Slashdot Mirror
UK Home Office plan: ID Chips in Everything
LauraLolly writes "The BBC ran an article on how booksellers in the UK hope to use Radio Frequency ID chips to report on the entire life cycle of a book, including ownership and second-hand sales. There were throw-away lines about how the Home Office plans to use these chips in all goods, and their current use in U. S. libraries. And you thought that voluntary medical chips were bad..."
Buy a book legitimately
:)
walk out of the shop
take it home
microwave it on high for 15 seconds
enjoy
a grrl & her server
And to think there was controversy over the subpoena of Monica Lewinsky's bookstore receipts - what an innocent time that was!
How long it is until every fucking piece of equipment has to be tagged with an electronic ID tag? Where I work every piece of hardware purchased must have a unique ID. It's a real pain in the ass and I cannot imagine how something in a larger scale could ever work.
What about citizens? The government keeps on exaggerating the levels of crime/terrorism with bogus statistics and the stupid public will vote in the control freaks with their subcutaneous ID plans. I will not have one even if it means I have to live outside the society.
Or in front of the bulk eraser should solve that RFID problem quite handily for you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is wonderful news!
KingPrad
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
They plan to put them in everything, eh?
So where can I buy ID chips for my ID chips? "This ID chip belongs to NiftyNews, please don't spoof me."
------
Today's Top Deals
Well, let's say I live somewhere where the local folk decide it's a good idea to have a book-burning - Harry Potter, maybe, or Catcher in the Rye. Or the local government decides certain books and those who read them are subversive and should be watched. Or the local corporations decide that if they could compile a big database of who buys certain types of books, they could "target" their marketing of associated products, and sell lists of, e.g. Kilgore Trout fans, to the highest bidder.
:)
Be awfully convenient for them to be able to find who's got those books, and where, don't you think?
(It's only paranoia until they get you.
maybe when things get so pathetic, people will be pissed off enough to revolt
The article didn't say how strong these things are. Will, say, a few seconds in a microwave oven damage them? "Cookbook" might make for a good pro-privacy slogan.
Please read about what hideous experiments the other poor people like you have been subjected all around the world on this page.
That should be fun. Even assuming that "all goods" excludes things like food, there are still a wide range of products that I sure wouldn't want to track.
--- MarkusQ
Though i'm not sure I would want to know.
Lets make this open source!
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
The UK government already want to put something in your car which tracks your movements (and there is a camera system which more or less does just that on the M25). The police are already entitled to break up a meeting of more than three people on a whim (Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000). They can see what you are looking at on the net, they control who gets to own weapons (apart from criminals, of course). And now they want to control what books you can read. (No, I know that this article didn't mention that, but seriously, of course they're going to try and do it if they think they can). Blunkett is a dangerous man, and I am so afraid of what this government is trying to do that I am going to be voting for The Other Lot next time round.
I am really starting to hate what this country is becoming. Is it any better over your side of the pond? Failing that, maybe it's time to move to the Far East...
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
The real logic behind this, ultimately, will be to allow book publishers - and, ultimately, the producers of anything - to collect royalties for each resale. Mark my words, this is exactly what this is about.
from what i understand, they're already doing this. it's how they caught kevin spacey.
SOMERSET: For a long time, the F.B.I.'s been hooked into the library system, keeping accurate records.
MILLS: What? Assessing fines?
SOMERSET: They monitor reading habits. Not every book, but certain ones are flagged. Books about... let's say, how to build a nuclear bomb, or maybe Mein Kampf. Whoever takes out a flagged book has their library records fed to the F.B.I. from then on.
xox,
dead nancy
Mark my words, this is exactly what this is about.
Sadly, I agree with you. It doesn't matter whether it's the RIAA, UK/US government, EU, book publishers controlling what you read, Murdoch owning the media, Gates owning the internet. It is all about control. Story of the human race, really.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Overall, I don't have a problem with people wanting to prevent theft, but I do have a problem with them continuing to track the book after its sold. Why do the powers that be insist on taking every last bit of privacy away from me?
I personally think that this would be a really good and easy way to make my home library catalog. I could just hold up my rf scanner and get the info direct from the books themselves.
I didn't think that voluntary medical chips were that bad, actually. There are different reasons to give up privacy. We can give up privacy for commercial reasons (all the supermarkets nearby where I live issue frequent shopper cards so they can monitor everything I buy -- I hate it). We can give up privacy for law enforcement reasons (depends on how much you trust your government). And there are a myrid of other reasons we can give up privacy.
I don't think that anything that encroaches on privacy is automatically bad. In fact, I'd have to say that encroachmetnts on privacy are only generally wrong because the possibility of demonstrable harm as a result of invasion of privacy can generally be shown to be a real possibility.
In specific cases I can support a mass (usually voluntary) invasion of privacy.
Police states are generally bad because of the baggage that comes along with them. Abuse of power, lack of freedoms, what not. They aren't bad because of the two words "police state".
If technology has progressed far enough to give us the positives of very effective law enforcement and monitoring without the baggage, well more power to it! As a first step, I would support voluntarily allowing tracking systems to be implanted (or worn like ankle bracelets) for the purposes of more effective protection from murders and kidnappers and what not. I think that our government's legal systems -- though not nearly perfect -- have progressed far enough to permit systems like these to be used without bringing along the baggage of fascism and totalitarianism. There is no possibility that they would be 100% effective, but neither would they be ineffectual.
And soon, there'll be new DMCA-aware photocopier who'll report the copyright infringers to the BSA/SPA/CIA/FEMA... when detecting such a book chip in the item being copied?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It looks like Orwells ability to divine our political future was dead on but his predictions on when technology would actually enable it was about 40-50 years off :-(
As i sit back and relax for a good read wearing my tin-foil cap, i'll just have to resort to wrapping my books in tin-foil as well.
It should work fine right up until the courts rule that tin-foil is a circumvention device under the DMCA...
once that happens the aliens will finally control us all!
How would a "second hand sale" be recorded in a book? What about subsequent sales? Would I have to go through an agency (ala dept. motor vehichles service -- DMV) where there will be a "change of ownership form" every time someone sells a book? Will I have to wait in long lines as I do at the DMV? Will they justify all this by saying "reading is not a right, it is a privilege?"
About microwaving books, will a person be fined if his book is "not standards compliant"? Will there be an annual inspection (like motor vehicles) for each book?
Since it is the "Mother's day", I will not call the advocates of this policy sons of ******.
S
Move along citizens, there's nothing to see here.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Heh. Fucked you, eh?
They can't make it illegal to take out or destroy the chip without seriously changing the way things are sold.
Right now, if I buy a book I can quite happily rip the cover off and even re-bind it with all the pages in the wrong order if I want, it's my book.
Are we heading for a future where nothing is ever owned ?
This computer game is yours, but you aren't allowed to reverse-engineer it.
This book is yours but you're not allowed to tamper with its chip.
This movie is yours but you're not allowed to watch it in company, or more than once a month.
This CD is yours but if you want to put it on your mp3 player you have to pay again.
This TV programme is being beamed at you, but if you watch it you have to watch all of it, including the adverts.
Do you see how close we are ?
graspee
Are you new to computers?
What a load of crap, next thing you know, you will have to break a seal before you open the book saying "by breaking this seal you agree to all terms and conditions of this book" these T&Cs will obviously include not damaging or removing the chip.. except ofcourse by "accident". People will reverse engineer the chips, build their own re-programmers and sell the books with new serial numbers, just like absolutely every single stupid protection system ever made. Although, on another note, these chips could be kinda cool - for finding lost stuff, just stick a chip on your tv remote, fav. pen or wallet and you can use your little tracking device to find it down the back of the sofa. Someone could mass-manufacture them on sticky things so you could just stick them on stuff. That would be uber.. otherwise... who cares, i'll just "accidently" stick my books in the microwave, before realising, after a few seconds, my mistake and taking them out again.. perfectly legal.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
On the other hand, if you're running a paedophile ring or something equally nasty, that should get you a long sentence, say 20 years or whatever, then refusing to hand over your encryption keys will get you 4 years instead of handing them over for the full 20.
So this law has given people a fairly easily exploitable Get Out of Jail Quicker card...
Regards,
Denny
Police State UK - news and
In a previous slashdot sumission on RFID Tags I had put forth this very same idea. It was shot down on the grounds that it would only affect magnetic devices and not RF devices. I suppose if RF Tags only use discrete logic or EPROMs then this would be true.
Of course the Microwave tactic would only seem to me to be feasible if it generates enough heat to melt the components.
Does anyone know of any reference material on what environment factors RF Tags can operate within?
I want these implanted in bicycles, so that bicycle theft becomes a thing of the past. Imagine having your bike stolen, and just calling in the id# to the police, so that they could track it down and find it. Bike theft would become a thing of the past! And imagine how much more useful bikes would be if you didn't have to spend 5 minutes locking them up every time you wanted to stop some place. This could change things more than Ginger!
Lets make it mandatory to implement id chips in our children so we can monitor their life cycle as well.
Knowing 'bout youngsters revolts against parent generations, I'm sure the first thing they will vote for is getting those damn thingies removed. But it will take approximately 20 years for a new generation to get voting rights. And whats more, the elder generations will most of the financial resources, so the ability of free speech and voting rights will be of less use than today.
So what happens is that kids getting id implants will start hacking their own bodies and wait 50-100 hundred years before the elder generations all have perished.
And just because of some damn books.
Justification for piracy of books on the internet: Found
But seriously, this is another one of those brilliant corporate ideas that fuels internet piracy, just like $20 for a music CD with a couple of good songs and several rushed throw-away tracks on it, the movie industry's insistence on stopping the horrific evil of importing DVDs that aren't available in your country, and several different industry groups' attempts to rob us of any fair use rights, or in some cases, any rights that we might have at all (especially in the case of the artists).
And they're going to go crying right to their legislators when internet piracy suddenly picks up a week or two after their bone-headed idea is implemented...
The Fowler Company, makers of the TagLogic RFID Tagging System says on their product page:
Tags retain data for a minimum of 10 years, and have a minimum of 100,000 read/write cycles. They are impervious to electrical noise, magnetism, dirt and grime and all but the most extreme temperature conditions.
Apparently these devices can withstand temperatures of up to 105C!
Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever makes you feel better.
I'll bet on the government's B-52s and Abrams M1A2 tanks and against your crippled M-16 any day. And don't give me any crap about the military personell not firing on American citizens. Once you take up the arms against the government you become "the threat, foreign or domestic".
That should have been up to 150C (about 300F).
Tagging a physical book is not sinister, it's not anti-privacy, it's not 1984. Nobody is going to care - ever - that you bought the latest Pratchett, then sold it to your friend, who donated it to a charity shop, who then sold it to a guy who gets drug conviction. There is no nightmare "Enemy of the State" scenario, because it's small potatoes. What this tagging is for is exactly what it say it's for: to identify specific objects to help convict habitual or large scale thieves. That's all it will do, and that's good, because it means those of us who do pay for books won't have to pay for the stolen ones too.
I guess if we don't have at least one anti-privacy conspiracy story on a weekend, we have to find one, huh?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Police say the felon heated his books to
200C to disable the rights management chip.
[Ad]
Police say he provided the illegal heating
service to as many as 10 other criminals
and this is his third strike.
[Ad]
His previous two convictions were for reading texts that were no longer in print and removing
jingle players from books to block part
of the advertizing.
[Ad]
His crimes are estimated to have cost 15 Billion dollars in lost revenues according to The Corporation(TM).
[Ad]
The death penalty has been granted, but the judge has reserved the right to choose the method. His trial is scheduled for Sept of 2008.
[Ad]
This station is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL-Time-Warner-Microsoft-Disney(TM), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the US-UK Government(TM), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Corporation(TM).
[Ad]
All rights reserved.
[Ad]
After all, the UK is Oceania, isn't it?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
You probably don't know what kind of perverts there are in the UK government. In fact, you don't want to know.
If they're typical graduates of the "public schools", I think the record speaks for itself - they'll be getting a sexual thrill out of knowing your girlfriend just bought a rubber raincoat and wellys...
Freedom: "I won't!"
Since the FBI wants to keep records on what books people read, this will just help them figure out if everybody who has had read it, not just the person who is renting/buying it. It makes me wonder why they are so afraid of information and ideas contained in books. Perhaps I am a bit paranoid but I am almost to scared to read 'Catcher in the Rye'. I am begining to look how I differ from other and wonder if I should just try to conform with the norm (I don't download enough porn, perhaps I need to up my intake not to be singled out as a devient) When I read 1984 20 or so years ago, I though it was purely science fiction and that it never could happen, but now I am begining to see the first stages of its implementation and it scares the hell out of me. All I realy what is to go though life doing what ever I want while not hurting anyone, but not I feel that I must conform and act like the powers that be want me to act. I no longer belive that the average joe has any real say in politics after reviewing some of the corporate biased laws that have reciently been passed and that all the idealist views of the government that I was taught in school seem almost like propaganda. While I keep on reading others 'I'm moving to canada' comments, I don't see the grass any greener on the other side. The problem is that technology that is now available is being abused, and I also see that the current technology is not all that good, I am scared shitless of what will happen when nanotec and dna tech becomes more advanced. Will your genetic makeup be enough reason to to be labled as a subversive, as the books you read is used now, or will it be used to ensure that such people will never be born. I feel like people are being treated more like cattle and less like human beings.
You Brits have two choices, The EU or
:
Oceania......
If I weren't such a rightthinkfull member of
Ingsoc, I'd be heading for the carribean soon.
BTW regarding the "three-person" rule, its simple
the government follows this simple saying
"Mind over matter"
They don't mind, IF YOU DON'T MATTER........
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I don't think any consumer electronics could survive in that environment. Maybe some NASA equipment could...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
..of getting published some day.
;)
:p)
Oh well, there's always the net. I'll get laughed at by 'professional' writers, won't win any awards, and won't ever get that entire coolness thing of having a friend in B&N figure out that, "Hey! What the hell! Your name! It's on that book!"
All that is worthless to me if I have to rape possible readers with a six inch wide stick of penetration to do so. I admit, it's pretty worthless to me anyway.
Luckily, I can code. (I can also make some pretty mundane web pages. But while they may look boring, they never look like a morass of blink and animation.) That's it, I'll come up with some sort of micropayment system. Then I'll pirate my own book and shove it on Kazaa for free publicity!
Hmm, maybe not having a publisher wouldn't be so bad.
At any rate, as long as they don't start putting tracking chips into compilers (Well, Microsoft is all but there already), I won't have to live on Ramen.
(And, I think, if enough writers are paranoid that Big Brother is watching their readers, publishers will find themselves in trouble. Think it's hard to break into the IT market with your shiny new MSCE? Try breaking into the publishing racket.
And once the Movie/Book/Music publishers can track second-hand sales of their products, any guesses as to how long it would take before they start demanding royalties on those sales as well? I'm betting you could measure it in nanoseconds.
Blah, blah, blah -- I've got nothing to hide, so why should I worry?
Please stop with this tired anti-privacy and anti-freedom argument. Truth is, if anybody implements any tracking device on anything I own, it's out the door immediately.
Is owning stuff really _that_ important, for us to accept a lasso around our necks?
So how many small potatoes do you have to assemble to make a big one? Somebody WILL track the information to assemble data and sell it to make a buck or three. You appear to be ignoring history on purpose.
Who on gods earh steals books, you can just go to your local library, take it of the shelf and read it if you need it that desperately, books stolen from libraries is more than paid for by the charges encured by late return fees, no one I know would ever concider copying more than a page or 2 from a book and the'll probably end up buying it anyway if it is of any use, and how would taging prevent someone copying a page or 2 anyway?
It only helps comerce and the government, would you like to have been tracked geting a copy of a few books by the author Karl Marx during the last century? Do you want to get yet more junk mail because you happen to have bought 2 cook books in the past month?
If so, I'm sure theres easier ways to achive your goals than taging every book sold from x point onwards.
As for control, implanting chips in your brain is probably discussed at weekly cabinet meetings. Blair, Straw and Blunkett are all power crazed maniacs, on a scale not normally seen outside of movies like "Public Enemy".And as for alienating voters, their record is looking good on that too. Unfortunately, the opposition is WORSE! However, between them, Blair & Co don't have the technical knowledge to write a "Hello World" program in VB, so we are probably saved.
If it it walks like a duck and talks like a duck Don't bloody well vote for it.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
See my journal, I write things there
to keep books from being taken into the bathrooms
at your local bookstore.
unless of course the book is banned. Nice try though.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Imagine what it would be like if a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook was tracked to everyone who owned a copy of it. The book is Flagged (much in the same way as a slashdot post) as offensive, and the owner of the book is given a point against him.
Combined with implanted medical chips, this could be a nightmare. Too many "bad points" on the medical chip, and then you're stopped at airports and train stations.
But this could be taken to the next level as well. What if you're applying for a job as a teacher, and they see that you like pornography a little too much? Or if you read books about bringing back corporal punishment? They'll either refuse to hire you, or fire you on the premise that you *might* either have sex or hit one of your students.
That's the ultimate goal, overall. Seek out all the "bad" people before something happens. Make anyone with different ideas public outcasts. Turn everyone into either corporate or government conformists.
It's never, EVER going to work. True Deviants and terrorists always know how to get around these sorts of things. Information will always be free... if you know where to look for it. The goal is to keep as many people in the dark of that fact.
But when I think of a motto for these people, I think of a line from the movie Sneakers to justify them:
"No more secrets, Marty."
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
They are determined to tax you to death, and then tax your death.
And then tax the inheritance you give out after death. In fact, inheritance tax is the most vile of them all, IMHO.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Government: "You the people put us in a position of trust, leadership and power and now you must trust that we know what's best for you... you're all too stupid to vote and think for yourselves so we'll do it for you"
Go on, you know you laughed when you clicked the link
That a bunch of replys saying "glad I don't live there", or something to that effect AREN'T here. Oh thats right, thats only for the US.
whether they will put an ID chip in Beowulf .
Except that the resale of all these goods (in used book stores and the like) is already taxed in sales tax/VAT and the like.
What about all them so called alien crystal implants??
Oh I get it, they needed help...
"I'm sorry sir, You can't return this book. It has been flagged!"
Bring the book to the counter, let them ring it up and pay for it.
Then rip the chip out drop it on the counter and say loudly enough for nearby customers to hear (not the whole store, yelling just makes you look loony), "Just because I purchase a book from you does not entitle you to track me everywhere I take it, so you can keep this".
Generating bad feeling for the store stupid enough to do this works better than just disabling one.
I'd cut the chip out of the book. Track my reading, will ya?
One other thing: if the chip's memory is capacious, it occurs to me that you could put the e-text of the book itself in there. Which kind of raises the question: why print the book if you can release it in e-format?
Has it? Considering if they didn't give them over, they wouldn't get any time at all..
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Kenneth Starr's office subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky's book receipts from a bookstore she had frequented. That was a classic case of investigating someone for reasons other than the interests of society. Bureaucrats can be dangerous people - just because you've never experienced that directly doesn't mean it can't happen.
You only have to go back to the 1950's, around the time to which the current article applies, to see a truly egregious example, in McCarthyism. The people who think "that can't happen again" don't realize how every one of the freedoms that are chipped away at day by day bring us closer to the day when some person or organization, well-meaning or otherwise, will find themselves in a position to abuse the end result in unfortunate ways.
In the Jurassic Park series of movies, there's the line about "life will find a way". You could make a similar statement about "abuses of power will find a way". History has shown this over and over.
I, for one, will destroy any tagging device I didn't specifically request, on principle. I'm no Luddite, either - I'm a software developer who develops financial services systems, and I love the concept of greater automation in our financial markets (an area of interest of mine) and in our lives. But another cliche is "with great power, comes great responsibility".
Unfortunately, governments, corporations and individuals have shown time and time again that they will abuse that responsibility, if given the opportunity. Don't give them any more of an opportunity than they already have, and certainly not without good reason. There's no good reason to electronically tag books.
For this, a simple tag that says "this book is part of the stock of such-and-such a bookseller, and has not been paid for" is sufficient. Buy the book, the tag gets cancelled. If you want to, use the tag to record "this belongs to me, if lost, please return". That's fine. Your choice.
Nothing more is needed to achieve the stated objectives. Anything more is there for the benefit of third parties, and needs to be examined very carefully for potential misuse before being accepted.
"We regret that owing to circumstances outside our control, 1984 has been somewhat delayed."
With more detail!
And it was rejected - how so?
Governments and organisations now seem to be obsessed with people-free electronic solutions to everything. They are failing to address two root questions: Why are there so many criminals, and why is it so easy to steal things from shops, banks etc.? Shops are terrified that if their doors aren't always open and the goods available to be picked up, people won't buy anything. They use psychology to try and get people to pick up things they didn't originally want. They try to remove as many as possible of the visual reminders that you are going to have to pay for this- which is why they love credit cards for even small purchases, because it's not like spending real money. But exposing everything like that lowers the threshold for theft. If you're supposed not to be conscious that this is going to cost you, the concept of ownership becomes less and less meaningful. They also try and take people out of the system until there is no-one around to watch the shoplifters. Effectively they are working to find a margin between cutting staff costs and unacceptable losses from theft, based on a business model that isn't human in scale. As Gerhard Schroeder remarked recently, if the EU is to mean anything to its citizens it must become a less technocratic society. Blasphemy on /. perhaps, but needs debating.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
that a bookseller should advocate what is the start
of the real 1984, friggin chips in everything is
a disgrace.
Don't they read the books they sell.
If they ever identify the sould the first thing
they will do is put a barcode on it.
I don't want people looking to closely at my book-buying habits. There is nothing too outlandish there, but I feel very unhappy about disclosing a lot of information that the Government can potentially access.
I lack books on chemistry and firearms, but doesn'Ät that tattered old book on Pentium assembler tell people how to write viruses? Especially taken together with that other book on NT Internals? Don't anarchists use Linux?
Of course, if we could gurantee the integrity of all government officials, then no problem. However it seems that even the FBI can't do that (John Hanssen).
http://www.plans-kits.com/
Speed cameras? Ooops they don't seem to be working.
Deleted
I don't know for sure how it works in UK, but, as a professionnal, if I collect VAT for the government when I sell goods, I'm allowed to deduct VAT when I first bought those goods. As second hand sales are usualy at a lower price that new goods, the net result is the state owns me VAT money, because I sell at a loss.
The only matter here is to convince revenu service that the goods are professionnals.
with "repetitive beats", e.g. the bolero (or dance music)
there was a general election which the winning party won by one seat. And that seat was held by a single vote! Boy, that person must have felt important :-)
Perhaps the government can install readers for these in public places, you can identify people carrying "problem" books, i.e. those promoting political discord, and track their movements.
Anyone from the UK here? You guys are saps for government intrusion. You don't even live in a democracy, but you think you do.
My goodness! I have been fighting to find a way to outlaw Microwave Ovens to bring back the good old traditional wood stove. The answer is now in sight!!!!
In combination with the DMCP, the chips in library books can *also* be microwaved.
All we need is a test case -- for a few people to microwave their library books, and then describe how to do it to bypass library book-theft controls. At that point, the DMCP will kick in, and lawsuits can be levied against the companies that produce microwave ovens [not to mention microwave transmission radio dishes and cell phones, which could concievably be used in the same way, though only with modification devices.]
You guys are GENIUSES!!!
Thank you one, thank you all. It is great to be a citizen of the WORLD'S GREATEST (ONLY) EMPIRE. I can now force everyone to live the way I want them to live. This is wonderful.
----advisory----
(please, this is irony and political commentary on the DMCP and the "control everything" mentality, and is thus related to the topic at hand. This is not trolling.)
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
- Nobody is going to care - ever - that you bought the latest Pratchett, then sold it to your friend, who donated it to a charity shop, who then sold it to a guy who gets drug conviction.
Then why record which book I have bought and who has bought it laterSigh. So that when it's stolen, it can be uniquely identified so that the thief can be prosecuted, and so that it can be returned to you. It's quite clear from the article that this is the intent, and really, it's the only practical use. It can't be used to track goods moving from one retail purchaser to the next. It's not invasive, or sinister, it's for your protection.
Are you aware of the definition of clinical paranoia? It's not specifically "they're out to get me!", it's generally seeing patterns that aren't there, attributing significance to insignificant things, particularly with regard to yourself. That's a pretty solipsistic attitude you've got there, buddy. Nobody cares about you. Nobody will ever care.
That aside, how exactly does this identify you any more than it already does? If you buy a book with a card, the purchase (against the book code) is already recorded (gasps of horror!). If you buy with cash, you're anonymous in either case. You think that we're going to ban anonymous cash purchases? OK, then say that, and we'll debate that.
Yes, that's a very nice work of fiction. Rather than worrying about speculative censorship and information control, why not worry about the books that are banned in the USA right now?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Unfortunately RFID systems have no standards yet. There is no ISO for the protocols these talk at all! There are, in fact, many competing systems from many manufacturers!
So, as such, even if the publisher (or manufacturer, if you're talking more than books) puts an RFID tag into the item, who's to say the bookseller, library, etc. will even be able to use the tag? There is no way to guarantee that the tag system that the publisher uses is the same system the store uses at all.Until there is some sort of standard, regulated way of using the RFID tags, you'll never see these being put in every item on the shelf. We all know how long standards take to be put in place for commercial applications.
That said, there are already papers at ISO on RFID... right here.
Paul K.
There's an easy way out of inheritance tax in the UK. Simply become the monarch then you will never be troubled by this insidious tax again.
Seriously though you are right, inheritance tax only taxes those whose relatives die unexpectedly. Anyone with anything worth inheriting will have made sure that they've given it to the intended recipients years before they die thus avoiding the tax.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
You're creating a straw man to push your own agenda. That's not what I said, and it's not what I meant. This isn't just lack-of-evil, it's actively good, for you and for me.
Instead of a (tired) knee jerk reaction of looking at this as "them" tagging "you", think of it as you being able to identify your stuff. Seeing as how that's exactly and only what it is.
And don't quote me out of context. The important adjunct is: nobody will care about your purchases because it's small potatoes. If you believe for one second that law enforcement or government in the US don't already have the technology and the leglislation to track every single purchase, deposit and withdrawal that you make then you're living in a happy dream world. Your life is already transparent. You have no privacy. The only issue is whether "they" care enough to peel you like a grape, and whether they will use any of your activities as evidence against you. Chances are that they won't, but either way product tagging won't make a blind bit of difference to the information that the MiB can obtain about you.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
People who cant punctuate or spel?
Don't assume that because you wouldn't do it, it isn't done. Bookshops (and libraries) are full of small, portable items that are so easy to just slip into your jacket. The value is low enough that a significant minority of people might not even view it as "real" theft. Before you gasp in outraged horror, ask any office worker how they feel about liberating office supplies.
Unrelated to this story, I heard an anecdote from a friend last week about casual bookstore theft: the mother of an errant child brought it back in to the bookstore to hand over a book that it had just slipped into its jacket. The child was about eight, and seemed utterly unrepentant, and the mother slammed the book down with a curt "Here's your book," then stormed off, as though it was the bookshop's fault that her offspring had taken it.
The part that surprised my friend was that the mother had even brought it back. He says that most of the people they get browsing their books are the sort who have to follow the words with their fingers, and they lose a lot of stock to casual - sometimes very casual - theft. People often don't even bother hiding the books, they just calmly walk out of the shop with them.
Now, tagging won't help to catch the most casual thieves, but if they do it once too often, it will help to convict them. Perhaps you think that this is a bad thing? Or perhaps you're confused about whether the purchases that you make on a credit/debit card are already logged and tagged to you. They are, and that information is already available to law enforcement.
Tagging of books (or any retail object) doesn't breach any privacy that you already have (which is almost none). It is targetted exactly and only at actual thieves.
Regarding your argument buying Karl Marx, it's very clever and sinister sounding, but considering that the USA already ban books it's overly hypothetical. How about finding out how few rights you have now rather than imagining lesser evils in the future?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
-- SIGFPE
feeble attempts to charge me with crimethinking by eliminating the word 'in' when you quoted me, the word 'in'
has always been part of my original statement. Any transcript that omits that word must be in error, and the
appropriate Ministry of Truth agents will be disciplined for dereliction of duty for not having corrected this omission.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Now of those law enforcement agencies, who do we trust with an all-encompassing portfolio, why people like John Hanssen. Please believe me, I have probably travelled a little wider than you, and giving the government a lot of extra information is never a good thing unless they really have a specific case to need it.
Tagging objects is a fine idea, but I would like to know where the information stops. Why do they need to know what an object is if it is physically in front of them?
See my journal, I write things there
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.