Rikkyo Elementary school has began using RFID chips to track the movements of the students. Whenever a student enters or leaves the school, the fact is logged into the school’s computer and email is automatically sent to the parents.

In any society, prisoners and children are two groups assumed to have very few fundamental rights, and particularly not the right to privacy, so this is not really an invasion of privacy issue. Administrators and parents both love the new system and feel that it will keep their children safer.

This is, however, yet another example of addressing a problem by doing something very visible and newsworthy, but which will have no effect on the problem itself. The RFID system was introduced after a number of high-profile child-murders. When asked how the system could protect students from such crimes the principal said quite frankly. “This won’t prevent crimes against children.”

Of course, actually making children safer is a secondary goal. The primary goal of such systems is making people feel safer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 16th, 2004 at 10:34 am and is filed under Japan, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.