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.

photo credit: seamusiv

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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Police officers in Mesa, AZ are among the latest law enforcement agencies to test the deployment of automatic license plate scanners to detect stolen cars, and other vehicles and drivers with legal issues. The system they are using is called the mobile plate hunter.

These license plate scanners automatically photograph, store & track location via GPS, and identify hundreds of vehicles per hour. The plate numbers are scanned and instantly matched against a database of vehicles. If any hits come up, the officer in the vehicle is immediately notified, and the car is stopped, or towed, and the driver arrested.

According to reports, there are more than 1000 of these license plate scanners deployed in police vehicles, nationwide. Arizona law enforcement agencies known to be currently using these systems include Mesa police, the state Department of Public Safety, the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the Oro Valley Police. They cost about $25,000 per unit, but no doubt that price will continue to drop rapidly as the technology becomes cheaper, and more widespread.

It won’t be long before these systems are standard equipment in all police cruisers, and very possibly other law enforcement and state vehicles. And the history of your plate being scanned can be stored indefinitely. Even if you have done nothing wrong, that data exists, and can be accessed in the future to log your past locations.

The larger implications these systems being in the field is that it will be increasing difficult to get away with driving on a suspended license, or if you have an outstanding arrest warrant for failure to appear. It is simple for law enforcement agencies nationwide to share data on drivers and their license plates.

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If you are facing any criminal charge in Arizona, please contact our attorneys and take advantage of your free consultation. There is no obligation, and the evaluation is complete confidential.

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