海角大神

If a school requires its students to wear IDs embedded with locator chips at all times, is that an infringement on their privacy? Or even, for some students, on their religious values?

Andrea Hernandez, a high school student in San Antonio鈥檚 Northside Independent School District, has sued the district over ID badges equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, which she and fellow students were required to wear this year as part of a pilot project. As an Evangelical 海角大神 who believes that any sort of tracking technology is a 鈥渕ark of the beast,鈥� she believes it violates her religious freedoms.

The result has been an unusual alliance of Evangelical 海角大神s and civil-liberties groups who claim that the technology is an overextension of technology into personal lives. It also points to rising concerns as locator technologies like RFID become more widespread.

How much do you know about the US Constitution? A quiz.

The technology is not new, though its use in schools has been somewhat limited. The Northside district began requiring some 4,000 students at two schools to wear the RFID-embedded IDs.

A prime motivator is financial. Texas, which last year cut school funding by nearly $5 billion, pays school districts based on how many students attend on any given day.

Often, students are marked absent because they鈥檙e not in their seats when roll is called, even though they might just be in the nurse鈥檚 office, says Pascual Gonzalez, communications director for the district.

The district paid $261,000 for the ID technology, but is hoping to get $1.7 million of additional state revenue over the year based on increased attendance numbers.

Beyond the attendance money, Mr. Gonzalez says, are safety concerns. 鈥淭his is not a tracking pilot, this is a locating pilot,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen there鈥檚 an emergency in the school, if we have to lock down the school or evacuate a school or whatever, we will be able to find a student as we need to by entering a randomly assigned number.鈥�

But that鈥檚 not the way that Andrea and her family see it. The school said she could wear an ID without any RFID technology, but Andrea refused 鈥� saying that wearing the badge, and implying her participation in the program, would still be 鈥渨orshipping a false god.鈥� The school reassigned her away from Jay, a magnet school, to her home high school, which doesn鈥檛 use the IDs, the week before Thanksgiving

A local judge has issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the school from transferring her, and the case is now in the courts.

鈥淭he future of privacy is at stake,鈥� says John Whitehead, a constitutional lawyer and president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil rights group in Charlottesville, Va., that is backing Andrea in the case.

The religious concern among some Evangelicals is 鈥渁 sincere belief,鈥� Mr. Whitehead says. And he notes that the school stopped Andrea from handing out pamphlets after school explaining her views.

He is also concerned about the fact that, without an RFID card, Andrea would not have been able to vote for homecoming king and queen and might have had only limited access to extracurricular activities or places like the library, as those activities are intertwined with the smart-card technology.

鈥淚f you don鈥檛 opt in, then you鈥檙e punished,鈥� says Whitehead.

Looking beyond this case, privacy-protection groups say they are concerned about the growing intrusion of RFID and other high-tech identification tools 鈥� including biometric palm scanners, which some schools in Maryland and elsewhere are using to help students pay for lunches more efficiently.

The use of tracking chips 鈥渄esensitizes students from an early age to privacy violations," says Khaliah Barnes, a law council at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit public-interest group in Washington.

That鈥檚 one reason that Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, has been trying for eight years to introduce bills that either ban RFID technology from schools or allow parents or students to opt out without any repercussion.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 like this technology being used with our children,鈥� says Representative Kolkhorst. 鈥淭his should be vetted publicly.鈥�

Northside's Gonzalez tries to dispel misconceptions about what the program does.

鈥淧eople may think we have personnel sitting in front of a bank of monitors looking at the whereabouts of 3,000 kids,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 impossible. We don鈥檛 have the staff to do that, and we don鈥檛 have a reason to do that鈥�. If we need to find someone, we can locate them, but nobody sits there and tracks their whereabouts.鈥�

To minimize hacking concerns, the cards are linked to a randomly assigned number 鈥� not the student鈥檚 ID number 鈥� and no sensitive information is stored with that number. And there are no card readers in bathrooms or locker rooms.

The program would also help administrators identify someone who doesn鈥檛 belong on campus, since they wouldn鈥檛 be wearing the ID lanyard. That鈥檚 why, says Gonzalez, it was important that Andrea wear an ID, even if it didn鈥檛 have the RFID chip in it.

Gonzalez notes that out of 4,000 students, only two 鈥� Andrea and one other family 鈥� have complained. For students in a public school, 鈥渢he expectation of privacy is really low,鈥� he says.聽

While RFID technology in schools is still not particularly widespread, it鈥檚 growing, with a number of districts in California and Texas implementing it.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a rather sensitive topic in various school districts and communities,鈥� says Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, citing concerns about tracking.

But Mr. Stephens also notes that there are a lot of potential benefits, not only in helping locate students in an emergency but also in starting to track where violence or crimes occur in a school.

鈥淎 lot of this is about a fine balance, about the technology that is there and creating the kind of environment you want on the campus,鈥� says Stephens.