Los Angeles schools plan to reopen next month — and when they do, every child will be required to have a COVID-tracking app that will be scanned daily before they can enter the classroom.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) last month announced the launch of Daily Pass, a COVID tracking system developed by Microsoft. The app will scan children in schools, using a barcode, to coordinate health checks, COVID tests and vaccinations.
The Daily Pass generates a unique QR code — each day, for each student and staff member — that authorizes entry to a specific Los Angeles Unified location. An individual must have a negative test result for COVID, show no symptoms and have a temperature under 100 degrees in order to gain entry to class.
All data gathered by the app will be reported as required to health authorities. Anonymized data from Daily Pass will be used by Los Angeles Unified’s research and healthcare collaborators — Stanford University, UCLA, The Johns Hopkins University, Anthem Blue Cross, Healthnet and Cedars Sinai — “to provide insights and strategies” to implement in safe school environments, school officials said.
Students without the barcode will be barred from going into school.
LAUSD is the first school district in the nation to adopt the Daily Pass technology. In a statement, officials called Daily Pass a critical component of the district’s “Safe Steps to Safe Schools” reopening plan.
“Sort of like the golden ticket in ‘Willy Wonka,’ everyone with this pass can easily get into a school building,” Superintendent Austin Beutner told the Los Angeles Times. “We’ll know the status of everyone in the building,” he said.
Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense, said parents should be concerned. “If data is the new gold, then LAUSD’s new Daily Pass is providing a lot of gold to Microsoft and other institutions,” Holland said.
Holland said LAUSD is “compromising the students’ privacy and freedom of movement” and segregating children based on unreliable testing. “Parents should be asking a million questions and demanding answers,” she said.
John Whitehead, constitutional law attorney, author and founder of The Rutherford Institute, said parents should ask why entities want all of this data, what they’re doing to do with it, where it is going and whether it should be given to government agencies.
Whitehead said the COVID Daily Pass is about control, not safety. He warned:
“We are moving into a total surveillance state and an entire generation of young people are acquiescing to the police state. Privacy as we know it will be deleted and no one will be overlooked.”
The district released a video about the Daily Pass to help parents and their children understand how the app works, what steps children must take to get their “entrance ticket” and to ease fears about returning to school.
Students will also be required to socially distance, wear masks, receive regular temperature checks and undergo additional surveillance and screening testing, according to the “COVID-19 and Reopening In-Person Instruction Framework & Public Health Guidance for K-12 Schools in California, 2020-2021 School Year.”
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