Student Locator Program

[Daniel Flaum]

http://www.nisd.net/studentlocator/

Scary shit, that.

[John Reskusich]

Yep. I wonder how long it takes the students before they start
disappearing with faraday cages and then have those banned...

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:49 AM, Daniel Flaum <co...@danielflaum.net> wrote:
> http://www.nisd.net/studentlocator/
>
> Scary shit, that.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Arch Reactor" group.
> To post to this group, send email to arch-r...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to arch-reactor...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>

[Chris Weiss]

some companies are already using this tech, specifically in large
factories. it's marketed as a way to make sure employees aren't take
excessive unscheduled breaks and aren't taking "the long way around"
when going somewhere else in the building.

[Ryan/baslisks]

so a faraday bag, an rfid cloner, a hapless victim, and some time and you could show easily how to circumvent the system.

think https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10070 would make a faraday bag?

[John Reskusich]

Maybe....

On Oct 11, 2012 10:16 AM, "Ryan/baslisks" <basl...@gmail.com> wrote:

so a faraday bag, an rfid cloner, a hapless victim, and some time and you could show easily how to circumvent the system.

think https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10070 would make a faraday bag?

--

[Frank Kallal]

well it becomes much harder to take a Kid with this in place..
Everything is circumventable.. but at least this adds a pretty solid
barrier.. As someone who has Kids.. I can see the Appeal that this
has..

we are getting to a point where we are always on Camera.. i don't
remember the last main Intersection where there wasn't a camera
present. i even watched three people get "tickets" on my way home,
that they will find out about in a couple weeks as it arrives in the
mail..

We are a monitoring society now.. I expect this trend to continue...

Fk

[Chris Weiss]

this wouldn't help with scenarios where kids of any age are taken.
The tracking only works inside the school, or on school grounds, which
are pretty safe places to be. it's not about safety. it's about
making sure kids are actually in the classroom they are supposed to be
in, and not hiding in bathrooms or leaving campus. it's about getting
attendance up to keep/restore funding without hiring extra people to
walk around and check bathrooms or police the campus borders for
escaping teens.

Some schools already require that students and teachers wear id badges
on lanyards, just as a quick visible check that this person is
supposed to be in the school. adding shielding is going to visibly
red-flag you, it's not a possible situation without ripping the card
open and moving the rfid to your pocket. this would also be obvious,
at least with the typical hooligan's quality of work.

[John Reskusich]

Along those lines, My neighbors just figured out that there is a
single engine plane going back and forth over our neighborhood for the
last week or so. Surveillance plane.

I am not terribly comfortable with it being there or this progression
away from having privacy expectations. I don't understand why
everybody is so defeatist in this category. I think it is premature
to give up on the prospect of privacy just because so many intrustions
already exist. In certain circumstances, it makes sense to sacrifice
privacy for some gain in another category. You give up privacy to
work with sensitive materials. You give up privacy to work for
somebody that you want to work for. These are choices you make and
the conditions in which they occur are well spelled out and you make
that decision knowingly.

But, the public camera thing and surveillance drones(which are coming)
is invasive. You are not making a choice. There are no public votes
on the policy. Our representatives are often not in the loop. The
proponents of more surveillance got a foot in the door and use one
concession to get the next one. They have momentum.

We are moving towards a world where computers could work together to
compile log report on your every activity. There may be a day where
our very thoughts are not protected from outside monitoring. What can
protect us is for our culture to reject that possibility. We have to
be mad when our expectations of privacy are violated. And the first
step is to have those expectations in the first place. Anything else
is a concession to the slippery slope that I am afraid of. We trade
our privacy all the time for conveniences, safety, income, etc. But,
what I am arguing for is to keep it a choice. You should be able to
negotiate the arrangement. You shouldn't have to give up your privacy
for nothing. And you shouldn't have to give it up at all.

In the case of the red light surveillance cameras, I am gaining
nothing for my privacy loss and our culture rejects the practice
almost across the board. It is something that is being shoved down
our throats from our government for one reason or another.
Convenience for the police? Revenue collection(they deny this?)
Prevention of accidents(the official reason?) The cameras remained
even with the state declaring it unconstitutional. It is an
encroachment on our expectation to privacy. I know that most people
argue that in a public space you have no expectation of privacy. But,
it isn't really true in practice. Up until recently, you had the
expectation that people weren't following you or watching every move
you made. If somebody followed you everywhere and kept track of your
whereabouts that would be stalking or harrassment. But, with cameras
and computers we are willing to forgive the practice. It's being done
by trusted people who watch out for us. Right?

There are also really legitimate reasons to keep most things private.
If you work with sensitive material or in a capacity that your
whereabouts could create a competitive advantage to your competitors,
then privacy is absolutely necessary. Sometimes, people's lives are
put at risk along with your privacy.

I don't really think the monitoring systems will prevent abductions
until the kids are actually chipped. Otherwise, the abductors just
dump the cards and take the kids with the benefit of it looking like
the kid is still on campus.

The way things are going, one day everybody might be required to be
chipped. There will be some very persuasive excuse to get it started.
They will probably start with children. Then certain jobs will
require it. Then to drive legally, you will need a chip. But,
before that happens, they will need to erode our expectations a lot
more in the name of some sense of security or protection they are
providing. In most cases, I think these things are installed by
people trying to reduce costs and gain control over the domain of
their authority.

In places where there is no public privacy(like Great Britain), people
attack and destroy the cameras. The authorities put dummy cameras out
with dummy controllers and real secret cameras aimed at them to catch
the people destroying the cameras. There is a war for privacy. It is
a hard fight because it is so entrenched. We aren't there yet.
Cameras are noticable because there aren't as many as there could be
and we remember a time in the near past where there weren't any
cameras except in banks and very specific places.

I don't want to fight a physical war against cameras and break the
law. I would rather be discontent and have our culture not put up
with it. If we reject it as a culture, it can be curtailed. At this
point, it is a culture war. Don't give up your expectation to
privacy.

[Hroller McKnutt]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 12:35 PM, John Reskusich
<john.re...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In places where there is no public privacy(like Great Britain), people

You have NO public privacy in the US, haven't ever had as far as I
know... I'm very familiar with privacy (as it relates to photography
specifically) and I'm not thrilled with a lot of the stuff going down
(including CCTV and the increasing coverage of EVERYWHERE with them)
but there is no more or less "public privacy" right in the US than
there is in the UK.

Mike
--
Nullo edactore ligni, consilium cedet. - Countess Magda

[Daniel Flaum]

Yeah, what you do in public is public.

I still object to extensive use of surveillance on the grounds that it gives our government too much power, though. There's a careful balance to be maintained between our government and our people, and surveillance technology will disrupt that balance to our detriment if we're not careful.

[Chris Weiss]

is your 6ft privacy fenced back yard "public"? planes with cameras
violate that if it is legally private.

[John Reskusich]

I agree that there is no public privacy or any privacy right in the
US. But, this is a matter of some controversy and I don't believe the
issue is settled once and for ever. At the very least, barring legal
protection, there should be a cultural value that dictates policy
built on common respect. Just because something is not legally
protected doesn't mean it shouldn't be or at the very least respected.
These programs are choices that people are making because there is no
consequence to making them and some advantage to those administering
the programs. If there were cultural dissent, I would hope there
would be less of it and maybe some legal support of the cultural
values that people expressed. But, it really starts with cultural
expectations.

[John Reskusich]

I imagine they do. Doesn't stop them from doing it....

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Chris Weiss <cwe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> is your 6ft privacy fenced back yard "public"? planes with cameras
> violate that if it is legally private.
>

[John Reskusich]

It's was evidently found to be a violation of privacy rights to do the
aerial thermal imaging to find indoor pot growers.

excerpt from wikipedia:

"New technologies can also create new ways to gather private
information. For example, in the U.S. it was thought that heat sensors
intended to be used to find marijuana growing operations would be
acceptable. However in 2001 in Kyllo v. United States (533 U.S. 27) it
was decided that the use of thermal imaging devices that can reveal
previously unknown information without a warrant does indeed
constitute a violation of privacy.[9]"

[John Reskusich]

Evidently, the real concern is what is considered private and what is
considered public in terms of what law enforcement can use against you
in an investigation without a warrant. And in what we consider
public, there is still a context considered to determine if you had a
reasonable expectation of privacy. For instance, hotel rooms are not
public. Public restrooms are not public. private sections of
jailhouses not public. Phone booths are not public. And one
important test is whether by design the environment was intended to
protect the privacy of the individual. A business can create an
environment that is supposed to be a shelter and that makes it
protected. Like a hotel room. Cars are up for grabs. Sometimes they
are considered private and sometimes public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy

So, by this reasoning, if we wanted to design Arch Reactor to be a
sheltering environment from surveillance, there would be a reasonable
expectation of privacy and any investigation would have to have a
warrant to gather surveillance. Maybe. Not that we want that. But,
we might have that option....






On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:54 PM, John Reskusich

[John Reskusich]

I imagine a safety deposit box has this same sort of protection. But,
probably not your personal tub in Arch Reactor. A locked container
might change that status....

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:03 PM, John Reskusich

[Hroller McKnutt]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:45 PM, Chris Weiss <cwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> is your 6ft privacy fenced back yard "public"? planes with cameras
> violate that if it is legally private.

From a photographer, yes... from a plane, I don't think so. I'm
pretty sure you have no rights regarding air traffic, but IANAL, YMMV,
Do not fold, spindle, mutilate, nor attempt to stop this message with
genitalia.

[John Reskusich]

"The Supreme Court has also ruled that there is no objectively
reasonable expectation of privacy (and thus no search) when officers
hovering in a helicopter 400 feet above a suspect's house conduct
surveillance."

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/488/445/case.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley

"Because there is reason to believe that there is considerable public
use of airspace at altitudes of 400 feet and above, and because
respondent introduced no evidence to the contrary before the state
courts, it must be concluded that his expectation of privacy here was
not reasonable. However, public use of altitudes lower than 400 feet
-- particularly public observations from helicopters circling over the
curtilage of a home -- may be sufficiently rare that police
surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations
of privacy, despite compliance with FAA regulations."


So, as long as they stay above 400 feet, they are good. But, it also
indicates that if the fence covered their aerial view then they had an
expectation of privacy....

[Chris Weiss]

so what you're saying is, I need a 400ft tall fence...

[Ryan/baslisks]

we need a dog pod grid.

[John Reskusich]

No, you need them to go lower than 400 ft or you need a concealed yard...

On Oct 11, 2012 3:17 PM, "Ryan/baslisks" <basl...@gmail.com> wrote:

we need a dog pod grid.

--

[Travis Megee]

As I always learned it: plane, plain, or pane view.

Travis

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Chris Weiss <cwe...@gmail.com> wrote:

so what you're saying is, I need a 400ft tall fence...

[Andrew Ricke]

To the orginal topic of RFID tracking IDs...there's already who product lines to protect you when outside of the area you're supposed to be scanned in

http://www.skymall.com/shopping/search.htm?query=rfid%20blocking%20wallet

Still, in the case of children...hate to think of people making their own scanners to track these schoolchildren outside of the school.  RFIDs are generally passive response, they don't care what pings them.  Unless they are scanner classroom doors and main entry doors, I assume these are the kind of RFIDs with a few dozen yards of range vs a few inches used on most security doors.