Schools lose things all the time. Textbooks. Laptops. Students.
Now — thanks to Secure RF, a Westport company — administrators can track anything they want. Gone are the days when valuable resources walk out the door — including kids and teachers.
According to BrickhouseSecurity.com, a blog covering all things surveillance, Secure RF will use a $100,000 National Science Foundation grant to test radio frequency identification (RFID) tags — aka chips.
Embedded in a laptop — or student ID or backpack — RFID scans a room “to figure out what’s there and what’s missing.”
The technology allows school administrators to “take a quick count of who is in class and who’s not, who walked out the front door, or who walked into the library.”
And guess which school system is thinking of testing the concept?
Gotcha! Not Westport.
New Canaan.
Currently, the program is limited to volunteer students and parents.
As expected, not everyone is leaping onto the RFID bandwagon.
A college ID, with RFID chip.
A school board member said: “I can perceive parents would have an issue with tracking kids through the school and through town.”
BrickhouseSecurity.com noted, “if the chip is in an ID card or backpack, high school students could easily ditch these items, rendering the system somewhat ineffective… It seems like this program is primarily targeting younger children and assets.”
High-tech efficiency — or Big Brother run wild? Whatever the answer, Fairfield County is involved in both the problem and its solution.
Nice to see BrickHouse security is a fan of The Commodores .
On a side note, I find it hard to believe this would catch on in K-12 education throughout the Westport school system.
A. No one ever uses their student I-D cards
B. School issued backpacks. no.
C. Students are not property of a school. They are the responsibility of a school. I”m fearful this technology could be abused by the wrong type of educator.
It will be interesting to see what ensues with the New Canaan test pilots…if there are any.
New Canaan. Isn’t that the town that refused to allow students to see watch or hear the President’s speech on education last year? Not to be paranoid, but doesn’t the idea of tracking human beings’ every movement sound like a rather Orwellian violation of privacy that could be used for ill purposes?
Indeed, Mr. Jackson, well said. “1984” arrived in full force following 911 and the tactics of “W” and his roving NSA comrades spying on our emails and scandalous cell calls. Now it would seem that Big Brother, Bozo, has surfaced to watch our kids every move. But I am not really that concerned, these kids are very smart and will figure out to beat this new technology. When maybe NOT in New Canaan but certainly here.