Beginning in 2001, the UK was the first country in the world to introduce the use of biometrics in schools. About half of the children at school in the UK now use their biometrics to access services in schools, such as food and libraries.
Before 2021, no parental consent was given for schools to take, store and use children’s personal data. After a law was enacted to require schools to obtain parental consent, the use of Radio Frequency Identification (“RFID”) may become the tool of choice for schools.
As you read further into this article you will understand why we plead with parents, as we have in a previous article: Please do not allow anyone to take and store your child’s data.
Aside from compromising your child’s safety – which we go into more detail below – please also bear in mind the totalitarian control that is made possible using technology such as RFID.
In 2009, a former Kansas State Trooper and Kansas Marshal blew the whistle about plans to use “metal shackles with a computer chip” worn on people’s wrists to control people’s movements and behaviour. He had been advised that when the planned vaccine mandates happen there would be roadblocks around major towns and cities. People would be “held” in the cities until they prove they are vaccinated either by papers or wearing a wristband. He was describing what we now know as RFID wristbands. Schools using RFID are conditioning children to accept this totalitarian control as “normal.”
Pippa King set up a website to record the rise of the use of RFID in schools, in particular the use of active RFID and real-time location systems. Her blog is maintained from the UK but details the use of children and RFID across the world.
The name of her website is ‘Against RFID in schools’. She has a second website ‘Biometrics in schools’. For parents who are not aware of the tracking and tracing children are being subjected to at school, it is well worth familiarising yourself with the content of King’s websites.
When King’s children were 6 and 7 years old, the school they attended attempted to take their fingerprints for a school library system. “After asking the Head Teacher when the school was going to obtain consent from parents, she was told that the school did not need to ask her permission to take her children’s fingerprints,” she said.
At the time, the UK Data Protection Act 1998 did not consider biometric data as Sensitive Personal Data. This meant that parental consent was not required for schools to store and process children’s biometric information. So King, together with other parents and privacy/civil liberty organisations got to work.
The group campaigned for schools to require written parental and student consent to process a child’s biometric data. For those who chose not to have their biometrics taken or used by the school, the group’s campaign was asking that schools provided alternatives.
In May 2021, the Protection of Freedoms Act was passed which requires that schools must obtain written parental consent if they wish to store or process a child’s biometric data. However, this does not cover the use of tagging children with RFID.
“With the possibility that schools may now opt out of using biometrics for other registering technology, the use of Radio Frequency Identification, RFID, seems to be the emerging technology and is used in the USA to track children,” King said. “Schools in the USA use active RFID, passive RFID and GPS to record children’s whereabouts.”
PERCEPTION RESET 