The Associated Press is reporting that a Rhode Island town is going to implement a “test” program where they will RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) children’s backpacks to see where they get on and off the bus. They will also use a GPS system to track the busses location. The ACLU of RI is fighting this action as unnecessary. I’ll avoid the obvious question of why they need this at all since they could just GPS the bus and then have the driver record the number of kids that get on the bus without needing to identify each individual student. The school dismisses concerns that others could use this information to track children since they say it is “just a number”. If this sounds familiar, it might be the ghosts of the debates over the Social Security Number program (and we see how that number has remained just a number and not a personal identifier, right?). The push for RFID stalled some time ago over the debacle with Tesco and its hidden tracking of UK shoppers (and Gillette razors at Wal-Mart here in the US). It appears this is back in the news. There is no question that RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has many uses, but tracking people is one that many folks are rightfully skeptical of (see www.spychips.com). I’ve not covered RFID yet in this blog (I will some time in the future) but there is good reason to be skeptical about technology that makes its carrier remotely traceable if we believe that people should have personal privacy). At least in the US, privacy is a balance; even in the case of the 4th amendment, there are weighing factors that have been used to determine the limits of privacy protections v govt. intrusions. In this case, all I can wonder is who thinks this is an appropriate trade off?
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