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Texas schools track students

Alex Kayle
By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist
Johannesburg, 31 May 2012

Texas schools track students

The Northside Independent School District, in San Antonio, Texas, is set to roll out an experimental project next year to track thousands of students at two schools by embedding radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in their ID cards, The Los Angeles Times reports.

“We want to harness the power of technology to make schools safer, know where our students are all the time in a school, and increase revenues,” explains district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez.

State officials and national school safety experts claim the technology was introduced in the past decade but has not been widely adopted, My San Antonio states.

Officials assure that chip readers on campuses and on school buses can detect students' locations but can't track them once they leave school property. Only authorised administrative officials will have access to the information.

However, fears are that RFID technology may expose children to more severe dangers like stalking and identity theft, Mobiledia says.

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