Northern Arizona University to Track Student Locations via Chip ID
Northern Arizona State University will soon be tracking and monitoring students as they enter classrooms and other locations, by a computer chip embedded in student IDs.
Each classroom will have an RFID (radio frequency identification) detector that logs the short-range radio transmission chip in the ID cards, similar to how an EZ-Pass device logs your car as you go through a toll booth.
Many students are highlighting civil liberties and privacy concerns, questioning exactly how this data will be used and who it will be shared with.As this article outlines, University officials claim this is merely an efficient way to track classroom attendance, and encourage it. They also imply that the primary users of this information will be classroom professors, so they have a record of exactly who attends their classes.
Of course, once the system is in place, it would be easy to monitor student locations anywhere on campus. They would know who is attending student organizations and gatherings.
They can also data mine this information for other purposes. Organizational and personal associations are logged and tracked. If a student is suspected of some violation or crime, not only do they know his or her whereabouts, they also have a database of “known associates”, people who were frequently in the same place at the same time.
And none if this kind of monitoring is illegal. As a Northern Arizona State University student, you essentially must opt in to all school policies.
This kind of intrusive monitoring and “big brother” surveillance is becoming all too common in American life, and few people protest this trend.
Similarly, Arizona and most states have police who are tracking ALL citizens via their license plates with automatic license plate scanners. Just by driving down the street, the location of your car is logged and tracked, and it’s all perfectly legal. Of course these systems do have benefits – they are great at finding stolen cars, and locating fugitives accused of failure to appear in court.
But these intrusions come at a price to our freedom. Maybe the trade-offs are worth it, but the subject isn’t even being debated in the public square. We should have that debate before charging headfirst into a full-fledged surveillance state, before it is too late to do anything about it.
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