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RFID Tags To Track Foreigners, Identify Dead
An anonymous reader writes "U.S. security officials say they will use RFID technology at border posts with Canada and Mexico to track foreigners driving in and out of the United States. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said wireless chips for vehicles would become mandatory at designated border crossings in Canada and Mexico as of Aug. 4. At the same time, British officials are considering using RFID chips to identify the dead in the wake of a disaster." From the British article: "...following the bomb blasts on the London Underground, the process of identifying some bodies - particularly on the deep-lying Piccadilly Line - became very difficult, with some families upset by the amount of time it took to confirm a relative had died. VeriChip advocates argue it could help in these circumstances. "
Does anyone else think this is a bit over the top? I mean, I usually think most pro-privacy people are a bit extreme, and I don't care if the government has a record of my existence, but making foreigners use RFID tags? I don't know about that one..
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will install radio frequency technology at five border posts with Canada and Mexico to track foreigners driving in and out of North America.
It will start with only five, pushing those that really want to get in to the other posts that do not issue the tags. It could also create a situation where potential criminals would leave their tagged car parked at a metropolitan hotel and use mass transit or even steal a completely different car so that they would be able to continue their mission without being tracked. This plan accomplishes nothing but making RFID
tags seem like a viable terrorism fighting tool. Thanks for yet another worthless band-aid that is only meant to ease the public's notion of what RFIDs do.
The mandatory program will apply, however, to all foreigners with U.S. visas--including those from the 27 countries whose citizens don't need visas for short U.S. visits--who cross into the United States at those points.
Of course this only applies to everyone else and not US Citizens. First they came for foo, then they came for you, and because skewed data about these tags seem to make our country safer we will be "asked" to add them to our cars so that the government can track if someone else commits a crime w/our automobile...then they came for me as I was the only one left.
As long as they keep tightening the reigns under the guise of "stopping terrorism" the sheep will continue to herd happily under the darkening skies.
This whole concept scares me. It's ramifications could extend well beyond assisting with finding bodies. I for one don't want the government tracking my every move. Talk about losing civil rights.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Inject chip into arm.
...
Find armless body at bomb site
*DrugCheese rants*
If you're really worried about being identified when you've been blown up, then wear dog tags.
The idea of implanting a chip that can be surreptitiously read at any time is just stupid, frankly.
Plant an RFID chip in every person and track their movements over their entire life so that it's easier to identify them once they die. Makes sense to me...
Actually, this would be ok as long as the chip DIDN'T respond until you died...but I don't think it is possible to engineer that requirement with today's technology. Besides that, if you get blown up the chip is only going to identify the body part where it resides. Of course, if it resides in a critical body part and that part is no longer attached to the rest of you body then it would probably be safe to assume you were dead...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
...tatoo'd on your forarm or torso (base of neck, maybe?) for dead body IDs. It requires no expensive reader or propritary implant. But that's not very techological, and not politically correct.
Same thing, different method.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The only way it would work as a process is if every foreigner dutifully keeps their document during their whole stay in the US. What if you lose your paper? Any penalty? And exactly what does the RFID chip accomplish? Everyone still has to check in and check out. So it makes it more convenience for the border patrol? If you are a terrorist, are you going to carry an RFID chip just to make the border patrol's job easier? Why not steal someone else's chip? Does the process compare the RFID data with their other papers? If not, it doesn't matter what chip you have as long as you have one. And this program costs $500,000 annually per criminal that has been nabbed to date? Wow.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
The problem is the slippery slope. How would RFID have helped identify those poor victims in the London underground? Only if they had RFID embedded in them in the first place. So in essence that is what they are arguing for. It usually begins, "Just think of the chiiiiildren!" with visions of kidnapping scares. Nowadays it's the "but what about terrorism???" scare.
Yes, embedding RFID in every person on earth would aid law enforcement quite a bit. It would help you keep track of your kids, and you could Lojack them if they were ever kidnapped. On the other hand, just think how nice it would be for the government to track everyone they view as a dissident, or an environmentalist, or a Democrat (oh wait, it hasn't reached that point...yet). Just think how marketers would love to be able to track your movement so as to show you an ad as you approached their kiosk or store or billboard. Just think how useful this will be to stalkers!
You can make an entirely safe populace by placing everyone in solitary confinement in a vast prison system. But is that really what you want? Similarly here, there are indeed advantages to RFIDing the populace. But can we please think about all of the implications, and not just listen to industry arguments?
Identifying dead by looking at their RFID-tag(s) is an invitation to fake deaths. Just don't give politicians technology. They don't know anything about it and are bound to find the stupid, wrong and useless applications.
Why not? They're already doing it for dogs. Now if only we could implant GPS tracking as well...
More bullshit about how "9/11 changed everything". The planebombers used real IDs - obscuring their identity wasn't an obstacle to catching them. Bad guys crossing the border will obviously just switch cars to avoid RFID detection.
This RFID program is yet another way to follow the government's failure to protect us from 9/11 with their own attacks on our freedom. It's welfare for security/defense corporations, privacy invasion for the fascists, more terror to keep us scared and manageable, and a tech smokescreen to cover the fact that they're not actually doing enough to actually protect us from the real threats. WHERE'S OSAMA? How about forcing Pakistan to put an RFID chip into everyone caught crossing the Afghani border? Then we might actually catch some terrorists. And the idea of the government forcing innocent people to be dehumanized into a number could instead be experimented on a some people who we would otherwise just shoot, in the old dehumanizing calculus of war.
--
make install -not war
If the President is allowed to know exactly where my butt is at any one time, will I, his employer, be able to track where his butt is at any one time? No? Then buzz off.
The problem with all this surveillance and Big Brother stuff is that it does nothing to deter the determined malefactor. It will only erase the freedom and privacy of the innocent. And the more of this crap they push through, the more of the innocent will get fed up and become malefactors because the government will not listen. Imagine dozens of Timothy McVeighs striking everywhere, without warning.
This is the wrong road to be heading down, folks.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Yup. It almost seems that the underlying message is that tourism is a threat to national security and should be outlawed. Obviously the whole tourist industry would be seriously pissed if it were just outlawed and tourists barred entry, but fingerprint them, tag them, etc, and eventually they'll clue in and just stop coming.
I had a trip down there (I'm in Canada) planned for November but forget it. I get the message. I doubt the economy of California will collapse for my not going, but I also doubt I'm the only one who will regard this as a discouragement to visit.
Loose lips lose spit.
Use these to track politicians.
If there's one group in this society I don't trust...
I hope the RFID chip gets implanted somewhere superficial and unimportant so that criminals don't need to hurt me too much to steal my RFID chip.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Well of course they will. "RFID tags to track foreigners, identify dead."
It's when they try to pry the RFID tag from my warm live fingers that I'd get worried!
But seriously folks, I'm about as tinfoil as they get, and this isn't that terribly evil a technology. It's fundamentally no different than the fact that they take pictures of the car and its license plate at the border. They've done that since the 70s. They've probably had real-time access to DMV records since the day the technology became available: If the DMV says that plate "F00B4R" is supposed to be on VIN "ABCDEFGHIJ1234567", and VINs that begin with "ABCDEF" correspond to the "2007 Omni Motors Products 6000-SUX", you'd better not be driving a 1977 Oldsmobile.
Yes, you're supposed to have your RFID-embedded document on you when you cross the border on the way out. I don't see anything in the proposed law that says your RFID-embedded document on you while you're in the country. Lock it in a safety deposit box. Leave it at home. Wrap it in tinfoil and put it in your luggage.
In that sense, it's less intrusive than a license plate.
No, I think that you will find us old-timers fighting against this. With it, the gov. can track your every move. Go though a toll-road exchange, and the rfid records you. Go to the airport, and when you go through security, they know. My guess is that stores will move to rfid to handle their security. In doing so, the gov. will come into stores, and tell them that they need access to the computer - remotely. At that point, if you use a store, as you walk through the ant-theft, the feds. are notified.
And for those of you who say that it can never happen, well, I know ppl who are much older than myself. And they will tell you that we could never be attacked. Likewise, we would never allow a universal ID (drivers license). And they would tell you that the gov. would never be allowed to have an unlimited warrent. etc. etc.
And I knew a few that would tell that republicans would never break any law. They would never do break-ins or do cover up. Likewise, they would never trade hostages for guns. Nor would any American government keep a traitor in the white house who would out a CIA agent to help their own party; They all know that citizens come above party politics. Yes, these dead ppl knew that are gov. would not be like that. And yet, here we stand.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, it would take a whole roll of tin foil to start worrying about satellite tracking. Still, 1m readability is enough to read from the jamb of most doorways in buildings.
The convenience of them is fantastic, but the potential abuse is just so overwhelming.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As funny as that might sound, suggesting to Americans that the "number of the beast" is on its way in the form of RFID would probably be a pretty effective way to help kill this idea.
What about a family with a mix of dual and single citizenships? We're a nation of immigrants: its fairly easy to have a family with all three of dual-citizenships, green cards, and visas. If you and your family are traveling together, will you get tagged as suspicious because you don't have the same number of YourRFIDsPlease leaving as you did when entering? (i.e. your cousin stays in Seattle to go to the SciFi Museum while your aunt goes up to Vancouver?). Wait, that's jut a rhetorical questions: of course these families are suspicious.
You only have to worry if you come here to commit crimes or acts of terrorism
Uhh, wow, how un-American of you. So when the Feds demand searches without warrants, you will back it under the same "only the criminals have something to hide" mentality?
You understand of course that the flip side of your argument is that any law abiding citizen (read: the people you WANT as tourists) will go elsewhere, rather than submit to this kind of treatment, right?
This will not protect you at all. How could it? You tag tourists, ergo criminals sneak across instead. You only tag foreigners, ergo anyone with no RFID signal, is a citizen. How did you get helped? The criminal is still in country, and still can't be id'd. You are how much further ahead?
BTW, I am one of those who will never visit the US while this mentality exists, so the policy didn't just hinder the "bad people", it made me change my vacation plans, and probably means a few less dollars in the pockets of those working in the tourism industry. So it hurt a few people at least, none of whom are "bad people".
You know it is funny. Americans (some, many, I have no idea) will support this policy, because its to protect you from the foreigners. Understand, these policies always start with "insert evil group here", before migrating to the general population. Within a decade, all Americans will be tagged, if this course is followed.
Does it impact me? Nope. I can choose to visit the US, or choose to avoid it. I decided to avoid the US after it became apparent that the US government had lost its mind, so tag or no tag, I'll not visit until some level of sanity has returned.
Maybe the problem is RFID tags? Maybe this would sell better if we all submitted to tattoos, and little cloth patches that had to be attached to your outermost layer of clothing. You know, like a little struck out US flag to show that we are not American. I wonder if a policy like that would fly? This must have been tried before. I know it sounds somewhat familiar, I just can't place it at the moment. Anyone? Anyone?
I hate to make fun of this, but, really. Come on. This is so funny. Remember back during the height of the Cold War, when the Evil Soviet Empire was just waiting to pounce. Remember when Americans used to laugh about the outrageous claims made by Soviet news services like Fox....I mean Pravda. Remember when Americans used to laugh at those poor commie loosers who had to "show papers" to go anywhere or do anything. Can you see what you are becoming? The similarities are quite amusing, as an outsider looking in.
Because fingerprints CAN be planted, mistakes can be made in identification, and fingerprints are universally accepted as *UNDISPUTABLE* evidence.
Once your fingerprints are on file, the file can fall into the wrong hands, and ANYBODY can make a copy and PLANT them.
Good luck trying to convince the police, the feds and the jury that you weren't at the crime scene.
And let's not forget the FBI being "100% sure" that that Oregon lawyer was involved with the bombings in Madrid (good luck trying to convince the police, the feds, and the jury that it was a mistake by the FBI crime lab).
Had it not been that the Spanish police were skeptical of the FBI's claim, and told them to get a clue, that man would be rotting prison or worse, dead.