Should We RFID 'Chip' Our Kids:?
Q. I'm
as concerned about school safety as anyone. But some of the security measures
in our brand-new school remind me of the scary book, Brave New World. Now there's talk about putting microchips under
children's skin as a "safety" measure. Ew, ew, ewwwww! I don't like that idea
right on its face. But is it a coming thing?
It may
be, and that's a matter of concern for a lot of people. RFID chips are under
consideration for school I.D. cards, identity badges, backpacks and even school
uniforms as a way to take attendance, pay for lunch out of a debit account to
reduce the chance of petty theft in school, reduce vandalism and
school-skipping, and assure parents of student safety at all times.
But they
are highly controversial. There are claims that microchip technology is
intended to be implanted within the human body. There, the allegation contends,
they can produce radio frequencies which in effect will produce widespread mind
control or covert neurological communication systems. That raises all kinds of
suspicions about the possible connection to the Biblically foretold "mark of
the beast" that is prophesied to control the population in the future when the
Antichrist supposedly reigns.
At any
rate, the chips will be connected to computers that automatically track a
person's location and record everything from your geographical location to your
heart rate. It can easily be seen that this is a way to track who attends what
political rally, and who has met with whom, which is not information which most
people want their government or anybody else to easily obtain.
There
also are concerns about malignant tumors being associated with a small
percentage of the implanted chips.
But those
are for the future. Right now, the issues include protecting children's
security and privacy when the RFID - Radio Frequency Identification - chips are
in place in backpacks, badges and buses, often combined with Global Positioning
Satellite technology.
An early
experiment with RFID chips in backpacks at Aquidneck School in Middletown,
R.I., resulted in a firestorm of complaints from parents and the American Civil
Liberties Union. While it is true that every school year, thousands of children
accidentally get left on buses, or lost, around the country, concerns were that
a pedophile armed with an RFID "reader" could track and target a vulnerable
child just as easily as a school district or parent computer could.
It is
also a concern that the RFID chips can hold all kinds of personal information
that could lead to extreme cases of kidnapping, identity theft and other ills.
For these
reasons, several states have banned forced RFID chip implantation by employers,
and civil libertarians and privacy advocates are working against the imposition
of the technology in schools.
Homework: Here's
a comprehensive RFID position statement from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.