InCom Corporation www.incomcorporation.com has developed a system for taking, recording and reporting attendance in schools called InClass™ based on a convergence of RFID and other wireless computing technologies. According to the company’s sales literature; “The entire system is wireless, which allows multiple classrooms to be linked to a main dedicated server. Students wearing our unique and proprietary ID system (patent pending), are located by devices placed over the doorways. As students enter or leave a classroom, their tag is read by the device and transmitted to the central dedicated server. All data transmissions are encrypted to insure privacy. Handheld computers allow attendance reports, school bulletins and notices to be sent to the classroom….The attendance data is returned to the classroom and then to the teacher on a handheld computer. The teacher need only confirm attendance on the handheld and the data is entered into the attendance logs for that period.” In Inescapable Data, we describe some of the positive benefits these types of systems have when it comes to controlling the behavior of bullies, an increasing problem for school systems that can have dire consequences.
However, an implementation of the InClass system in the small town of Sutter CA, (population 2,885) has drawn legal fire from privacy rights organizations. The June issue of Wired magazine reports that, after two weeks, the outside pressure was so intense that the system was shut down.
There are other technologies like facial recognition software, that are much harder to detect by the individual under surveillance. Yet usage of video recognition systems hardly if ever draws the same kind of intense scrutiny. Why?
Case in point: On May 23, 2005, NBA Entertainment, the production and programming division of the National Basketball Association, announced a data warehouse for NBA game videos. The data warehouse “will allow NBA broadcast engineers to catalog and store all the action from every NBA game as it occurs.” In addition, NBA Entertainment also announced the possibility of using “sophisticated pattern-recognition technology that enables overhead cameras to track the on-court movements of every player, and then render their actions in 3D so coaches can interactively study offense and defense moves from any angle.” Use of GPS and RFID to track all of the on-court action were rejected because of recent privacy rights controversies surrounding these two technologies. Perhaps the RFID and GPS-style tracking of players seemed too much like big brother, detailing our sports hero's movements. But then again, isn’t video recognition just as effective, if not more effective in some ways, at following us where ever we go? Or, could it be that players don’t object to being watched in intimate detail. They simply objected to wearing something electrified.
So we ask a question: Has RFID become stigmatized?
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rfid sports GPS InClass Truancy
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