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CA Bill Limits Skin Implantation of RFID Chips
twitter writes with a link to a ZDNet blog entry about a piece of legislation submitted to the California state senate. Drafted by Democratic Senator Joe Simitian, its purpose is to ensure that employers cannot require the implantation of RFID chips as part of employment. It is meeting with scorn from the American Electronics Association. "'Our bottom line is we're opposed to anything that demonizes RFIDs,' she said. 'The technology has been in existence for more than 50 years. It's in more than 1.2 billion ID credentials worldwide. ... We've not seen a single showing of ID theft or harm,' said Roxanne Gould, vice president for California government relations for the American Electronics Association, a high-tech industry group."
How can I be guilty of not reading the fine article, when there is no fine article to be read?
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Doesn't mean you can't have your RFID -- it just means they can't REQUIRE you to have it.
and that's a good thing.
Note to Ms Gould: There's a difference between a tag you wear at work, and something semi-permanently implanted in your body.
It's in more than 1.2 billion ID credentials worldwide.
In my humble opinion, just because something did not happen yet does not mean that it will not happen in the future
And the summary missing a link to the ZDNet blog.
Employers are requiring a medical procedure as a condition of employment. How about tattooing the employee ID, or neutering the staff to make them more docile, although that would be redundant for any employee that accepted the chip in the first place.
This is not primarily about the RFID security. It is about mutilating the staff to save the employer the cost of installing and using a less Nazi-slave-like security system. Seems to me that any doctors that perform the procedure should have their license removed. The tags are hardly justifiable as cosmetic surgery providing any self-image benefit, since the tags aren't supposed to be visible.
No, the "market" won't fix itself, at least not in the direction of individual liberty. The "market" will migrate towards all the companies requiring it, and then you don't get to choose anymore. I for one would rather not have to sleep in a Faraday cage in order to sleep soundly.
Why is it always California that's always ahead of the rest of the country? The best time to take care of a problem is before it starts. Everyone here in the IT business has probably heard of it. It's called preventative maintenace . California has started applying it to politics, and I applaud them for it.
I've never been to California, and I know that it's not perfect, but a good portion of their newer laws make a ton of sense, and should probably be implemented nationwide.
What's sad is that when a government body passes a law that is good for it's people, it's news.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
This is a bad idea for the same reason that it's a bad idea to be chipping our own citizens:
What happens when people who weren't intended to be reading these chips start using them to track and find the chipped?
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
We've not seen a single showing of ID theft or harm
Read as:
We all stand around here with our eyes closed and our hands over our ears shouting BLABLABLABLABLA.......
Ignorance is bliss!
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The problem with implanted RFID is that most people underestimate their future costs as a result of an employer implanting the chip. It costs considerably more to remove an RFID, in money and personal risk, and the employer makes no provision to pay for this. Over a lifetime of jobs, once all employers require RFIDs, how many of these chips will need to be implanted? Assume that every time you change employers or even locations for the same employer you'll need new chip implanted. Every time a system is cracked (your individual chip or the outdated technology of the original chip) you'll need another chip implanted. If your company is bought by another company, implant a new chip. Technology changes constantly and employment terms for one entity are becoming increasingly shorter than in the past. Once employers do it, everyone else will want a chip under your skin for credit cards, or even customer memberships. You may have, literally, hundreds of opportunities to be re-chipped. How many chips can you realistically implant in your arm? Will you be forced to remove some of them because they compete with other technology? (The RFID used for toll booths in Maryland and Delaware are incompatible so I have to put one in the glove box to pass through the other because their systems interfere and cannot read their own ID if the other ID is also present.)
How many of these concerns do you think a person who is asked to install a chip has actually considered before they get implanted? The long term issues of chipping and the future costs which will be borne by the person being chipped and they are woefully uninformed. This lack of information availability is exactly what allows larger players in a market to abuse the smaller players. When a company knows the dangers but the employees or customers do not, they can shift future costs to them because they lack this information. The market is notoriously bad at affixing future costs to those who caused the problem (from cancer risks of smoking to pollution of locales to bad economic decisions.)
It's not the RFID tags the senator is going after... its employers being able to fire anyone who doesn't want a CHIP EMBEDDED IN THEIR SKIN by the company they work for. I think RFID technology is great, and I completely support this bill.
This is another case of an industry group going crazy to protect what they perceive to be their interests, when in fact its no challenge to the technology at all, its a challenge to having an employer being able to modify your body.
Another note to Ms. Gould: I don't think it's the possibility of the RFID tag not working or being stolen that worries the CA lawmaker. I am pretty sure it's the implantation that's the worry.
For one thing, no employer should ever have the right to demand the violation of an employee's body.
Another issue is that this is too damn close to a slave collar. "Property of ACME Inc."
And finally, the RFID tag doesn't stop working once the work day is over, but works 24/7/365.
The problem I see with a ban is that the ban is likely going to be too narrow if it mentions RFID. Unless it's a ban against any permanent or semi-permanent marking of employees, it's going to be worse than nothing, as the wrong judge might rule that since RFIDs were banned, but tattoos were not mentioned, it means that tattoos are implicitly allowed.
Regards,
--
*Art
We just pay our employees that allow us to chip them 10 cents an hour more. And for some odd reason, whenever we lay people off, the ones not tagged are the first ones to get sacked.
Pure coincidence, of course.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Does this really need to be legislated? Eh, no I don't think so.
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is that cal.gov are having to legislate on this because some HR person has seriously considered it...
Actually, I found that part of it refreshingly honest. What she's saying is tantamount to something like this:
The nice thing about that is that it means their opinion on any subject can be dismissed out of hand. It's like a binary signal that's always set to one; it carries no data. We already know what they're going to say, whatever the question ("RFID tags are GOOD!") and we know why ("because it make us MONEY!").
It's just rare to see one of these industry pressure groups quite so willing to disqualify themselves from the debate.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Often this kind of legislation has to be extended to barring the technology altogether as corporations or government departments will try to work around the legislative ban forbidding compulsion by the use of various extortion techniques, reduced pay, promotion restrictions, implied threats of dismissal, unlikely employment.
Why wait for the abuses, ban questionable applications of technology to start with.
Just think of the benefits for the weasel in chief, he wont have to wait for you to make a phone call so that the NSA can record you calls, he can just download you sound recording chip when ever you walk past a phone for any questionable anti-republican statements.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Ahhh, classic /. logic on display...
"this has never happened to me, therefore your logic is silly for suggesting it could happen. Further, I am far too talented and independent to ever work somewhere that would do such a thing."
Good for you that your company doesn't demand it. However, that really wasn't parent poster's point, was it? Rather, it was that something we previously assumed would never be required as a condition for employment now is. And there are quite a few large, successful companies (ones that likely employ employees as talented as you) that do.
Better to raise the issue now, discuss it in public and get the word out that some industries are actually opposing the proposed legislation. Given the tenor of privacy issues in the US and UK, it's not such a bad idea to try and deal with this now.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
there was an article on here of the opinion that we no longer complete projects before they ship. That new dvd player you just bought requires a firmware upgrade right out of the box type stuff. With that sort of mentality about today's electronics are we really anywhere near ready to start putting them into our bodies in the first place? Just look what mere hobbyist hackers are doing to any new DRM that comes along. From an engineering/security standpoint, unless you can find a real robust method of firmware upgrade or failing that make it real cheap to perform the upgrade medical operation, possibly quite regularly, would this even be a practical solution? I'm not sure I have that kind of confidence in our current engineering abilities. Flying cars seemed pretty inevitable at one time too.
No, it isn't that easy. For instance, unless you come in america illegally, it will take quite a bit of time to get the appropriate paperwork and such to come in legally and find work. Now, visiting is another story, and I don't think most other countries are that far off. But you cannot just up and find another country.
Oddly enough, if forced implants ever came to pass one could probably use this logic to avoid participation. Religious sects get so much leeway, in the U.S. at least, it's almost sickening. Yet if you have a rational, well thought out philosophy based in humanism it's not worth a damn. Yet another strike against thinking for yourself.
To the people who believe in Jesus Christ and the book of revelation, it is indeed a valid objection.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.