Apologies--I had line breaks throughout that post, but they disappeared.

Okay, so you can speculate on ways that this school's RDIF program can be subverted or otherwise lead to problems, and you can go back and forth on this ad infinitum, but consider this. At some point, maybe not this year, maybe in a couple of years, maybe in five or ten, this school, or perhaps another, will hit upon a recipe for an RFID program that actually works. Once that happens, other schools will start to imitate the program. From that point on, there will be a population of students, growing every year, who will eventually become adults who are accustomed to being tracked. Now, we already have passports with RFID chips. U.S. citizens are not required to have a passport, but imagine that at some point in the future, in the way that Congress actually managed to pass the health care act (something that was considered unlikely by many), a law is passed, and later upheld by the courts, requiring every citizen to carry an ID with an RFID chip or some other tracking mechanism. If such a bill were proposed today, an uproar would instantly arise, but think ahead a generation or two, when a large percentage of the population is already used to being track, via their school IDs. At that point it is conceivable that tracking becomes a reality. Now, because power corrupts, it is inevitable that that the power that comes with tracking data will be misused by governments and other entities, such are corporations and criminal elements, able to obtain access. Accept this as a given, because the history of this country indicates that we will eventually reach that point. Well, what I am telling you is that all of us, the citizens, will be much safer if two things come to pass: A) Tracking is enforced, so that nobody, not a cop, not a judge, not criminal, can escape it. B) Tracking information is made publicly available, to prevent the power differential that occurs when some entities have access to information but others don't. Please read this carefully. IF YOU ASSUME that tracking will occur, eventually, you must realize that it is in your best interests for you to have as much access to tracking data as anybody else, and for you to be able to monitor the authorities and the criminals, rather than the monitoring being just a one-way proposition. To get back to this San Antonio schools, what the parents should be advocating, and insisting, is that all school officials be required to carry the same RFID chips that students carry, as a matter of fairness, and to help mitigate against abuse.

...is what I've come to expect from legislators. They are generally quick to pass retrictive laws out of fear rather than undertaking the more courageous and challenging task of figuring out how to use new technologies to solve social problems. The human tendency to deceive and the human institution of privacy are a cause of many problems around the world. This technology, or technologies like it in the future, have great potential, if smart people would stop succumbing to fear and start thinking positively. I expect the worst from legislators, but I expected at least one person in this forum to propose a positive idea. More details here, at starbuckseverywhere.net/IrrationalityOfLaw.htm#Sep tember_3_2007