Using RFID and Wi-Fi to Track Students

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a proposal to use RFID and wi-fi to track students wherever they go on campus: 'Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location.' At The Wireless Event in London, 'Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks.' The article points out that integration of RFID and wi-fi raises the possibility that RFID can be used for remote surveillance."

Re:Cost

[commodoresloat]

That being said, how big are these things? What would be the consequence of not carrying one around?

The RFID chips themselves are small they can be implanted under your skin or woven into clothing, or into the student ID that you have to carry around everywhere. The battery power is probably the size of a battery; it's unclear from the FA what kind of battery is necessary, but I imagine it would be pretty small. "Lugging it around" would not be an issue, and I'm sure student fees could easily absorb the cost without much notice. The real question is what real value does this have other than providing a tool for stalkers or control freak administrators? Do we really want to encourage the equivalent of temporary restraining orders or dorm arrests as a disciplinary mechanism in colleges, for example?

Re:This is Snape's idea

[PilotDvr]

Actually, it is how the Marauder's Map works

Re:Cost

[tthomas48]

RFID has no built in power. It's passive and power is radiated from the reader. So, yup, you could easily put it on a sticker (in fact I believe this is what most RFID enabled stores do).

We already have this...

[joe 155]

...I go to the University of Warwick, and we have this already. There are RFID chips in our library cards which we have to use to go into the library, take out books, the learning grid (its a 24/7 mini-library and work area that they've packed full of buzz-words...) or sports center. They are also used to give variable access to departmental buildings when they are not "open", as it were. For example if you are a statistics student you can get into that departments building at 3 in the morning but you can't get into social sciences.

These are passive and so give me little reason to be worried (although I do have a sheet of metal in my wallet anyway, just in case). They also provide pretty much all the benefits of an active chip without as much of a feeling that they are doing some weird prying into your life.

Having said that this system didn't stop my friend from having £180 charged to him because someone stole his library card and took out 10 books on it... having active cards could just make that problem far worse -
Security: "It seems the fire was started by you, Scott"
Scott: "But I was at home on my own all night"
Security: "Tell it to the police, and in the mean time you've been kicked out - read the University ToS, we can kick you out whenever for whatever reason"
Scott: "Bugger..."

Paranoia without hope?

[JesusPancakes]

Damn, you guys know how to spin YRO articles to make everything sound apocalyptic and awful. What exactly do you think this technology is meant to be used for? Do you think that university administrators have such a vested interest in vending machine habits and profit maximization that they want to data mine their own students? Do you think they really care when and how often you go to the bathroom?

Slashdot seems to have missed the boat on the notion of Ubiquitous Computing.

Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]
CMU's Aura Project [cmu.edu]
UbiComp 2007 [ubicomp2007.org]

http://jesuspancakes.net/context.htm [jesuspancakes.net] - A little summary paper I wrote about the field this past semester summarizing a few experimental trials of context-aware systems identical to the one described in this article.

This isn't technology designed to control and monitor people - this is technology intended to make people's lives better, provide interesting new services, utilize all the miniature computers that we carry around to make our lives easier.

I don't trust the damn government any more than the rest of you, but you don't have to implant RFID into your skin in order to try these out - most technologies are based on location badges, Wi-Fi triangulation with PDAs, and cell phone GPS. Guess what - you can turn them off, too!

So yes, blah blah, data mining, government spying, privacy, et cetera. Stop whining about it - these discussions are only useful if you actually think of useful solutions to the privacy dilemnas. If you're not, then you're just being a stubborn Luddite who can't see that it's possible for location-based computing to actually make your life better.