Time to take it in the... arm
According to CityWatcher.com, a private surveillance company that "provides security cameras [accessible] in real-time over the Internet," about 70 people in the US have been voluntarily injected with the encapsulated RFID chips so far.
It's been so long since I posted something on this site, that I 'd almost forgotten how. But if some of us are currently letting our 21st Century technology go to waste, well, others are not. Unfortunately.
If you are wondering what I am I complaining about now? What it was that roused me from my malaise-- my generalized feelings of depression and cynicism about anything related to society as we know it--long enough to find out if the WiserBlog.com domain name was even still active?
It was this little piece in the Financial Times.
Not that I read FT any more than I do any other word of print media these days, but I did happen to see the article reporting the "first known case in which U.S. workers have been 'tagged”' electronically as a way of identifying." So there you have it.
In the United States, these RFID chips were at first, like barcodes only being embedded in things. Then livestock. Then pets.
Surely you've seen by now the cheerful TV commercials for HomeAgain. The new best friend to man's best friend, this company sells RFID identity chips that you can inject into your dog. A sort of pet LoJack, without which one out of three pets apparently disappear each year. The ads feature a yellow dog and the brighter, smiley-face-yellow HomeAgain logo. You can't have missed it (you can watch it here if you did), but you might not have realized what the ad was for. Maybe it was announcing a sort of Cialis for dogs? A Crestar formulas for every breed? Or maybe an over-the-counter canine remedy? After all, HomeAgain's tagline claim is "Pet Recovery." They just don't go into much detail about about the RFID chips, what they are and how they work.
But never mind HomeAgain for now because, surprise, surprise, the chips are being injected into ordinary U.S. citizens. As noted before in these pages, Japanese children, Mexican government officials, and Spanish nightclub goers in Barcelona have gotten "chipped." And here in the states, VeriChip has been inviting people to get themselves a chip to store, say, emergency medical information. As creepy a decision as that may be, it is entirely voluntary. You've got to go find yourself a doctor who will inject you with the chip and although VeriChip is offering discounts to early adopters, it's a procedure that will be cost-prohibitive for some. Predictably it is being marketed as a potentially life-saving modern convenience. If you care about protecting your loved ones and pets, you'll fork over the cash.
But, no, there hasn't been much talk of people getting chipped for "security" reasons for fear that the American people might start listening to pesky privacy and civil liberty advocates who fail to appreciate the real dangers to national security and and private industry presented by those outdated Constitutional Amendments--One through Ten. Better to focus on the revolutionary convenience afforded by not only the above-mentioned innovations, but by EZ Passes, and supermarket discount cards and the opportunity for anyone with $9.95 to search multiple databases for private information about whomever they want.
A lot of people are willing to give up some privacy for more convenience and what they believe to be more security. So, no need to get things all stirred up by talking about injecting people with tracking chips that hold more than 80 times the information stored on a barcode, all of which can be read and updated via a handheld "scanner" from quite a distance these days.
Except now that is what we are talking about. Of course, technically, participatiion in CityWatcher.com's employee-chipping program is voluntary too. If you don't want to be injected with a chip, you can work somewhere else. But while it's true that the Ohio company is itself in the business of tracking and surveillance, there is no reason to imagine that workplace conditions there are so unique or sensitive that other employers will not see the benefit of tagging their employees.
Versatile and inexpensive, RFID technology is not only here to stay, but it is a huge growth industry. And in our current climate, It's not difficult to see how RFID's future uses will consistently outpace any privacy or civil liberty protections that might be legislated to address them. Injectable national ID "cards" that can conveniently store not only driving, mediical and police records, and credit scores, but broadcast a person's Global Position are no longer the stuff of science fiction. They exist.
What remains to be seen is whether implementation of such chips will, in the end, be mandated or if by then, people will happily roll up their sleeves in the belief that a shot in the arm will yield greater national security--to say nothing of the shorter lines at the airport and the extra discounts at checkout. I am not sure which is the more frightening scenario.






