OK...I'm going to show my ignorance here (isn't it refreshing to admit that right up front??)...why would someone have an issue with this? Unless you felt that it put some harmful radioactive waves into your child, or you were concerned that your school employed pedophiles who could use it to their advantage?
I saw a snippet of a father on TV saying that it violated his child's religious freedom. That was all the news played, so I have no idea what he's talking about.
Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this for me.
The religious freedom thing has to do with an idea in fundamentalist circles that sprung up in the 70's/80's that the tribulation period would involve the anti-christ tracking people with bar codes or marking them with barcodes as the mark of the beast. Now, micro chips is the thought:
[video=youtube;l39XsMcyvgA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l39XsMcyvgA&feature=related[/video]
A Distant Thunder [7] - YouTube
(Minute 6:59 for the bar code scene).
A Distant Thunder [8] - YouTube
(Minute 5:00 on for more bar code scenes).
I'd have a huge problem with it. It's a blatant invasion of privacy.
Based on what I've read, yes schools do employ pedophiles.
IMO it's like using the argument if you have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong what's the big deal if the police search your house without a warrant.
The government can't keep track of the pedophiles they keep putting back on the street, yet want to track our children for money?
It's wrong, wrong, wrong...
I don't know if this is true or not...but I've read in the news articles that for 30 dollars anyone can file a Freedom Of Information Act request and receive the name of every child and their address in the school district.
Here is one of many news articles stating for 30 bucks anyone can get any child's name and address in the district.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october122012/student-microchips.php
Ok, so you're saying that a pedophile who is employed by a school could:
1. Pay money and make a FOIA demand for school kids home addresses.
2. Hack into the wrist band tracking system.
3. Figure out via the hacking, whether a child was at school or absent on a particular day.
4. Go to the home of the absent child, peer in and if the child is there without a parent or sitter, break in and molest the kid?
Well, I suppose that could happen. I hadn't thought of that.
Otherwise, I'm hard pressed to see why having an ID badge that tracks the whereabouts of school kids while on campus only, is a violation of constitutional rights. They are already tracked while in the school, just visually.
And, if a pedophile works at the school, and was a master hacker (or not), they could simply determine which kids failed to show up that day by looking at the attendance rolls and suddenly fake an illness and show up at the absent kids' homes. A tracking device would not be needed for that to happen.
It may be overkill, though. I can't see how it would help battle truancy. Kids could just stuff it in their locker. Seems like a waste of money.
However, I can see how a lot of parents would like such a device. Because in cases like Kyron Horman's, in which he was supposedly already at school, it could be determined if that was the case and if so, where. Or cases of school shootings and multiple victims; to locate the victims and survivors remotely. It could also be used in case of natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane/tornado, to find out where all the kids are if they get separated.
I don't see a reason to get up in arms about this at all. I don;t see the problem. Unless there is fear stemming from those apocalyptic visions of bar code scanning. But if it freaks certain parents out, oh well, let them opt out. What's the harm?