The Contra Costa County School District has become the first to implement an electronic tracking system for its students. Preschoolers in Richmond are now required to wear what resembles a basketball jersey that is implanted with a radio frequency transmitter.
Administrators say such an Orwellian device is just peachy because it will save them time and money because they won’t have to take attendance. No word on what happens if a child loses or forgets their tracking device. As expected, privacy advocates and parents are aghast at such a Big Brother-ish intrusion. Because of course the program will expand. Oh, Little Timmy spend 8 minutes in the bathroom and our guidelines clearly state that 5 minutes is more than adequate. That will be 10 demerits.
It also starts children out early being part of the surveillance society. How useful for governments, training them to “be a loyal plastic robot / For a world that doesn’t care, ” as Frank Zappa put it.
A wee article that I wrote up some time ago.
Grooming for subservience!!!
It is often said that we are sleepwalking into a police state. I would disagree and say that if we aren’t already there we are certainly galloping straight into the cage. On top of all the intimidating national database, ID cards, security checks and armed police at various points we are now to be hit with the police carrying portable finger print scanners. In spite of the fact that there is considerable doubt about there accuracy as the rely on a flat scan and not the rolled scan with ink as used in police stations.
While all this is going on there are people, who, seeing the dangers are protesting against this continued intrusion by the state into our every personal detail and movement. However there are those without a voice who are being weaned on this intrusive fabric of the police state and it is going on more or less without any real protest. Our children are being subjected to a more invasive regime than we would readily accept yet we seem to do nothing.
What our children are being subjected to is nothing short of the panoptic society. Below are listed some of the infringements to their human rights, which, by our silence we blindly endorse.
Police stationed in Eastbank Academy, Campus Cops. Glasgow, from 2002 now widespread in schools (BBC News 16.09.02, Evening Times, 09.10.07
CCTV mass surveillance (31 cameras) in Perth Academy 2003; playgrounds corridors and stairways. (SCS)
Fingerprinting nursery pupils for library books, to be implemented in Queen Street nursery, Falkirk 2006 (Forest;2007)
Random Drug testing in schools called for from Head Teachers Association of Scotland (HAS) 2006
Fujitsu “Palm Secure†biometric palm scan, Todholm Primary School Paisley, (first in Europe) 2006 rolled out to 14 Education authorities by 2007, (Yarg Biometrics based in Perth) (Forest; 2007)
Amey Infrastructures Services (Glasgow) contractors for PFI builds biometric scanning into new school construction
Renfrew, 2007.
RFID radio frequency identity cards- Active frequency tagging sewn into school uniforms, Hungerhill School, Doncaster England age 11 – 16 (Spartan Solutions and Sun Microsystems)
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) databases include samples from anyone arrested over the age of 10 regardless of being charged or convicted or innocent.
Microdrones used by Merseyside Police are flying remote controlled ‘spy drones’ (tried out in Iraq) fitted with CCTV cameras now used for tackling antisocial behaviour from 2007.
If our kids are subjected to this degree of surveillance as soon as they walk into school they are likely to grow up with the assumption that this is normal and will hardly protest as the intrusion creeps ever more personal as they grow into adulthood. This is only possible by our silence and the co-operation of the state’s soft police force, the teachers. It has to be attacked or the next generation will be walking zombies of the true police state, where their every personal detail and movement is known and checked to see if it complies with the wishes of the state.