CTA tracking your children
The CTA and Chicago Public Schools are now tracking high schoolers every move. The reduced fare student cards have been implemented with a chip to create a “smart card” that tracks every stop the students make. As is the every popular trend with the government they are combining the student photo id with the CTA pass.
Plans are already underway to use this smart card as a way to punish and track truant students. (And no-school administrators have not checked on the legality of the project.) They also have discussed plans to use the CTA card as a way to track parents of truant children. (Side note: This punishment was set into place years ago by the over-reaching Chicago School Board, this is an extension of that program.)
Worse, the schools never had any intention of telling the student they were going to track them according to the ACLU.
“This permits the tracking of these young people beyond school hours,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “It’s not at all clear how it is helpful to know how students used the CTA on a given day.”
One smart cookie, Elizabeth Avelar, 16 said “It’s ‘1984′ coming to life.”
Add comment April 11th, 2008
