Student to fight high school over mandatory microchip tracking

High school student from the state of Texas will take legal action after being threatened with expulsion for refusing to wear a microchip-embedded identification card to class.

Sophomore Andrea Hernandez is likely to have her last day at John Jay High School in San Antonio, TX next week unless educators there revoke their promise of kicking her out on Monday, November 26. It’s only the latest episode in an ongoing war involving the mandatory surveillance of students, and it looks like it won’t be the last update given Hernandez’s plans to pursue a court order with the help of her attorneys.

Earlier this school year, all students at John Jay were asked to start wearing ID badges, each one equipped with a Radio Frequency Identification (“RFID”) chip so that teachers there can keep track of their whereabouts on campus. The school told parents that the “Jones attendance office staff will be able to manage attendance reporting more efficiently” by utilizing the cards, because “By reporting increased attendance to the state, Jones Middle School will be eligible for additional funding.” So far just one other school in Texas is employing similar rules in order to ideally bring in some more funding, but if the program is deemed a success, the ID cards could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.

Even if asking students to wear the badges proves beneficial for funding, parents and pupils alike are voicing issues with the now mandatory tracking. Hernandez went public with her claims earlier this semester and told Salon that being forced to comply was comparable with being branded with the “mark of the beast.” As a result of her refusal on basis of religious principles, she said she was being discriminated by school officials and even told she couldn’t participate in the election process for the John Jay homecoming king and queen because she didn’t want to wear her badge.

"I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID," Hernandez told WND earlier this year. "I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote."

Hernandez’s arguments with the school board have continued since the semester started, but now she is reportedly being threatened with expulsion for her ongoing refusal to submit to the creepy surveillance. This week the Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based nonprofit that specializes in civil rights representation, reports that officials with the Northside Independent School District have informed Hernandez that she will be “withdrawn” from John Jay High starting Nov. 26 if she continues to protest the tracking program. Now the Rutherford Institute says their attorneys “are preparing to seek immediate judicial intervention to ensure that Andrea is not removed from her school as a result of adhering to her religious beliefs and refusing to express approval of the Project.”

“There is something fundamentally disturbing about this school district’s insistence on steamrolling students into complying with programs that have nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to do with fattening school coffers,” says John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “By virtue of the First Amendment, students in our society are at liberty to conscientiously choose which governmental programs they will support and which they will oppose. It’s a sad day in America when school officials deny someone an education simply because she stands up for what she believes in.”

As Hernandez’s efforts to voice her opposition snowballed, the school initially budged and told her they’d be alright with her wearing a badge that was not equipped with a RFID chip but still contained a barcode that educators could use to keep track of her. Not only did she decline that offer, but the Rutherford Institute says she has been prevented from distributing flyers to her fellow students explaining her grievances.

The girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, told WND earlier this year that the school was somewhat willing to work with his daughter, but said that the family is unwilling to “agree to stop criticizing the program” and publically endorse it.

“I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong,” Mr. Hernandez said.

Should the school keep good on their promise to expel Hernandez next week, she is likely to transfer to William Howard Taft High School around 10 miles away where students aren’t subjected to a tracking program. The Rutherford Institute says they will immediately seek a preliminary injunction against the district to prevent her from being transferred if they need to.


http://rt.com/usa/news/rfid-badge-texas-hernandez-269/

1) I agree with the objection, for sure I do...but did she just pull the 'religous grounds' one out, as a good legal move?

2) Why do they need to keep track of students, in such an invasive manner. Sure. To cut down on truancy? So that they qualify for more funding? Well that sounds like drek to me. For one thing, it cannot be cheap to have hired the company to create and make the devices, and software, so there is a cost, right away. And, for another thing, it is just wrong, it sounds bloody Orwellian!

 

I wouldn't want to go to such a school. That's a complete invasion of our civil liberties.

 

It sounds messed up, like a social experiment.

 

Wh got the contract for the badges and micro-chips?

 

Very good question...

 

I'm ashamed to be an American where at least I know we're for sale,
And I won't forget the men who died by pissing on their graves,
And I gladly sit down next to you and sell her still today,
'Cause there ain't no doubt I'll sell this land God sell the U.S.A.
From the lobbyists of congress, to the murdering MIC,
Across fracklands of Texas, and the oil spill by BP.
From Detroit murder city to murder city in L.A.,

There's shame in every American heart
And it's time we sit and whisper:
I'm ashamed to be an American where at least I know we're for sale,
And I won't forget the men who died by pissing on their graves,
And I gladly sit down next to you and sell her still today,
'Cause there ain't no doubt we'll sell land God sell the U.S.A.

 

Better not be like a vault.

 

Well, the US have conducted social and other experiments on given groups, in the past.

Did you think they were bored with that?

 

what exactly is the issue, I think camera should be in the hallways as well, keep the trouble makers out of the schools, heck if we had camera's in the classroom we could get rid of some bad teachers too

 

I also found this, going back nearly 7yrs, so sort of prophetic, albeit nuance, etc..

Human beings may be forced to be 'microchipped' like pet dogs, a shocking official report into the rise of the Big Brother state has warned.

The microchips - which are implanted under the skin - allow the wearer's movements to be tracked and store personal information about them.

They could be used by companies who want to keep tabs on an employee's movements or by Governments who want a foolproof way of identifying their citizens - and storing information about them.

The prospect of 'chip-citizens' - with its terrifying echoes of George Orwell's 'Big Brother' police state in the book 1984 - was raised in an official report for Britain's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas into the spread of surveillance technology.

The report, drawn up by a team of respected academics, claims that Britain is a world-leader in the use of surveillance technology and its citizens the most spied-upon in the free world.

It paints a frightening picture of what Britain might be like in ten years time unless steps are taken to regulate the use of CCTV and other spy technologies.

The reports editors Dr David Murakami Wood, managing editor of the journal Surveillance and Society and Dr Kirstie Ball, an Open University lecturer in Organisation Studies, claim that by 2016 our almost every movement, purchase and communication could be monitored by a complex network of interlinking surveillance technologies.

The most contentious prediction is the spread in the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.

The RFID chips - which can be detected and read by radio waves - are already used in new UK passports and are also used the Oyster card system to access the London Transport network.

For the past six years European countries have been using RFID chips to identify pet animals.

Already used in America

However, its use in humans has already been trialled in America, where the chips were implanted in 70 mentally-ill elderly people in order to track their movements.

And earlier this year a security company in Ohio chipped two of its employees to allow them to enter a secure area. The glass-encased chips were planted in the recipients' upper right arms and 'read' by a device similar to a credit card reader.

In their Report on the Surveillance Society, the authors now warn: "The call for everyone to be implanted is now being seriously debated."

The authors also highlight the Government's huge enthusiasm for CCTV, pointing out that during the 1990s the Home Office spent 78 per cent of its crime prevention budget - a total of £500 million - on installing the cameras.

There are now 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain and the average Briton is caught on camera an astonishing 300 times every day.

This huge enthusiasm comes despite official Home Office statistics showing that CCTV cameras have 'little effect on crime levels'.

They write: "The surveillance society has come about us without us realising", adding: "Some of it is essential for providing the services we need: health, benefits, education. Some of it is more questionable. Some of it may be unjustified, intrusive and oppressive."

Yesterday Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, whose office is investigating the Post Office, HSBC, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland over claims they dumped sensitive customer details in the street, said: "Many of these schemes are public sector driven, and the individual has no choice over whether or not to take part."

"People are being scrutinised and having their lives tracked, and are not even aware of it."

He has also voiced his concern about the consequences of companies, or Government agencies, building up too much personal information about someone.

He said: "It can stigmatise people. I have worries about technology being used to identify classes of people who present some kind of risk to society. And I think there are real anxieties about that."

Yesterday a spokesman for civil liberties campaigners Liberty said: "We have got nothing about these surveillance technologies in themselves, but it is their potential uses about which there are legitimate fears. Unless their uses are regulated properly, people really could find themselves living in a surveillance society.

"There is a rather scary underlying feeling that people may worry that these microchips are less about being a human being than becoming a barcoded product."


http://www.standard.co.uk/news/britons-could-be-microchipped-like-dogs-in-a-decade-7207412.html

 

no more so then requiring students to be quite during a test is a violation of free speech

I am trying to think of possible abuses of this technology and I am not able to come up with any, what abuses do people foresee?

.

 

Setting people up they do not like.

Demonsing people for views they do not like.

Rolling it out across more places of education, and beyond.

Promising it makes something safer, and doesn't really.

Massive costs.

And so on..

 

can you give an example, not see how those things could be done

they already give out the id, would not cost much more to add a rfid like you have in your drivers license already, or your passport

as far as out of school, that is why they make rfid wallets, so they can not be read unless you want them to be

course today almost everyone has a cell, that is like a tracking device on steroids...

.

 

See people can't talk during tests, because it takes away someone else's right to take a test without being distracted.

What right is being protected by requiring people to insert a microchip into their body?

 

Students do have rights. The right to privacy is a big one here. It's unwarranted.

 

Those who keep saying 'what's the problem', every time the goalposts are move further toward literally the stuff of Orwell, you must wonder at what point would they object? Where is their line? Is there a line? After all, if you apply their basic principle, and take it to it's logical conclusion, why not let the state install, mandatory, cameras inside homes, that they can watch, because, every day, crime takes place, inside houses.

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...65722-what-point-would-you-pick-up-rifle.html

 

BS, there is no rule in any Texas schools where anyone has to have a microchip put in them. Jeeeez people, verify the cray stuff you find.

 

The second some RWNJ picks his up and says he is gonna steal a piece of America to call his own little country.

 

The second some RWNJ picks his up and says he is gonna steal a piece of America to call his own little country.

 

RWNJ?

Oh, I get it. You still believe pro-wrestling is real!

 

were talking about students having badges, not inserting a microchip in their bodies

 

teachers have been taking attendance sense the first school opened, this is just an electronic attendance taker, nothing more

 

The twenty million dollar question is if these RFID chips can be traced anywhere on the planet. If school officials can track you to your home if you have the ID on your person, that constitutes illegal search and seizure and a massive invasion of privacy.

The bigger implication is why do schools think they can treat students like cattle. The more prominent cases include principals spying on their students via webcam. When I was going to school a few years back they had a 10 foot tall fence with razor wire on the top. Uniform policy was strict; a studious girl I knew was nearly suspended for wearing three necklaces (you couldn't wear more than two). They suspended 40 students for wearing white t-shirts on choice dress day because they said white is a gang color. (What color ISN'T a gang color? Even sports logos can be gang signs, such as with Tango Blast.)

 

Just like being herded through metal detectors and tazed by campus security, the RFID chips are there to teach the youth how to live as a slave. Give it a generation, and everyone will think it's just the way it should be. Meanwhile, the civics classes will continue the propaganda about how we live in a free society. The truly scary part is that only one person has the courage to oppose this latest assault by Big Brother. The rest of the slaves are already conditioned.