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..."
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.
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.
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
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!
Also being against murder, i can see where you're coming from. However, "very effective law enforcement" is bad to the extent that laws are poorly written, oppressive, or otherwise unjust. We need limited means of technological enforcement of crimes until the laws that define them are deserving of "very effective enforcement".
There's a reason the abolition movement was closely tied with the (then illegal) Underground Railroad. If people-chipping tech had been available back then, social forces for change would have been greatly hampered. No Frederick Douglas, for example, whose freedom was a result of breaking an unjust law. Remember forced sterilization in VA? Japanese internment? This was all within the last hundred years - many people now living remember these things. i expect that the War on (Some) Drugs will come to be seen the same way. Technology in law enforcement is a major threat to our civil rights.
Now, your post was pretty reasonably written, as you said, "depends on how much you trust your government". But how much can one trust a government in principle?
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.
After all, the UK is Oceania, isn't it?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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.
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.
See my journal, I write things there
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
The chips work up to an extreme of around 105C, which works out to be 221F (cool converter here ).
All they have to do is double the extreme, and then the book will burn prior to the chip.
I wouldn't have known this if not for Ray Bradbury . Thanks!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.