All it takes to defeat the idea of a solid perimeter of RFID sensors is a $20 RFID blocking wallet. Or for the low budget approach, wrapping the ID card in aluminum foil.

My kids’ elementary school encourages parents to buy meal plans for kids, so they don’t have to be “bothered” with money (losing it, not having it, etc.). Their school lunch costs $2.35 and includes two sides. But the sides are only offered at the front, and they load up all kinds of a la carte snacks in the middle that are an extra cost. Kids on meal plans have no idea that the lunch they are eating actually costs $5. I’d rather roll the dice, give my kids money and have them understand what they are purchasing and do the math. The same school teaches “Everyday Math” which works with real money and making change, but discourages kids from using real money in their very own cafeteria.

And for those prinicpals and teachers, get up off of your fat ass, and go look for yourself, instead of pulling up the screen then paging badge #251, because #251 has been in the restroom for a long time.

My advice is for parents to keep these chipped cards at home, and just send a letter with your kid. “Mom and Dad say Chip This!!!!!”

Somewhere, a salesman is making a pitch to the most gullible school administrators in the world.

It’s not going to answer questions like where the kid is when s/he’s off campus, or what s/he’s doing. This is why, for example, my RFID office key isn’t a threat to my privacy.

A school RFID tag is a bigger threat than a “product” tag or a “business key” tag, because the school market is big enough that non-school readers could start popping up at businesses or government offices that deal with students. It’s still a smaller threat than a “mandatory ID card you carry with you to operate a motor vehicle” tag. The slippery slope argument is valid here, because you’ve got the government involved in a large scale and the ID cards become mandatory for those in school and after a few years of that the step to tags in driver’s licenses is a small one.

I’m not saying “don’t be concerned”.

I’m saying the proposed benefits of this system have nothing to do with safety.

I actually have microwaved an RFID tag before. In my infinite wisdom I put it on a paper towel. I was expecting it to ruin the chip but leave not affect the outward appearance. I wasn’t expecting it to explode in the microwave and light the paper towel on fire. Oops. I’d recommend a hammer, just as effective and won’t leave any indication that you destroyed it.

@8

The system you are describing sounds like a standard HF security system. A UHF RFID reader can read much further than that. It is undesirable for a door security system to read from far away, as you don’t want random people moving around to unlock a secure door.

@11

You can read a lot further than that, even with a passive tag. I installed a system that could read from 40 feet away pretty easy under ideal circumstances, and you can go further than that. You can go much further with active RFID (the tags have their own battery in them).

“Sorry, teach, I have no idea why my card doesn’t work anymore.”

*snicker*

Stop it now, before it goes too far. Tell them to stick those cards up their…..you know the rest.

If my family lived in a district that tried something like this, I’d encourage my kids to use faraday cage containers, so the chips would be unreadable when they aren’t in school.

It’s also why my kids will or have (depending on age) read Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother.”

Re: Matthew F, #7 & #8:

You can solve the directional issue by staggering two or three sensors just out of range of eachother and recording which gets pinged first. If they’re in a corridor, you know the direction of travel from the time stamps. With a little math you’d know the rate of travel too (NO RUNNING IN THE HALLS! Heh).

Roll calls based solely on RFID would fail with the wallet I listed above. When I was a kid, I bought my first wallet the day I got my first school ID card. I imagine kids still do that, if they don’t already have one.

Have a great weekend!

Lenore, I already hate myself for picking this particular nit, but it might help you in the future, so here goes. A “palette” is that funny-shaped wooden thing that an artist deploys and mixes his colors on when he’s painting. A “pallet” is a rough wooden platform on which you stack goods to facilitate handling them with a forklift. (It’s also something that us Hoosiers are apt to call a “skid.”)

Thanks for posting here … it’s been fun reading your stuff, and I’ll go on doing so at FRK.

There was some concern that the RFIDs in US passports could be read up to 10 meters away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport

Wait till they start requiring everyone to have an implanted RFID.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)