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Homeless to be Implanted with Subdermal RFID Tags
An anonymous reader writes "Politech has the scoop on the Bush administration's plans to forcibly implant RFID tags into homeless people in participating U.S. cities. Here's an excerpt from the UPI article: "The miniscule RFID tags are no larger than a matchstick and will be implanted subdermally, meaning under the skin. Data from RFID tracking stations mounted on telephone poles will be transmitted to police and
social service workers, who will use custom Windows NT software to track movements of the homeless in real time... A second phase of the project, scheduled to be completed in early 2005, will wirelessly transmit live information on the locations of homeless people to handheld computers running the Windows CE operating system.""
You can defeat this plot by putting the homeless person in a microwave.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
This was obviously written by someone who works with homeless programs. PATH is a real program, funded under the McKinney grant, and they are actually deploying Palms to collect data on mentally ill homeless persons.
On any other day, I would actually have believed this for half a second. Clearly, there are big privacy issues with collecting any sort of information on people. The current requirements make me any many others very uncomfortable. The federal government has actually received quite a bit of push back over this issue, and the final rule has been delayed for more than a year as a result of the privacy concerns.
Thankfully, it look like HUD will be making significant concessions to address community concerns, that will result in a final requirement that better protects client privacy.
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Polling shows it'll play well in the midwest.
Yes, I know that you're continuing the political propaganda ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H alleged joke.
But, no, polling does not show it would play well in the midwest. Or with the right wing - especially the Christian Right. Even a trial balloon on this subject would result in a guaranteed loss for Bush in the next election.
FYI: There is nobody more rabidly opposed to implanted RFID tracking devices than a Christian Fundamentalist. While right-wingers in general are suspicious of programs that invade personal privacy (since they are perceived as mostly used, once instituted, by left-wingers to dump on their political enemies), an implanted I.D. chip plays directly into one of the Christian Fundamentalists' hot buttons.
An implanted RFID device is an indellible "mark" transmitting a number - the serial number of the device (which is used as an index to an external database of personal information) and/or any stored information (which is also encoded as a binary string, i.e. a number).
According to a Christian Fundamentalist, tagging people with a government-mandated indelible identification number is applying the "Mark of the Beast". (See the Book of Revalations.) The person who would cause that to occur as a government program is the Antichrist, it happens as the end times and final battle are approaching, anybody who lets it happen to him has signed up with the wrong side, etc.
This opposition to anything even approximating applying a number to people, especially if related to financial transactions (which includes aid programs) is SO strong that it has been a problem even during the rollouts of Social Security, the Income Tax, credit cards, ATM debit cards, and online banking services.
Bush and his administration have been clueless enough to do a number of things to tweak off their electoral base. But mandating an implanted I.D. number in the face of this well-known (on the right) hotbutton issue would be cluelessness far beyond the pale. Essentially ALL of his advisors would be SCREAMING at him if he gave the SLIGHTEST sign of being in favor of such a scheme.
Which is why you KNOW this is another (literally) damned April Fool joke.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You are completely wrong! The homeless are tracked. Congress required all agencies receiving funding from HUD to be using a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to track the homeless and their use of services. Communities are then required to report this information and are often required to collaborate with neighboring communities to provide regional information. In my state of Massachusetts, some homeless agencies have been using HMIS for as much as 6 years. Excellent statistics for the city of Boston are available as they have required all agencies in the city receiving city funds to use HMIS for at least 5 years. The published statistics do not specifically tell who was where when for what. They do give detailed demographic information and types of services received. The city of Cambridge is beginning to use HMIS to do a gaps analysis, creating statistics to see the difference between the need and what is provided. More information can be found at
HMIS
Actually, a "Republican" would do this if they thought it'd get them reelected. A Conservative wouldn't do this. Keep in mind that near-centrist left wing elements have come into the Republican party since the Democrats fell out of power, and don't forget that not all Republicans are Conservative Libertarian types.
But I agree...Democrats sUx0r.