California Senate fights required RFID in schools
Legislation approved Monday would prohibit public schools from requiring the implementation of radio-wave devices that broadcast students' personal identification and monitor their movement around campus.
The bill was introduced by Democrat Sen. Joe Simitian and passed in the Senate on a 28-5 vote. The State Assembly will still have to pass it, also.
"The reason we have this level of support is it is a narrowly crafted bill, Simitian told the Associated Press. "We're dealing only with mandatory use that tells parents they don't get to be in charge of their kids' personal information."
According to this article in The Register, since 2005, when a small elementary school in Sutter, California, tried to implement a similar RFID program, public opinion has soured for mandatory RFID child-monitoring. The bill provisions would expire in 2011, giving the state government four years to debate the implications of this topic. Despite the assertions of the article, I've seen substantial evidence that when parents understand and are comfortable with the way a school is using an electonic monitoring device like an RFID-enabled ID card to control access to school buildings or to monitor whether children are leaving school unsupervised, that there is broad support for such efforts. I don't know if Virginia Tech uses RFID-enabled access controls on their dormatories or classrooms, but if properly used it could have helped police identify faster who entered the building for the first shooting and potentially stop the one that followed 2 hours later.
More RFID bills led by Simitian are currently being sent through California committees. One bill places a similar temporary ban on RFID technology in California driver's licenses. Another would impose specifical technical mandates on any existing RFID-enabled government IDs, mandates supposedly designed to reduce privacy risk to card holders. Simitian also has led a bill that would restrict forced RFID chip implants in people.
It's not clear whether this collective effort is designed to make the public safer, or as a crusade against RFID technology. There are lots of technologies, in addition to RFID, that have similar track and trace capabilities and are being used in similar applications -- but the restrictions are targeted only at RFID. I don't know if the Senator is aware of the distinctions, or just considers the term "RFID" as a catch-all term that covers smart cards, magnetic stripe technologies, GPS, etc -- all are different, all can be used in similar applications, and all have pros and cons.
If this Senator or other lawmakers are concerned about protecting public safety, they might be better off looking at increasing penalties or enforcement against lawbreakers who steal identities, abuse personal information, hack computer systems, kidnap school children, counterfeit drivers licenses or other government documents, etc. Perhaps that would be more effective than targeting a specific technology.
