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..."

Comments

Actually I didn't think that

[Henry V .009]

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.