Department of justice funds
programs that track students
By Catherine Komp
ALTERNATIVE PRESS REVIEW
|  BERKELEY
- As debate over government surveillance rages in adult
society, the US Department of Justice is quietly enticing
school districts to implement controversial technologies
that monitor and track students. Critics fear these
efforts will normalize electronic surveillance at an
early age, conditioning young people to accept privacy
violations while creating a market for companies that
develop and sell surveillance systems. |
A few of the nation’s schools are already running pilot
programs to monitor students’ movements using radio
frequency identification (RFID). The highly controversial
programs, implemented in the name of student protection, see
pupils wearing tags around their necks and submitting themselves
to electronic scanning as they enter and leave school property.
Now, a new federal grant could lure more districts into using
these or similar technologies.
Even though school violence is at its lowest rate in a decade,
according to the federal government’s own statistics,
the Justice Department’s "School Safety Technologies"
grants will be distributed to schools that develop proposals
in four broadly defined areas: integrated physical security
systems, bus-fleet monitoring systems, low-level force devices
and school safety training.
In its call for the grant proposals, the National Institute
of Justice (NIJ) – an arm of the Justice Department
– says the money will be distributed to schools proposing
"effective technology solutions to protect the students,
teachers, school personnel, and the educational infrastructure
from criminal activities, particularly crimes of violence."
The NIJ states that the current systems used in schools are
costly, invasive, labor intensive, and "objectionable
to various segments of the community." The Department’s
vision for improvements are "integrated physical security
systems," which would include "non-obtrusive sensors"
to detect drugs and weapons, as well as to track students,
staff, visitors, and intruders on school grounds. It also
asks applicants to develop systems that enable law enforcement
personnel to track the time and place that students enter
and exit school buses.
 In
one of the more controversial areas of the grant solicitation,
the NIJ states that "non-cooperative" identification
and tracking is preferred over a "cooperative" system.
A non-cooperative identification system captures and tracks
personal or biometric data automatically, without a person
knowing that they have been screened by a surveillance system.
Catherine Sanders, a spokesperson with the NIJ, would not
elaborate on the specific technology that could be proposed
to qualify for the grant money. She said doing so would create
an uneven playing field for applicants. However, the types
of technology solutions described by the NIJ are similar to
RFID surveillance and biometric data programs. Companies that
manufacture these products often describe "cooperative
and non-cooperative tracking" components of their systems.
Maximum-security Schools
Such technologies have already been implemented in some school
districts. North of Houston, Texas, 16,000 elementary students
in the Spring Independent School District wear RFID tags,
embedded with chips that indicate their locations on a computerized
map. The school also has 750 surveillance cameras mounted
throughout its facilities, with plans to install 300 more.
In New York, RFID systems are also being used in schools.
The Brockport Central School District in northern New York
is testing school bus fleet monitoring with GPS technology
and scanning students IDs as they enter and exit the bus.
Students at the Enterprise Charter School in Buffalo wave
their RFID tags in front of two kiosks at the school entrance
which automatically transmit attendance to teachers and administrators.
The use of RFID tracking technology in schools is troubling
to electronic privacy advocates. They say it further compromises
the already minimal civil rights of students while reinforcing
a demeaning environment that erodes trust and respect between
young people and adults.
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a public-interest organization, believes the increasing
use of RFID technology in schools could affect how the public
views surveillance.
"It creates an atmosphere where you normalize the use
of surveillance technology… [and] the idea that you
should accept that you are being tracked," said Tien.
Katherine Albrecht, director of the group Consumers Against
Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) and author
of Spychips : How Major Corporations and Government Plan to
Track Your Every Move with RFID, is also concerned about technological
surveillance in schools. She says RFID companies are targeting
captive audiences with their products.
"They're going for prisons, they're going for the schools;
they're going for the military; they're going for the people
who are not in a position to say ‘no’," Albrecht
told The NewStandard. "And who is less in a position
to say ‘no’ than a child? I think it's absolutely
unconscionable, absolutely unethical."
The NIJ also asks grant applicants to develop proposals for
"low-level force devices."
New York City Detective Kevin Czartorysky says low-level
force, or non-lethal devices currently used by law enforcement
include batons, mace, pepper spray, beanbag launchers, and
Taser electroshock weapons. However, he adds that these devices
would likely draw sharp criticism if used in schools.
The NIJ says candidate weapons should be "inherently
safe, causing no long-term or permanent injury" and "should
also not engender objection from the public, the media or
government."
The Safest Place to Be
While school administrators justify the use of RFID and other
high-tech systems to protect children and facilities, some
question whether more security in schools is even necessary.
Frank Zimring, a University of California at Berkley law
professor and author of several books on youth violence, says
that whether adolescents are rich or poor, school is the safest
place they can be.
Indeed, crime in school has been falling since the early
1990s. According to information released by the federal Bureau
of Justice Statistics in late November, one percent of students
reported being a victim of violence in school. Between July
2001 and June 2002, there were seventeen homicides and five
suicides on school property for school-aged youth in the United
States between the ages of five and 19. The study also found
declining rates of school fights, lower percentages of students
bringing weapons to school and less overall fear at school.
"If you try to create too much security in a school
setting, you’re going to make it a branch of the law
enforcement enterprise instead of a branch of the educational
enterprise," said Zimring.
Federal Government and RFID
The government’s use of RFID technology is expanding.
The US government has used RFID technology in Department of
Defense for more than two decades, and this year, the Department
of Homeland Security started a pilot program to track immigrants
by putting RFID chips in visas.
But the money flows both ways. Accenture, a global consulting
and technology company that specializes in RFID, was the top
business services contributor during the 2004 election cycle,
with its owners and employees giving approximately $778,589
to federal candidates, 69 percent of which went to Republicans,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Deloitte
& Touche, a global accounting and consulting company that
helps companies implement RFID technologies, gave more than
$2.2 million to candidates in the 2004 cycle, 71 percent to
Republicans.
An explanation for the increasing use of RFID technology
by federal bodies could be found in a government document
discovered by CASPIAN, the RFID watchdog group – and
it may have less to do with actual need than with supporting
the private interests that support politicians. A December
2004 bulletin from the General Services Administration, which
manages federal purchasing, encourages agencies "to consider
action that can be taken to advance the industry by demonstrating
the long-term intent of the agency to adopt RFID technological
solutions."
In a statement released shortly after the bulletin was discovered,
Albrecht criticized the government for finding "excuses
to purchase and promote controversial technology at taxpayers’
expense."
The deadline for the federal "School Safety Technologies"
grant applications was November 25, and the full review and
approval process takes six to eight months. NIJ spokesperson
Sanders would not say how much funding will be made available
or disclose the number of proposals received.
Meanwhile, Tien and Albrecht continue to raise awareness
about what they see as the dangers of tracking technology
and the lowering threshold for permissible government surveillance.
"The burden of proof is no longer on someone who wants
to institute surveillance, but rather on those who object
to it," Tien told TNS with regret. "And I think
that's a big change in the way people look at social privacy."
Albrecht believes that today’s adults – as members
of the last generations to enjoy privacy and anonymity –
have a huge responsibility in fighting for responsible uses
of technology. "If a generation of school children grows
up accepting as perfectly normal the idea that someone would
and should be able to watch and keep track of where you are,
as adults those people are going to have no concept whatsoever
of the kind of privacy that you and I take for granted,"
said Albrecht. "And that would be a huge loss."
|
