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RFID Will Stop Terrorists?
W33dz writes "Retailers and manufacturers around the world are enamored with the new radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices. The problem? What about when a thief or the police want to find out what you have in your house? Oddly enough, according to a Wired magazine article, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win Dept of Homeland Security approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists. This will give them blanket immunity from all law suits related to the product."
Drown him!
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Tin foil will replace vinyl siding as most popular home exterior.
I can see it now... Immune from lawsuits, they start putting chips in the food, "To keep it safe" of course. Eat the food, eat the chips, instant tracking implants in everyone.
;-)
Sorry, let my paranoid side get the better of me for a minute. I'm sure it's all for the best
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Just put an RFID tag on all terrorists. That way when they try to board a plane, you can detect them!
Or maybe not...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
So they just arrest everybody that buys the fixins to make falafels?
I think you might want to loosen that tinfoil a bit. It's cutting off circulation to your brain.
has been determined to be an effective tool to prevent terroristic identity theft" says Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. "Remember, not allowing us to burn numbers into your forehead and the foreheads of your loved ones means the terrorists have won."
See???
Now how did you *know* I was wearing a tinfoil hat????
I rest my case.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
A few months back /. had an article on sewer traversing robots. Does anyone know why they made these? I mean the REAL reason why these were made?
The goverment is out to get us man, they want to know every fart let in your house. THE MAN is trying to KEEP UP DOWN. Sure they may say that these sewer traversing robots are for laying down CAT5 in the sewer, but I know the real reason.
Each of these robots is SECRETLY equipped with a miniature spectrometer, which takes your sewer water, and breaks it down to determine its chemical makeup. All this information is then passed back to the DEA to assist so they can profile which houses do, and which houses do not have drug users living in them.
Now they are preparing phase 2 of the program for use by the USDA to profile the eating habits of Americans. By secretly implanting RDIF tags into your food you poop becomes a "stool pigeon" on your eating habits. The USDA will use this information to adjust prices on certain key products to help promote growth in our sluggish economy.
Just say no to RDIF. It's worse than you can imagine.
Quick!
There goes Osama bin Laden out the door of Walmart with a whole case of Gillette razors!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Wal-mart claims that RFID tags will stop ballistic missiles from striking targets in the US, and seeks dept. of homeland security sanction to deploy them in defense of the nation....
IANAL... But I play one on
My mother-in-law lives with us.
Sorry, but you are totally-wrong, squared, dude-guy.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
So, you are saying that it would work like this. I go to the store, and buy a pair of shoes with a credit card. The RFID in the shoes is scanned in order to bring up a price to charge my card. So conceivably there could be a database somewhere that matches my financial info, including my name and address, etc, to an RFID tag in my shoes. Presuming the government could get access to a database like this, they could track people with some kind of device that could read the RFID tags from a distance. Thereby tracking my movements with my shoes.
With each step in this process I have detailed, things become more and more implausible. Retail store having database records of purchases, likely, I am willing to believe. Government getting access to database, not too likely but possible with warrants or something. Government having device that can read the tags from a distance great enough to use it to effectively track your movements, probably next to impossible. I doubt these things are detectable at a range that would make tracking people practical. If you are willing to believe the government has the resources to put the trackers everywhere, on every streetcorner, without anyone knowing or getting upset, for budgetary if not privacy reasons, well...
Another obvious problem is what happens if I resell my shoes, or donate them to charity, or any number of other things that could cause inaccurate information in the database.
Finally, isn't it legal to observe people in public places? That is the very definition of public, a place where you cannot control being observed by others. The government might as well be looking at you if ten or twenty people you don't know personally are. I'm not saying that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, or some other silly thing. I just think expecting privacy in public is unrealistic.
However, such a system would make this exchange possible -
Spook #1: Hey, she's going to the mall again.
Spook #2: Looks like the shoe store. Lemme see, yep, she's buying more shoes.
Spook #1: Why does she keep selling them off for cash? It makes her harder to track.
Spook #2: Dunno, maybe she likes to keep up with shoe trends.
Spook #1: I think she's a goddamn terrorist.
Hello John Anderton, I see from the RFID devices in your stomach, that you ate a Super Combo Taco Deluxe combo meal with extra guacamole for breakfast. Come into CVS and buy some Pepto Bismol - CVS the only price you need.
Hello John Anderton, you've had those sneakers for a year. They're getting kinda ratty I bet. Come into SportShoe and get a new pair before someone faints.
Hello John Anderton, The RFID in your Hemmorhoid pad tells us that you are in pain. In 56% of all hemmorhoid cases the major irritant is toilet paper that is not soft enough. Let us interest you in Charmin Lotion Soft toilet paper. The soothing lotion makes wiping a joy. And it is much stronger than that no-name brand stuff that left it's RFID sticking to your ass hair..
Eat at Joe's.
The Department for Homeland Security has just announced that putting 'locks' on your 'doors' will stop thieves burgling your house.
Latest research also indicates that umbrellas keep you dry in the rain, women like chocolate, oranges are not the only fruit and it's dark at night.
RFID tags + concealed HERF gun + WalMart = Warburning
;) Oh, and make sure there are no elderly folks around who may have pacemakers. It's not their fault that the AutoID guys and Ridge are greedy, voyeuristic poodu.
;)
Walk down the WalMart aisles, triggering your trusty HERF at random (should people wielding these be called "HERF nerders"? Who you calling scruffy?). Then the fun REALLY begins near that funny looking Gillette shelf...
Just don't carry your PDA or digital watch on you when you walk in the store!
"They" keep saying that technology is the key to 21st Century "homeland security." "They" just don't get it that the same technologies will inevitably be turned against their oppresive corporate-police state. If "They" want to move their attack against freedom into the technology realm, "They" will find success for a while as they embrace it, but will "fall on their own swords" in the end as it becomes a crutch-like addiction for them, and they have trouble dealing with the shortcomings of those technologies.
"They" have been quite successful in enslaving us via consumerism, TV, cars/suburban sprawl, photo IDs, SSNs (the thinly veiled National Identifier, thanks to gross mission creep), etc. Addict, then control. We need to take a lesson from their playbook and employ the same tactics in our eventual rally as a People to rise up and take back our freedom. Addict, then control. See, I managed to learn something from the Dune series!
"Overthrowing the government through violence" isn't currently necessary when We The People can do it through peaceful means right now. Hopefully it won't get to the point in the future where violent revolution is once again necessary before We The People wake up, like what our Founding Fathers had to go through. Gandhi and MLK Jr. were no idiots. Peaceful, civil disobedience of unjust laws and regimes may be harder, but it does work and it takes the clearest moral high ground. Violent protest is "easier, more seductive", etc. but only warranted in fairly extreme oppression, once the regime has lost every shred of mandate from We The People as a whole.
Who is "They", you ask? The Pentavirate, of course! "I hate the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes..."