The rights and wrongs of chipping children

RFID has always provoked strong opinions - from supermarkets proclaiming it to be the best thing since sliced bread to privacy advocates calling for a moratorium on the technology. However, news that one Japanese school is planning to put RFID tags on it pupils and readers on school gates and other 'dangerous' locations drew a great deal of comment from silicon.com readers.

A several readers were saddened by the development, saying the trade-off between privacy and security was too great or predicting that the tagging of children in one school was the starting point of humanity in general being tagged.

Michael Litwak summed up the feelings of many of them. "Is paranoia what we wish to teach our children?" he wrote, adding: "How much restraint will the next generation show, when it's their turn to do the monitoring? Let's not sell out real liberty for the false promise of greater security."

The dilemma between infringing on children's civil rights and at the same time ensuring their safety was one that perplexed even the most opposed to RFID.

Reader Pete Bellamy said: "[This is] the first salvo in the war to implant chips in the world's population... But on the other hand, when a kid goes missing, the idea of being able to GPS track them is very appealing."

Nat Irvin, however, believes the sacrifice is one worth making. "For some reason, this seems to make perfectly good sense to me. Children are our most vulnerable and prized possession. Privacy is not," he wrote.

Others were less convinced that the scheme had any chance of working at all, given the nature of schoolchildren.

An anonymous reader wrote: "Can you imagine the chaos that could be caused by naughty children swapping schoolbags or items of clothing, or stealing items and then placing them in dangerous locations? A wonderful example of the misuse of technology."

Coleman Yee thought he had the answer to wandering children and it didn't need any tracking chips. "Cheaper solution: close the gates!"

One anonymous reader just simply couldn't see what all the fuss was about, saying: "How many of you have cardkeys? Guess what - that's RFID! This is no different than issuing a card key to each student, just like we have at work. And, just as cardkeys, you only get tracked when going through chokepoints such as entrances and exits. No big deal here - and I'd prefer people spend more time worrying about their kids' exercise habits, spelling and math."