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And They Shall Know You By Your Books
Val42K writes "People have been concerned about provisions of the Patriot Act that would grant law enforcement access to your library records. Now libraries are considering placing RFID tags into books instead of barcodes. The RFID tags will (supposedly) be turned off when you check out of the library, but could they be turned back on? What about the possibility of you being located and tracked by the books that you carry?"
Quick.. get a towel, soak it in water and wrap it round your head!!
;)
They are out to get you!!
Why won't they just attatch a big sign saying "Hey! My name is foo bar, i'm working at foo doing bar, my homephone is +0160003960132, my political oppinions are foobar" to your back?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I think so!
Better return that copy of 1984 I took out the other day. Now wheres that bottle of Victory Gin I had?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
That's simple. While waiting to be seated, each of your customers would receive an injection containing an RFID tying them to your restaurant. Then their feces would be inspected later to determine what food had been consumed, and the system would report back to your inventory control process.
RFIDs wouldnt be bad. If they threw one in your library card too, that would be good. You could then just grab your books, and walk out the doors, with it automatically being thrown on your card.
That would be really comfortable. But don't forget: the Deathstar increases the intensity-level of its torture-ray every day you are late with returning the book. Better hurry up with this last chapter, or otherwise you won't breed.
Sheesh. Now I have to microwave my library books as well? I wonder if they'll mind the books coming back smelling like hot dogs?
StopRFID FAQ
Date: the not-so-distant future
Time: 9:37 PM
Location: Chicago, unspecified subway stop
A student gets off the train onto a semi-darkened platform, the only one there. He checks his watch, tries not to panic. He needs to get back to his apartment, and fast. He has a term paper to write and only thirty-three hours left to do it.
As he heads for the revolving gate, he's blocked by a stranger in a dark suit, dark glasses, and a hat. The hat obscures whatever features the glasses leave visible. He speaks. His tone tells the student that he is very, very serious about what he has to say.
"Roger Thomas Richardson." The stranger adjusts his posture, hands in his pockets, features still obscured. "Age twenty-two, unmarried. Profession: university student. Major: Far Eastern religion. GPA: 3.8 and dropping, but your advisor believes you have a chance to change that." He pauses, takes a slow breath. "Am I correct?"
"Who... who are you?" says Roger, trying badly to hold his ground. "What do you want from me?"
"What do I want?" The stranger takes a piece of folded paper from his pocket, unfolds it, makes a gesture of reading it. "I want a book, Mister Richardson. Specifically the book A Contemporary Analysis of World Religions by Chang A. Yin, ISBN number 079236139X, published 1982. Copy number one of one held by the Chicago Public Library." He refolded the paper, stuck it back in his pocket, straightened his coat. "You're overdue, Mister Richardson."
"What? I... I thought I had three weeks... I called, they said...."
"You called to renew, Mister Richardson, but you have been denied that renewal. There is another student in your class who needs that book just as badly as you do. More badly, in fact. If he does not complete his paper in time with a spectacular passing grade, there are...certain people who will be very disappointed. Very disappointed indeed, Mister Richardson."
The stranger reached inside his coat, took something from the breast pocket. It was a pair of scissors. They gleamed in the fluorescent lights of the subway. Two men, unheard, grabbed Richard's arms from behind and twisted them around his back. Richard could feel his shoulder try to dislocate under the pressure. He winced, tried not to scream in pain, and failed.
"We want that book now, Mister Richardson. We know you have it on you. And when we have the book, we want you to give us..." he snipped the scissors once, the metallic snip echoing again and again down the subway tunnels. He grinned, and his perfect white teeth were reflected perfectly for Richard in the blades of the scissors.
"...we want your library card."
SELECT RFID FROM tLibrary WHERE Gender = 'Female' AND Married = 0 AND BookCat = 'RomanceNovels'
Address = GetGPSLoc(RFID)
"Well hello there, lonely lady. My name is Quagmire. He Heh, Alllll right!"
that you can encase them in to stop them from working. If you put them in one of these, for example.
Once saw a student at Stanford go charging out of the library through a turnstile, unaware that the turnstile was connected to the uncharged-book detector. The turnstile locked and he was bent double over the turnstile bar.
Anybody that wants the above information can find it out by knocking on the door on some pretense and taking a quick peek inside. This whole thing is silly. If I wanted to track someone after they left the library I would follow them home. They're likely to leave the book at home anyway, or wherever else they read it, so it's hardly a useful tracking device. I suppose there might be something to worry about if every book was also implanted with a GPS transmitter or something.... Even then it's pretty laughable... two Homeland Security employees staring at a large screen in the war room ... "Look, over here, Bob. See that red dot? An unusual concentration of Kafka, Kierkegaard, and Kropotkin. You know what that means?" "Ummm, potential existentialist radical?" "No -- he's in the KKK! Get it? Hahaha I crack myself up. No really, though, let's have him interrogated just for the fuck of it."