TRI In The News

Preparing Students for 'Surveillance Police State'

From One News Now

Original article available here

An attorney tells OneNewsNow that a Texas school district requiring students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards for tracking is punishing those who refuse to comply, preparing them for the future.

Officials at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio are tracking students with the ID cards as a way of stemming truancy. John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute says those who refuse to get the devices face disciplinary action.

"If you don't agree to have the so-called 'card,' you're out of the system," he explains. "These kids -- they can't even use the cafeteria if they don't have the card, or vote in elections. So I would say it raises a very, very interesting question in terms of what we're conditioning kids to get ready for in the future."

Whitehead suggests this is just one example of how the government is conditioning future citizens.

"What we're creating is a surveillance police state, where the government will know wherever you [are]," he foresees. "Sooner or later … the general populous will carry these cards, because what I'm seeing happening in the schools [is] conditioning school children to get ready for a surveillance state."

If the pilot program is successful at these two schools, authorities expect the surveillance to be implemented at 112 schools, affecting roughly 100,000 students.