Human Inventory Control

It was inevitable that the radio tags that let cars breeze through toll plazas would get placed on, or in, people. The sole elementary school in a California town 50 miles northwest of Sacramento raised hackles far and wide this past January when it tagged students with the same technology used to determine the whereabouts of cattle and to keep tabs on toilet paper rolls at Wal-Mart. The Brittan Elementary School in Sutter required the seventh- and eighth-grade students to wear a badge that sported a name, a photograph and a radio tag containing identification data that could be read automatically at attendance time. Purportedly, the radio-equipped badges would have also helped improve safety and prevent vandalism.
Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Human Inventory Control

Comments are closed.