School kids in Japan have been wearing RFID-tagged identification devices. Now the first elementary school in the United States, in the rural town of Sutter California, has adopted RFID-enabled badges.

The system is designed to simplify attendance-taking, reduce vandalism, and keep students safe. The program is actually a test pilot by ImCorp.

Predictably, the civil libertarians and privacy advocates are outraged. Some parents are up in arms, fearing that the information inside the RFID chips could end up in the wrong hands, endangering their children instead of keeping them safe.

The school superintendent says he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

Had he been a reader of this RFID Weblog, he might have been more in tune with the privacy debates. He might have realized the need to air the plan to parents in advance of adopting it.

People get pretty protective in this country when it comes to using RFID to track people. A California elementary school is probably not the best place to test an RFID security system for people tracking, at least not in 2005.

- Hat tip to George at Brewed Fresh Daily. From an MSNBC article via Smart Mobs.