Every breath you take

I'll be watching you.

Geovv Parrish has this at Working for Change:

Back when I was in school, we used to joke that the administrators treated us like we were in some sort of private prison.

Turns out we were just a bit ahead of our time.

In rural Sutter, California, a town just north of Sacramento with a population of 2,300, a controversial new program has all of the students in the one-school district being forced to wear radio-frequency identification badges that can track the students. It's the same technology used to track cattle in feedlots, or product inventory in factories.

The badges, introduced at Brittan Elementary School in January, are defended by school administrators as making attendance-gathering easier. (You know how arduous THAT task is. It must be the hardest thing teachers do all day...) And, presumably, it can help find students who get lost on the way to the restroom -- at least, the ones without the wherewithal to ditch the badges. The badges are also supposed to "reduce vandalism and improve student safety," although it's not clear how.

Naturally, some parents -- who weren't consulted before the system was imposed -- and the ACLU are up in arms about this latest invasion of student privacy. Beyond the obvious, parents are also concerned that information encoded in the badge could fall into the wrong hands, or that the radiation from the badge might pose a health hazard to the kids.

Seems like a good idea to me, being able to keep track of the little bastards. Societies have longed for this ability for ages. Why, just the other day someone wrote:

Presumably she could be trusted to find a safe place. In general you could not assume that you were much safer in the country than in London. There were no telescreens, of course, but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized; besides, it was not easy to make a journey by yourself without attracting attention. For distances of less than 100 kilometres it was not necessary to get your passport endorsed, but sometimes there were patrols hanging about the railway stations, who examined the papers of any Party member they found there and asked awkward questions.

Seems pretty handy, keeping track of everyone, everywhere, all the time. Add in traffic cams, video surveillance in publics places, and it's the dream come true for fascists the world over.