RFID Spychips in Passports Just The Beginning?

[The Cleaner]

RFID-laced passports may be just the start of an Orwellian airport experience, warn privacy advocates and authors Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre as the nation braces for a rollout of the controversial technology in passports this week.

They point to a U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) concept video created by CompEx Inc. that shows how citizens can be tracked and monitored throughout an airport terminal -- without their knowledge or consent.

The animated flash clip is posted on the authors' website. In the video, citizen "Bob" is remotely identified and tracked via Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices as he enters an airport and navigates to his gate. The video ends with chilling frames of a government agent surreptitiously scanning Bob and his belongings as he sits in the waiting area.

Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/McIntyre/Liz10.htm

[acmejack]

1. You bet, I just got a mouse with one it!

Works great! It's wireless and the mousepad has the wire.
http://www.a4tech.com/en/

Seriously, these RFIDs are the end of privacy. Already if you have a cellphone you are (or can be) tracked where ever you go & they don't even have the chip!

The new drivers liceses will be the same. License plates, registrations, even automobiles themselves will soon be the same. Can implants be far behind?

snip>
DELRAY BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 2006--VeriChip Corporation, a subisidiary of Applied Digital (NASDAQ:ADSX - News), announced today that the VeriMed(TM) Patient Identification System was successfully utilized at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, helping a Bergen County Police Officer, who previously received the VeriChip, during an emergency situation. The event represented the first time that a patient who had received a VeriChip was able to receive treatment from a hospital that also offered the System.

http://www.verichipcorp.com/

edit for readability

[WinkyDink]

2. I give it ten years, tops, before all newborns have these chips implanted.

DoB, DNA, Blood type, Parentage, Address, etc.
More info added as they mature and get inoculated, e.g.

All for their "safety" and "well-being" in case of "an emergency".

[acmejack]

3. For their own protection of course.

You'll never lose your wallet again. Or your "papers"...

[MrCoffee]

4. Those things are SO EASY to hack

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html

A guy with a USB device and a laptop can stand next to you on the bus and swipe all your RFID info. Bodes well for the future, don't ya think?

[earth mom]

5. RFID chips are pure EVIL!

http://www.spychips.com/index.html

:grr:

[The2ndWheel]

6. Children of the Machine

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/02/21/children-of-the-machine/

A tag like this has a maximum range of a few metres. But another implantable device emits a signal which allows someone to be found or tracked by satellite. The patent notice says it can be used to locate the victims of kidnapping or people lost in the wilderness(6).

There are, in other words, plenty of legitimate uses for implanted chips. This is why they bother me. A technology whose widespread deployment, if attempted now, would be greeted with horror, will gradually become unremarkable. As this happens, its purpose will begin to creep.

At first the tags will be more widely used for workers with special security clearance. No one will be forced to wear one; no one will object. Then hospitals – and a few in the US are already doing this(7)- will start scanning their unconscious or incoherent patients to see whether or not they have a tag. Insurance companies might start to demand that vulnerable people are chipped.