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Opening Arguments

Chipping away

Uncomfortable truth of the day: The further away we get from 1984, the closer it seems:

A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip.

Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when the semester began in the fall. The ID badge has a bar code associated with a student’s Social Security number, and the RFID chip monitors pupils’ movements on campus, from when they arrive until when they leave.

Radio-frequency identification devices are a daily part of the electronic age — found in passports, and library and payment cards. Eventually they’re expected.

Not to get too science-fictiony on you, but the next obvious step is to just have the damn things implanted at birth. If they always know where we are, they don't even have to watch us! Lazy bastards.

Comments

littlejohn
Fri, 11/23/2012 - 11:51am

This story has nothing to do with Big Brother. It has everything to do with religious nutbaggery.

The objection to the ID is that it's the "Mark of the Beast," not that it's an invasion of privacy. These are the same people who think grocery store UPC's imbed "666," making them satanic, or some such.

There's no cure for that sort of idiocy. The kid will eventually die of snakebite during a church service. Let's just hope he doesn't reproduce first.

Leo Morris
Fri, 11/23/2012 - 11:59am

So if somebody objects to something for reasons of "religious nuttery," that's a reason not to worry about the invasion-of-privacy concerns? Strange reasoning.

Andrew Jarosh
Fri, 11/23/2012 - 1:29pm

Much ado bout nothing. Wouldnt parents want their kids monitored? And S S info why complain. Keeps u from memorizing numbers

Harl Delos
Sat, 11/24/2012 - 10:54am

I recall movies where a subpoena was issuedfor docunents, and the other side delivered, not 4 or 10 sheets, but 5 or ten tons of documents.

Joesph Nelthof IU says an insurance compant was ordered to print somethingin 14 point red, so they printed the entire policy in 14 point red.

Someone is going  to start selling the tools needed to counterfeit RFIDs and they'll be advertised everywhere like those X10 voyeur cams used to be.

tim zank
Mon, 11/26/2012 - 8:47am

Andrew, I must admit I'm rather surprised that you have no problem with human beings of any age being forced to wear the the equivalent of an ankle monitor...

I assume if Gannett instituted a similar policy you'd have no problem wearing a tracking device?

Andrew Jarosh
Mon, 11/26/2012 - 11:23am

Referred to kids only. And this kind of monitoring already done the old fashioned way

tim zank
Mon, 11/26/2012 - 12:59pm

I'll go out on a limb and guess you don't have children....

Harl Delos
Mon, 11/26/2012 - 4:29pm

This conversation would be different if people took a toll road to work in Fort Wayne.

Never driven much on tollways myself, but lots of people find E Z Pass to be desirable.  They go through the tollbooths at $35, the money coming out of their bank accounts automatically, but the toll road owner know who you are and keeps track of your comings and goings.  I don't know that they're doing it yet, but there was talk of automatically issuing speeding tickets to those who go through consecutive toll booths too quickly.

Andrew Jarosh
Mon, 11/26/2012 - 7:11pm

Have a daughter who is a philly attorney. Dont like big brother at ll but since public schools monitor the shit out of teens like they did with sarah might as well use more cost efficient technology than having cops rifle your kids locker for intell.

tim zank
Tue, 11/27/2012 - 10:21am

AJ, I've got one kid left in high school and while I'm always concerned with safety, the thought of "tagging" them all with tracking devices just appalls me...It reminds me of those parents I've seen with their kids on a leash..it's just creepy (and creeping)...

Andrew Jarosh
Tue, 11/27/2012 - 11:06am

I agree. The spying and surveillance was insulting to me, the father of a wonderfully self-adjusted teen and now a 30-year-old who was paying for the sins of others but what bugged most was the locker searches at northrop and her losing a scientific calculator in the process and me still remembering how intrusive that was.

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