US students encouraged to 'wear' RFID cardsPDFPrintE-mail
Technology
Written by Chris Perver  
Sunday, 18 March 2007 17:00
This link from my friend Cheryl...

Around 60 schools in the Philadelphia School District have issued students with contactless RFID cards, to help the relevant authorities keep a better track of them. A company called ScholarChip had been conducting a pilot programme in two schools for a year and a half, and was recently awarded the contract which will see over 56,000 people numbered for identification purposes. The new scheme will electronically record when a pupil enters school grounds, eliminating the need for roll call. Eventually the schools hope there will be enough RFID readers to monitor attendance of classes, and for this they are encouraging students to "wear" their cards, rather than carrying them on their person. The RFID badges can be used to purchase lunch at the cafeteria, gain access to lockers and even alert teachers to which classes truant pupils should be attending. 

Quote: "Students are encouraged to wear the lanyard-attached badge around their necks, however, many are still simply carrying them on their persons, said Ms. DiLella. "We want them to get used to wearing the cards because they’re going to be used (eventually) for classroom attendance." The smart ID badge is tapped when a student enters school grounds. Attendance is taken in a classroom in the normal fashion and the results are compared with the records generated when the students first enter the school. In addition, the badges can be read by portable, PDA-style readers. So, if a student is in the hallway, the badge can be read by an administrator to determine where the student should be.

I thought the idea of "wearing" the RFID cards was particularly striking. For as we have seen, identity cards can be stolen, lost and left at home. "Wearing" the cards would help reduce those problems, and as RFID grows more common place, would become essential for accessing everyday services. And of course wearing the card is one more step towards having the actual chips implanted in your hand or forehead. As we can see, from the speed of this particular implementation process - 59 schools in six weeks, it would not be too difficult for states to scale that up to country-wide identification schemes. In fact that's already happening, and when all our biometric data is finally recorded on computer, it will just be a case of issuing chips - or whatever "Mark" they happen to chose - to all these people on their database. So when the False Prophet declares that all mankind should receive the "Mark", quite possibly many people will view this as the next logical step to ensure their own protection.

Source Raiders News Network

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