As students across the United States begin to return to school, some schools are requiring students to wear tracking beacons to prevent the spread of the Chinese virus.
Wired reports that as students across the United States begin to return to school following months of lockdown to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, many schools are taking measures to prevent the spread of the virus including implementing tracking beacons that students must wear to ensure they are not gathering in large groups.
Wired reports that the school district of New Albany, Ohio, with five schools and 4,800 students plans to test a system requiring each student to wear an electronic tracking beacon that will record their location accurately to within a few feet throughout the day. It will record where students sit in each classroom, show who they interact with, and reveal how they gather in groups. The aim of this technology is to prevent or minimize another coronavirus outbreak.
Many schools are planning to reopen on a gradual basis while keeping students as spread out as possible. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for reopening schools recommend staggered daily schedules that allow for smaller class sizes, open windows to provide air circulation, avoiding sharing books and computers, regular cleaning of all buses and classrooms, and the requirement of masks and handwashing.
Michael Sawyers, superintendent for New Albany-Plain Schools commented: “We are very much interested in the automated tracking of students.” Sawyers believes that tracking technology could help the school to determine whether social distancing is being observed correctly and identify students who may have tested positive for the virus.
Industry experts have noticed that a small but growing surveillance industry has appeared following the coronavirus pandemic with many firms pitching temperature-tracking infrared cameras, wireless beacons, and contact tracing apps to enforce social distancing. Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, commented: “It’s been one of the most disturbing parts of this.”
Cahn believes that the industry is keen to find a way into classrooms. “One of the things that will be a huge profit driver, potentially, is that younger children would need specially designed devices if they don’t have smartphones,” he said.
Read more about the issue at Wired here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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