Protest Like It's 1984

California elementary school's tracking devices symbolize growing threats

By Ben Ewing

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On January 18, Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, California adopted an innovative approach to monitoring the behavior of its students: radio frequency identification (RFID) badges. Under the school's new pilot program, students were required to wear ID cards around their necks along with a wireless transmitter. Developed by Sutter-based InCom Corp., the radio frequency ID badges had the power to track the movement of individual students. In exchange for agreeing to the experiment with InCom's RFID badges, Brittan Elementary received a payment of several thousand dollars and stood to receive even more in royalties from InCom's future sales. Ties between InCom and Brittan were not merely financial-a parent of a former Brittan student founded the company, and a Brittan technology aide was also a part-time employee at InCom. While Brittan's administration and InCom were enthusiastic about the idea, enough parents were concerned about the program that opposition and bad press ended the trial less than a month later.

The badges' ostensible purpose was to simplify attendance procedures and provide a mechanism for the school's administration to account for students' whereabouts in and out of the classroom. Antennas in doorways were used to read students' IDs from their wireless transmitters, as they entered and exited their classrooms. Brittan's principal and the school district's superintendent, Earnie Graham, also envisioned supplementing the ID cards with bar codes that would allow students to check out library books and pay for school lunches. Though some Japanese schools had already experimented with similar technology to notify parents when their children entered and exited school, Brittan was one of the first American schools to make use of RFID.

The school's new policy quickly drew mixed reactions. Mary Brower, a parent who felt confident in the administration's ability to use its new power properly, told the Marysville Appeal-Democrat, "Any kind of new technology has the potential for misuse, but I feel confident the school is not going to misuse it." Other parents strongly opposed the RFID badges, and took action to cease their use. Dawn and Michael Cantrall spoke out against the badges, told their two children not to wear them, wrote a protest letter to the school board, and notified the ACLU. Superintendent Graham, apparently unable or unwilling to conceive of the system's threat to privacy, dismissed these criticisms as superficial. "You know what it comes down to? I believe junior high students want to be stylish. This is not stylish," he said, according to the Associated Press. Soon after the national media picked up on the story, the school's plans were stymied. Evidently fearing bad publicity and the possibility that their RFID badges might be vandalized by opponents, InCom backed out of its agreement with Brittan and ended the school's pilot program in mid-February.

Media attention unquestionably contributed to the demise of the RFID badges at Brittan Elementary. Yet, for all the privacy concerns raised by parents and illuminated by national news coverage, the controversy failed to spark a significant enough dialogue to place the experiment in its broader context-the widespread and evolving tradeoff between innovative technology and privacy. Nor was attention paid to the concerns Brittan's policy raises regarding the further commercialization of public education. To dismiss the Brittan-InCom pilot program as ill-advised but small and short-lived misses the point-the story's importance lies in its implications.

Spy-gear: A Primer

RFID "tags" are small objects, easily attached to or imbedded in products or other items. These tags include tiny antennas used to send and receive radio frequency signals from a transceiver. RFID tags were used as early as World War II when the United Kingdom used these devices to distinguish between friendly and enemy airplanes. Since then, the technology has been used to track animals, product inventory, library books, airline bags, prisoners, automobiles and even beer kegs. Human implantation has even begun for select purposes. In 2004, the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain began using an implantable microchip to identify its VIP customers. The chip, developed by the Palm Beach-based Applied Digital Solution's VeriChip Corporation, allows Baja Beach VIPs convenient access to designated areas and allows them to pay for food and drinks without cash or a credit card. Applied Digital's product brochure boasts: "Unlike traditional forms of identification, VeriChip can't be lost, stolen, misplaced, or counterfeited." In Mexico City, the police department embedded RFID chips into approximately 170 of its officers for security access and tracking.

While one elementary school's short-lived use of RFID technology may seem like a minor, albeit disturbing incident, it is unfortunately indicative of a frightening trend: the erosion of privacy at the hands of technology. Even at a time when privacy faces a multitude of difficult threats from spy-ware to identity theft, the attachment and implantation of RFID chips seems startlingly Orwellian. While the threats to security brought on by the internet are real and growing, they arise in secret, from sources-spammers and identity thieves-assumed to be malevolent, not concerned with upholding the public good.

In contrast, Brittan Elementary, a public school and theoretically trustworthy institution, made its seizure of privacy with full disclosure and with an allegedly benevolent purpose. Likewise, when the Baja Beach Club and the Mexico City police force embedded microchips into human beings, they did so openly, to promote the immediate ease and comfort of those in whom they imbedded the RFID chips. Intentions matter. Erosion of privacy may seem worse when it is deliberate and malicious than when it arises as an unintended by-product of another aim. Yet, counter intuitively, the latter cases are as a whole more threatening because of their easy justification, even among those harmed. No one would willingly allow his or her identity to be stolen, but people have already allowed themselves to be tracked with embedded RFID chips.

Beyond Pouring Rights

Compared to microchip implantation in human beings, the threat to privacy posed by RFID badges in an elementary school seems relatively small. Yet the invasion of privacy is not the only cause for concern about the action of Earnie Graham and Brittan Elementary. Though not nearly as visible, an equally alarming aspect of the school's brief policy was the way it upped the ante for the shameless commercialization of public education. A cursory examination of Brittan's use of RFID technology reveals the overwhelming shadow of the marketplace's invisible hand. Even the strictest disciplinarian would be hard pressed to argue that Superintendent Graham's decision was motivated purely, or even primarily, by a true belief in the benevolence of monitoring individual students' movements. The opportunity to both raise money for other worthy school initiatives and effectively give patronage to a local company with ties to the school could not have been lost on Graham.

Brittan's agreement with InCom begs the question of what remains sacred in the quest for additional sources of public school funding. To what extent should a public school allow itself to be commercialized for the sake of additional funding? The practice of giving exclusive rights to corporate sponsors has become increasing common among public schools. Selling "pouring rights," or in-school monopolies on soft-drink distribution, is perhaps the best known example of example of this trend. Yet the implications of corporate sponsorships in public schools are much farther reaching than dictating whether students drink Pepsi or Coke. It is a major concern when public schools become so beholden to corporate interests that they would prefer to profit from fast food sales than promote healthy dietary choices. A study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000 estimated that 20 percent of public schools sell brand-name fast food.

When a small story gains nationwide media exposure, it is generally because it is indicative of a larger issue. Such was the case with RFID badges at Brittan Elementary. The disconcerting trends embodied in the school's brief policy are real, substantial, and of increasing concern. While Brittan's tracking policy immediately raises alarm at technology-driven privacy invasion, a closer examination of the use of RFID reveals a tradeoff. Though microchip implantation raises serious privacy concerns, the Baja Beach Club's VIP system demonstrates that in the future these concerns will be weighed against efficiency and the allure of innovation. Yet, if the experience of Brittan Elementary is a microcosm of widespread phenomena, the speed with which parents' protests and national media exposure stopped the RFID initiative in its tracks is encouraging. Only through the hell-raising of individuals (with a little help from the ACLU) can we hope to stave off the many other privacy infringements the future is sure to bring.

Ben Ewing B'08 thinks UPC barcodes are anachronistic

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