RFID tags to keep Japanese kids in line

Scarcely a day goes by in Japan without some new story about schools introducing RFID tags to keep tabs on their pupils in one way or another. The idea of checking them in and out via readers at the school gates is old hat by now, but one school in Wakayama prefecture has teamed up with Japan's telecommunications ministry to go a step further: they're planning to fit tag readers to "dangerous locations" around town. Should pupils stray into range of the reader, the school and parents will get pinged by email. This all seems a trifle excessive, particularly if it means a future in which everyone's grown up acclimatised to being chipped and tracked; but given that Japanese schools already take an abnomally close interest in their pupils' conduct both on and off campus, it's hardly surprising.