Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag
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This raises a very valid concern. Human beings aren't cattle. Contrary to what many high school administrators might think, teenagers deserve the right to not be treated as such. If children are taught to be complacent with their privacy that can absolutely extend into adulthood. It would be a shame to raise a generation of Americans who support the idea that they are not trustworthy and therefore subject to probationary measures.
Approaching an airport security control a while back where security agents where shouting "Remove your shoes, belts and jackets, and move along!" repeatedly gave me the distinct impression that the TSA strongly disagrees with you.
I haven't spoken to a single person who thinks that's the case.
Managing a bunch of 15 - 19 YO's is pretty challenging and as schools continue to get their budget raised or cut, based on attendance, it will be more important to manage attendance vs. GPA / performance. Having kids safely in school, with butt in seat in class, will be continue to be a driving KPI.
Human beings aren't cattle, but an education system built around preparing kids for a 9 - 5, factory job, is essentially a cattle farm.
Source? All of my years in school have taught me that (unwilling) attendance != comprehension of material.
Out of curiosity, are you more afraid of the government having that goal and enabling that environment or Facebook/Google/Foursquare/etc? Why? I think this is an interesting discussion.
But you do admit my suggestion currently works.
If it's a public school, the agreement cannot include anything that violates a student's civil rights. Under the equal access rules currently in force, the fact that a student chooses to attend a particular school is not a factor -- her civil rights must be protected no matter what choices she makes.
Anyways, there is a magnet school literally right next to Taft HS that she could apply to that doesn't have the RFID tags. In fact, she is going to a school that is further away from where she lives and she should be going to the magnet school Comm Arts
I live in the area that this is talking about. I don't necessarily agree with the RFID tags, but claiming religion is a load of crap.
Doesn't matter -- it doesn't matter whether there is a signed agreement, only whether the agreement does or doesn't include provisions that violate civil rights. If this were not so, the South could have gone around and gotten all the poor black people to sign an agreement to attend inferior schools or give up the right to vote. They didn't even try this tactic, because they knew it wouldn't make any difference.
The tl;dr: Civil rights can't be signed away.
If the govt. would start rewarding schools money not based on attendance alone, this would be a totally different thing.
I'm sure you didn't intend to explain how the school, on financial grounds, would be justified in violating the civil rights of the students. It was surely an oversight.
Isn't that exactly what schools have always tried to do?
> and that the RFID badges hold some personal information in them
Isn't that exactly the information schools have always had?
I think the family just wanted to get a quick window of fame and be able to tell people "Ya, we forced the HS to get rid of those RFIDs."
Noone is forced to use a mobile phone nor Facebook nor Google.
>I think the family just wanted to get a quick window of fame and be able to tell people "Ya, we forced the HS to get rid of those RFIDs."
Or they could, you know, care about the issues.
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're teaching their daughter an important lesson in civics -- and teaching the rest of us too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
The Fourth Amendment is often cited in cases of this kind -- it has been interpreted in modern times as assuring some protections against unreasonable or unjustified surveillance.
Readers can't be made specifically to cover a larger range?
>You'd think the antichrist would be able to come up with something that couldn't be defeated with aluminum foil.
RFID is cheap. And you don't need something that can't be defeated by aluminum foil. Putting aluminum foil around things is a hassle. People avoid hassles. How many people take the battery out of their cell phones to avoid being tracked?
The underlying issue with RFID in schools is the technology can be used to track people and some believe it's wrong for the state to condition kids into being forced to carry technology that can be used to track them.
Bar codes are really no better, since they can be scanned at line-of-sight for a remarkable distance. They're less reliable, which is why RFIDs were invented in the first place.
Through the wholly unremarkable combination of having a job, living in a city with a functioning public transit system I sometimes use, being a Zipcar member, and having a credit card, I end up carrying about five RFID's at all times. RFID's are part of the world, not magical antichrist technology that the evil schools are conditioning children into accepting. Schools are a few years behind the technology curve, actually, as they almost always are.
Checkpoints aren't near the bathrooms, but they are in the halways and the last time I heard, they were in the rooms as well.
This is also a test by only these two schools. If it passes, they will use them in the entire county, otherwise they will abandon the project all together.
I don't necessarily believe that she should be using the "Mark of the Beast" excuse. But this does cut REALLY close to invasion of privacy.
Edit: You could also show who and how often, but I'm scared you'd be arrested...
If that doesn't make the school realize how appalling this violation of privacy is, then they're too far gone for anything!
In the countries I've lived and worked in, you don't get such a number until you want to file a tax return, so usually somewhere around age 15 (depending on the country)
Should we really commend someone for being unable to tell the difference between an electronic component & radio transmission system, and the magical 'mark of the beast'?
I'm also pretty sure that forcing people to wear tags is going to be overturned by a judge on the point of religious freedom, not based on a common sense decision.
And so we're overturning a practical cost saving practicality because:
1) One person believes in magical symbols, and can't tell an electronic component from magic.
2) Some people (commenters in this article) believe we're all magical special snowflakes that should never be treated as a 'group', despite the practicalities of dealing with a large group of people at the same time.
Now all we need is for a bunch of nudists to decide that clothes are the mark of the beast. Or concert goers to say that tickets are a mark of the beast. Or flight-attendents to decide that passports are a mark of the beast. Or Hacker News commenters to decide that login details are the mark of the beast.
Where does the insanity stop?
They could be wrong (and they have been before, of course) - but this family isn't arguing that. They are arguing on religious and privacy grounds.
Reductio in absurdum: take the "I won't do it because it's the mark of the beast" to it's next level (hacker news comments, library membership, news articles, theaters), and you have a dysfunctional society.
Yes, she is using language with religious roots and very expressive 'mark of the beast' phrase. But these are just words, part of the language and culture. Fact that she uses them doesn't make her stupid or insane.
Those with broken souls or those that work in high-security institutions? This is hardly the average experience in an office FFS.
> This is not big brother, its what every sane parent wants to know: where is my kid?
You're joking right? This is completely big brother, and in my mind sane and endlessly controlling aren't compatible concepts. Indicting every other parent who doesn't want to ChildTracker(TM) their kids as insane is by far the most ridiculous part of your comment.
Wanting to know where you kid is at all times and going to invasive lengths to gather that information are two completely different things. If your child is out and unaccounted for, you should be worried. You shouldn't be checking their GPS tracker on your phone to gain that peace of mind. Sane parents have another key skill: self control.
It's a disgusting invasion of privacy, akin to ransacking your child's room to check for undesirable items. Feel free to do it, just don't be surprised when nobody visits you at the home in 20 years. You broke that bond of trust and respect a long time ago and it won't just suddenly re-appear.
Because using rfid badges to unlock doors at an office building/control and log access to server rooms, etc is a psychopathic and antisocial thing to do
Whether this particular case (which admittedly is different from other privacy cases I've seen), the girl is choosing to be at this school. The school gave her the option to opt out of the program and just have a normal card, and she refused. The school then gave her another option, which is to return to the school she is legally required to attend rather than the one she is choosing to attend. That seems more than reasonable to me.
A very good question. The answer is that courts decide this sort of thing, and the notion of "civil rights" is a moving target over time.
But if her civil rights are violated, then the fact that she volunteers to be there instead of another school should not be allowed to interfere with the judgment.
How am I so sure? Well, as one example, African-Americans must be allowed to attend the school of their choice, and the argument that they have alternative schools is (in the eyes of the law) insufficient. The south famously argued that African-Americans had their own schools and shouldn't be arguing for admission to other schools. The Supreme Court disagreed.
> The school then gave her another option, which is to return to the school she is legally required to attend rather than the one she is choosing to attend. That seems more than reasonable to me.
Read the history of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, from beginning to end. Then ask yourself whether what you've just said is fair and reasonable.
I'm not certain that the Civil Rights Act comes into play here, though. The problem there is that the government were mandating that people had to go to different schools just based on their skin color. On the other hand, magnet schools are inherently and legally discriminatory; they discriminate on talent. You're legally required to attend school, but you can qualify for attendance in a magnet school. They're not telling the girl to go back to the girl's school, or back to the black person's school, they're telling her to go back to the same school everyone else goes to, the normal school, the regular school, the legally mandated school. High school is not an alternative school, magnet high schools are. It's not discrimination to make someone go to a school everyone else goes to. Not everyone gets into a magnet high school; she did, and now she's been disqualified. Magnet high schools are not a right.
But it does. This person wants to attend a particular school, but that school violates her civil rights as a precondition for attendance. It's a clear violation of the civil rights rulings that were handed down in the 1960s. It would be like requiring people to take a literacy test before voting, but only in particular places. Beyond the civil rights implications, it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause
> The problem there is that the government were mandating that people had to go to different schools just based on their skin color.
Yes, but that's coincidental to the legal issues. If the people in question had been women, or another minority, or of a particular religious persuasion, or any number of other traits, the same laws would apply. Race has always been coincidental to the legal arguments.
> On the other hand, magnet schools are inherently and legally discriminatory; they discriminate on talent.
Sometimes true, but a red herring in this case, because the girl is qualified to attend. Because she is qualified, her civil rights become the issue.
> Magnet high schools are not a right.
Actually if it's a public school, yes, it's a right. The reason? If a particular person is qualified to attend this publicly funded institution, then any other equally qualified person should be able to attend also, and if not, the school had better have an excellent reason why not.
If it were a private school, the rules would be different, but this is a publicly funded school, therefore constitutional protections are in force.