California Tracks Students With Microchip Devices

Years ago people were called conspiracy theorists when they said that the government wanted to implant chips into every American citizen and that they would be doing so very soon. I was one of those folks and based it on the technical capacity of being able to employ biochips to track cattle and pets, which has been popular in the United States since 2002. Subdermal RFID (radio frequency identification) devices are about the size of a grain of rice and can be tracked via GPS.

Today, this is reality. In Richmond, Calif., officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices under the guise of saving teachers, staff and the school system time and money by freeing up teachers and administrators who previously had to use paper files when a child was absent. The system requires that students — while they’re at school — wear a jersey  that has a small radio frequency tag that will send signals to sensors that will track the children’s whereabouts, attendance — and check this, whether or not they have eaten. The cost for the implementation of the 50,000 program was paid for with a federal grant.

–torrance stephens, ph.d.