ACLU questions county’s decision to install microchip student tracking system
The American Civil Liberties Union is questioning Contra Costa County, Calif. on their implementation of a microchip-tracking program in their preschool centers, according to the California Watch.
Contra Costa’s tracking initiative called Child Location, Observation and Utilization Data System, or CLOUDS for short, assigns students a shirt that has a small locator chip sewn into the chest area. Parents can digitally sign in students after being dropped off at the beginning of the day, at which point the tracking device sends a signal to a computer in the administrative office.
Each child is seen in real time as a moving dot on the screen, and if a child strays out of its assigned area, an alert is sent to the teacher.
The ACLU is asking the county to provide more information about their program, the technical specifications of the microchips and how the program came into being.
A spokesperson for Contra Costa County said, “The program does not intend to harm or put any child at risk. It is meant to enable teachers to focus more on classroom instruction by freeing them from filing attendance reports.”
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