March 26th, 2005
On tracking the student body
A school in the Wakayama prefecture in Japan has found a series of new applications for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. In addition to using them for taking attendance (you badge into classrooms) and tracking at which bus stop you get off (to ensure that you don’t exit at the wrong one), they’re planning to equip "dangerous" parts of town with long-range readers that will pick up the presence of school badges and instantly inform parents and school authorities.
So what?
Fear of this sort of thing drove the creation of CASPIAN, an organization dedicated to educating people in what they consider the downside of RFID and similar technologies. But perhaps I’m overreacting: On the plus side, the school’s approach could be used as a cheap way to track people on probation, who often have restrictions on which parts of town they can frequent. Unfortunately, all of this presupposes that students and felons aren’t smart enough to leave their badges at home. The solution to that is simple, of course: Mandate implants. Ha ha! I know, I know. That’s ridiculous.
These posts are now available as a convenient weekly newsletter called Flashpoint. Click to subscribe. Ed Gottsman is a senior researcher with Accenture Technology Labs. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
