Elementary school nixes electronic IDs

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I'm glad privacy wins out... but I can see the excuses already..: ..from the crowd that believes monitoring and Big Brother should be everywhere. Then, there's other people who believe this is a lost opportunity to make some money (i.e. the "let's monetize everything" crowd) by selling the hardware to schools and selling services to analyze the data. I'm just glad sanity won out this time.

Hmm.. let's see the potential list...

"If you're a good student and you always attend class, then you've got nothing to hide. Only the 'criminals' are the ones who are against this."

"They're students. Kids don't have any rights."

"The school is a public place. Students do not have any expectation of privacy."

"We are doing this for a good cause: to reduce costs and truancy. Don't you want to make sure your kids are going to class?"

"We already have monitoring everywhere else in society, what's wrong with just one more sensor?"

"No one is forcing your kids to attend our school. If you don't like our monitoring, then you can bring your kids to another school." [Gotta love the take-it-or-leave-it crowd, like when it comes to software licenses.]

"Actually, the whole world thinks this is a good idea, except for the very small but extremely vocal minority of privacy loving people." [Gotta love this "argument" when its used in a derogatory manner to attack open source supporters in other issues.]

One must always be vigilant when going against Big Brother. Big Brother doesn't win by being mean and nasty. He wins because every intrusion is always based on "good" intentions (reducing truancy, improve safety by reducing speeding or crossing red lights, ensuring that employees remain productive, allowing companies to save money by targeted advertising, protecting us from terrorists, etc.) and there are always those who will be willing to trade away their privacy for some false sense of added security. Unfortunately, when personal data starts floating around, shared, and used in ways that no one except the "paranoid privacy nuts" could envision, then the system is in place and its too late.

Cheers!; Posted by: Root User Posted on: 02/18/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use