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January 7, 2008

ACLU: Tracking chip would treat students 'like cattle'

The Rhode Island ACLU claims that the Middletown School Department would be treating its students "like cattle" if it adopts a plan to monitor some of them with electronic chips.

The ACLU has sent a letter to Middletown school officials asking them to abandon the plan, set to go into effect later this month.

The pilot program is designed to track the travel of school buses and student riders. GPS tracking devices would be placed in two school buses, and radio-frequency identification labels the size of luggage tags attached to the backpacks of the 80 or so Aquidneck Elementary School students who ride those buses, according to a Journal story last week.

School administrators would then be able to monitor — in real-time, via an online map of Middletown at a secure Web site — the progress of those buses and their passengers as the children enter and exit the buses.

School officials could notify parents if the buses are running late or a child doesn't get on the right bus.

But the ACLU says the program is an invasion of privacy and raises safety concerns.

Middletown schools have said that the program would enable them to determine whether students get on the right bus, but the ACLU's letter says it hopes “this is a goal that school district procedures already address without the need to tag and track students like cattle. The use of RFID labels on the children is a solution in search of a problem.”

The ACLU also says the information stored on the chips could potentially be read by others, using inexpensive readers available for purchase on the Internet.

"If school officials can find schoolchildren, others might also be able to find them and target them for improper purposes,” the ACLU says.

Posted by Jack Perry  at 10:49 AM | Permalink

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