Well it has happened – pure discrimination against a human not choosing not to be tagged with RFID, in this – possibly first case of RFID discrimination – a child. USA you should be proud to have reached the heady heights of the big brother state that your rivals China, North Korea, Russia have not even achieved.
School student Andrea Hernandez, 16 years old, is suspended for refusing to wear an RFID lanyard. The Northside School District has not wavered at all in this and now Andrea is taking legal action against the school.
Is this what children can look forward to in a “democracy”? No religious right of expression if it doesn’t suit the establishment? Even on privacy grounds, or for any reason, children and parents should be able to refuse carrying RFID. It is a gross invasion of privacy and apart from that invasion the technology has not yet proved it is safe for health reasons.
“Hernandez was told she would be expelled and transferred to another high school in the district that had not yet adopted the tags, if she refused to comply.
The teen is now taking the school to court in a bid to overturn the decision.
Hernandez is backed by civil liberties organisation The Rutherford Institute, which has accused district authorities of implementing the program purely as a money-making scheme.
“There is something fundamentally disturbing about this school district’s insistence on steamrolling students into complying with programs that have nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to do with fattening school coffers,” Institute president John Whitehead said.”
This excellent video by We Are Change TCH – “Protest RFID Round 2 at NISD School Board SA, TX” posted September 29th 2012
Hopefully the NISD school board will see sense with so much opposition, 17 people wanted to speak against RFID tagging of children, only 5 were allowed to speak.
“Beginning this year, the NISD School Board has decided to take on a pilot program for two schools John Jay High School and Jones Middle School of San Antonio, Texas, that will branch out to 110 more schools after the pilot, utilizing the RFID Tag on a Lanyard. If you thought the barcode around a kids neck was a horrible idea, like I did, this takes it to a whole new level. We’ll touch on the health issues in a moment, but here’s some numbers to throw at you: It cost $525,000 to set up this new program for two schools, all the tags, and for the monitoring set-up. It will cost $136,000 a year, per school to run and maintain. This at a time when John Jay HS is having teachers print textbooks on copy machines, classes are lacking chairs, as well as some teachers only pulling in 11k a year! Not to mention all the other things teachers provide out of their own pocket, the teacher lay-offs, pay-cuts and the maintenance needs of the schools. Once you figure in the other 110 schools, that’s $38,800,000 start up cost, a $15,232,000 to maintain yearly, and this money is allocated for education. Education for whom? Someone’s learning a lot about your kids.
Picture
The Hernandez Family is spearheading the fight against RFID Tags, and Andrea Hernandez has taken her stand on the school grounds, refusing this indoctrination, by not wearing “the mark” Which also makes her marked. Andrea was gathering signatures on a petition for a moratorium on the RFID Tags after school, and was harassed by NISD lackeys to hand over the documents claiming she could not do so on school grounds, and forced her to leave the property or face arrest by the schools’ Black Boots, also frothing around her. Back in this writer’s day, we had student councils, we liked to fight issues at school, and it is our right to petition the school with grievances! Apparently that’s not the case anymore according to Andrea, now it seem’s the school keeps their cattle in line from the top down by putting pressure on people with academical threats, and persuasion through incentives. Andrea was even told by the Superintendent, that her failure to participate in the pilot program might get her transferred to another school, kicked out, fined or other forms of removal. On one account, she spoke of her being given the option to wear the old/new plastic bar code if she would come out in favor of the new RFID system and that they would “give her back her rights”, seeing the hypocrisy of the suggestion, and the insult to her humanity, she declined. What are they teaching your kids with that methodology? Think of the dog training method. They can’t buy or check out books, can’t buy tickets to events without it!? Teachers giving candy, to high school students for wearing the tracker, and scolding them by not giving candy to those that don’t wear it! How likely will that generation, or the next, when adults, be willing to take RFID in the body so they won’t forget it for work, or a license, bank account, and all the like that have been put out as reasons to get a CHIP implanted?
Today was the second round of NISD Board meetings. Support of the family had grown, and with 17 people signing up to speak before the board, measures were taken to shave down the opposition. The only news coverage was channel 4 WOAI, and INFOWARS Nightly News. The Chair Person contrived to allow only 5 people to speak on the RFID issue, and a three minute allowance for each peasant to speak. Others had signed up to speak on a separate issue, the budget, and were given time to speak but they angered the chair when they used part of their time to address the RFID issue as wasteful spending. The chair barked and warned of any outburst will cause the meeting to adjourn. Five speakers addressed the Board, bringing up valid facts and points on the issue, ranging from religious, privacy and medical affects. More coverage on the events in the board meeting to come.”
From Wired.com – “Just as the U.S. Department of Agriculture mandates Radio Frequency Identification Device chips to monitor livestock, a Texas school district just begun implanting the devices on student identification cards to monitor pupils’ movements on campus, and to track them as they come and go from school.
Tagging school children with RFID chips is uncommon, but not new. A federally funded preschool in Richmond, California, began embedding RFID chips in students’ clothing in 2010. And an elementary school outside of Sacramento, California, scrubbed a plan in 2005 amid a parental uproar. And a Houston, Texas, school district began using the chips to monitor students on 13 campuses in 2004.”
This RFID tagging of humans is not resting well with some families. Here on The Alex Jones Channel – “Steve and Andrea Hernandez of Spychips.com who talk with Alex in-studio about San Antonio area High School honor student who has refused to wear a school mandated RFID tracking beacon around her neck because doing so conflicts with her religious beliefs.”
According to Fox News, Northside Independent School District spokesman Pascual Gonzales is of the opinion that using RFID with children in schools, tracking their every movement throughout the day…
“[RFID]…is not surveillance.”
Quite astonishing! What quite is RFID used for then?
We would suggest that Pascual return to school as a student, rather than a spokesperson, not only to complete his education (which obviously has some glaring gaps in the subject of technology) but so he too can experience what it is to be tracked going to the toilet, being observed who he is associating with and how his time keeping bears up.
In March 2012 students in northeastern Brazil, Vitoria da Conquista, now wear RFID locator chips embedded in their T-shirts the Huffington Post reports. The RFID chip is designed to withstand washing and ironing and it has a “security system that makes tampering virtually impossible.” Phew, thank goodness for that!
“Twenty thousand students in 25 of Vitoria da Conquista’s 213 public schools started using T-shirts with chips earlier this week. By 2013, all of the city’s 43,000 public school students, aged 4 to 14, will be using the chip-embedded T-shirts.”
How apt that the chips are placed underneath each school’s coat-of-arms or on one of the sleeves below a phrase that says:
“Education does not transform the world.
Education changes people and people transform the world.”
Indeed, but quite in what way does education change the world after students have been tracked like this in their ‘education’ is the question.
Article – Biometrics and RFID tracking in UK Education
Documenting the rise of biometric and RFID technology used in education
Book – Surveillance Schools
With the growth of surveillance technologies globally, Dr Emmeline Taylor focuses on the phenomenon of the Surveillance School and explores the impact that continual monitoring is having upon school children, education and society.
433MHz military capabilities of tracking students
Interview with Katherine Albrecht, technology and privacy in schools
Katherine Albrecht show - July 2013. Katherine and Pippa King discuss the victories in removing or preventing biometric and other tracking systems from being used on our children.
Interview: Biometrics & RFID in schools, 433Mhz
Interview with Pippa King by Tony Gosling from BCFM - August 2013
Against RFID in schools 