareness of responsibility to answer basic questions under the Freedom of Information Act. But when children are tracked in this manner, literally their every move with the potential to be scrutinized, there should be absolute transparency.

Leave a comment

Posted in Attendance, Civil liberties, Consent, EU, Freedom of Information, Privacy, Real Time Location System, RFID children, RFID College, RFID school, RFID Tags, RFID tracking, RTLS, Tracking children, UK, West Cheshire College

Tagged children, college, consent, Freedom of Information, Real Time Location System, RFID, RFID children, RFID school, RFID tracking, RTLS, snooping, surveillance, Tracking children, UK, West Cheshire College

Yet another bill flipped in favour of tagging kids with RFID?

Posted on July 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

HB239 was introduced to Missouri senate in January 2013 by Senator Ed Emery stating:
“No school district shall require a student to use an identification device that uses radio frequency identification, or similar technology, to identify the student, transmit information regarding the student, or monitor or track the student” now has an amendment by Senator Curls, in April 2013, that reads:
“technology, or similar technology, unless such identification device is used solely for the purposes of student safety or student security.”

Given how Oregon’s HB2386 was flipped from not tagging children with RFID to the bill endorsing the RFID tagging of children, maybe this is how legislature will trend with RFID tracking children in the USA.

On the back of the Sandy Hook massacre, Ekahau, via Rapid Emergency Response, supplies wfif RFID to Skyview High School and is marketing its RFID to schools on the back of this Delaware bill, HB33, requiring each public school to have panic buttons.

RFID in Northside Independent School District, NISD, in San Antonio was scrapped last week as it did not improve attendance – a valuable lesson for the RFID industry. Dangling the carrot of increased funding for NISD on the back of promised improved student attendance was attractive enough for the school district to buy into RFID but when the technology did not deliver it was rightly scrapped.

The next round of RFID will be marketed at schools selling us increased student safety. As the Skyview High School RFID vendor’s Rapid Emergency Response (original link now broken so here is the Webarchive link) website states, “we spend billions as a nation protecting our banks, cars and homes. When will we do the same for our children?” A good question indeed from a company selling RFID systems to schools.
What is the cost of our children’s privacy, that we are willing to sell for their security?

Overview video of the Skyview RF tracker system.

Leave a comment

Posted in Attendance, Legislation, Real Time Location System, RFID children, RFID school, RTLS, Tracking children, Wifi

Tagged RFID children, RFID school, RFID tags, RFID tracking, RTLS, surveillance, Tracking children, wifi

MPs to have Biometric attendance and RFID tags?

Posted on July 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

RFID-Cattle-tag-parliament

Quite how RFID tagging MPs will miraculously make them attend the South African Parliament is baffling. I suppose it will log them in and out of buildings and rooms but so then can a swipe card or pin. Apparently “Parliament has proposed a combination of two technologies – radio frequency identification (RFID) and biometrics (fingerprint) – to monitor the attendance of Members of Parliament at sittings of the houses of parliament and committee meetings.”

Not that I would like to see any human tagged, or using biometrics to prove their whereabouts in relation to the RFID chip, but find that one comment interesting from the Chief Whip of the Democratic Alliance who is against the proposal:

“DA chief whip, “Watty” Watson said the DA caucus rejected the idea, saying that its MPs are not sheep or cattle. “We are senior citizens who have been elected to Parliament by the people of SA and for us to be treated like sheep or cattle being counted is unacceptable,” he said.”

Perhaps refusal to wear the chip would result in expulsion from the South African Parliament much like Andrea Hernandez was expelled from John Jay High School in San Antonio for refusing to wear a RFID tag? But then supposing the proposal goes ahead and South African MPs lead by example carrying RFID tags to monitor whereabouts, does this then set the standard for the rest of the population?

Strange, opposed as I am to RFID tracking humans I do find the notion of using a RFID Real Time Location System to tag MP’s and making their whereabouts in Parliament public to us all, who they associate with, meetings attended, actually quite an attractive proposal. On the other hand I’d like to think that I trust my represented Member of Parliament enough not to tag them (though for me the recent behavior of some UK politicians has eroded that trust). Personally if I did feel the need to RFID tag my MP to see where they were, then the wrong person is in parliament representing me.

If we get to the point where we RFID tag other human beings, what does that say about trust and the standards of our society?

Leave a comment

Posted in Africa, Attendance, Biometric, Debate, Ethical, Parliament, RFID MP, RFID Tags

Tagged biometric, MPs, parliament, RFID, RFID tracking

Green light to RFID track Oregon’s school children?

Posted on June 13, 2013 | 1 comment

USA – Oregon Senate passed a bill on 11th June 2013 seemingly giving schools the right to impose RFID tracking on it’s students. However HB2386 appears to have started life back in January 2013 with exactly the opposite intent, reading that:

HB2386 “Prohibits school district from requiring student to wear, carry or use any item with radio frequency identification device if device is used for purpose of locating or tracking student or taking attendance.“

The original January 2013 wording goes on to say that a school may use RFID to track property, such as instruction manuals and electric items, but if a student takes possession of said property the school must inform the student that the property, therefore the student, is being tracked.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged members of the Oregon Senate to sign the bill stating that this “Common sense proposal is critical to protect the privacy of our students” with information being communicated transparently about the use and option to use RFID

What could possibly go wrong?

By June 2013 the wording and intent of the bill changed substantially, to read:

HB2386 “Directs State Board of Education to adopt standards for school district board to incorporate into any policy that requires student to wear, carry or use item with radio frequency identification device for purpose of locating or tracking student or taking attendance.“

This rewriting of HB2386 seems to go on to say that a Oregon school district cannot require a student to wear RFID for tracking unless the Oregon State Board adopts standard rules about the use of RFID with children, as decided upon as in the above statement. This appears to read that if a school wants to impose RFID tracking on students the State Board has to agree to it under (their own) standards/rules. Informing a student of the fact they may be carrying a RFID tracked object has also been dropped from the wording of the original text.

…yet point 2 (c) states that the bill would allow for “…a student or a parent of a student to choose not to have the student wear, carry or use an item with a radio frequency identification device.” (?) Can a student not consent when a school has required it to carry RFID tracking, backed by the State Board? Is this another court case waiting to happen?

The bill takes effect as of July 2013. The history of the bill going through the Oregon Senate is here.

Currently Oregon does not use RFID to track students in any of it’s schools, so maybe a little strange they have spent senate time on this bill. But with other schools in the US introducing RFID for financial (funding according to attendance) and “safety” reasons, perhaps this comes as no surprise in that Oregon does not want a situation similar to the adverse publicity the Hernandez case in Texas brought to school boards RFID tracking students – better to set the ground rules first.

With over 850,000 children in Oregon, with 550,000 K-12 students, there is a fairly healthy market for RFID systems with perhaps this bill giving a green light to the RFID industry that these schools are good to go.

How sad that HB2386 has been changed with the potential to destroy children’s rights and civil liberties, when there was a great chance to preserve the next generation’s freedoms and our societies integrity in respecting our children’s privacy.

1 Comment

Posted in Attendance, Civil liberties, Consent, Legal, Legislation, Privacy, Real Time Location System, RFID College, RFID school, RFID Tags, RFID tracking, Tracking children, USA

Tagged college, consent, legal, legislation, Real Time Location System, refusal, RFID children, RFID school, RFID tracking, surveillance, Tracking children

What is the cost of active RFID UWB tagging students at West Cheshire College?

Posted on May 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

You’d have though some simple questions on cost and funding may have been easy to answer, especially when you are investing in a state of the art, military standard, ultra wideband RFID tagging system for tracking children in real time? It would seem not.

West Cheshire College, according to the RFID Journal, started tracking students in 2010 with active RFID tags emitting a radio frequency signal, over 300 feet every second, to sensors around the college to pinpoint the students position to an accuracy within 1 meter – featuring some of most sophisticated RFID capabilities on the market.

According to the college, the Chief Executive/Principal, a role held by Sara Mogel, was responsible for the New Buildings project at the College under which the RFID tracking system was installed. So great a return on investment the RFID system proved to be, that the college’s Business Area Services Manager, Kevin Francis, went to Florida, USA, in April 2012 to give a presentation at an international RFID conference of how successful UWB RFID was at tracking kids.

So how much does this cost the British tax payer and how was the RFID and was funded? To cut a very long exchange of Freedom of Information Request (FOIR) and West Cheshire College’s replies short (which can be read here) apparently this is how a state of the art RFID student tracking system is procured at one of the UK’s largest Further Education colleges:

Finance – West Cheshire college cannot be clear if the system was purchased, if it was purchased they cannot find the cost. The word “impossible” was used.

Implementation – The college does not hold nor can provide any documents or records whatsoever on any discussions about the implementation of the RFID system.

Supplier – The college claim they have had no contact with the supplier, Zebra Technologies, at all. Zebra had on their website a video “Optimising the learning experience with a Zebra Location Solution” of the college, staff and students promoting the real time student tracking system. This would seem to highlight that a company can film the college, staff and students without contact with the college at all.

Lack of Information – Members of staff that have left have been cited as a reason for the college not being able to provide information under its obligation to the Freedom of Information Act.

Staff trip to Florida – West Cheshire College hold no documents or records about sending a member of staff to another continent to present the college’s use of UWB RFID to the RFID industry. The college states that “In such cases there are no costs presented to the college and all matters are settled by the sponsors.” Does this apply to this case/trip? They have no documents on it either way, so maybe not? Who knows?

Student Consent and privacy -The college cannot be clear on how consent from students has been gained, whether any privacy impact assessments have been carried out. They could not be clear on the specification of the RFID used to track the students. These unanswered questions on consent and privacy, asked under the Freedom of Information Act, are now lodged as an official complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Either West Cheshire College’s understanding of the Freedom of Information Act is extremely poor or the college’s answers under the Freedom of information Act raise some serious questions about what is going on at the college as a whole. If West Cheshire College’s responses under the Freedom of Information Act are to be believed – which they must as the college has obligation under the law to respond truthfully – then practices at the college appear to highlight serious breaches of student consent, privacy, audit trails, accountability, transparency and security. This would be quite astonishing.

The seriousness of child/student welfare should be of absolute paramount concern to any educational establishment acting in parentis locus and replies given under the Freedom of Information Act must be taken seriously – to this extent the Information Commissioner’s Office who oversees the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act has been made fully aware of this situation.

We will let the penultimate slide of Kevin Francis’s presentation to the RFID Industry last April 2012, sum up: “West Cheshire College – a first in the Education sector”

Leave a comment

Posted in Attendance, Civil liberties, Consent, Discussion, Europe, Freedom of Information, Privacy, Real Time Location System, RFID College, RFID tracking, RTLS, Tracking children, UK, West Cheshire College