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California Blocks RFID Implants In Workers
InternetVoting writes "California has passed a bill banning companies from requiring employees to have RFID chips surgically implanted. Already one company has been licensed by the federal government, implanting more than 2000 people. At least one other company — CityWatcher.com, a Cincinnati video surveillance company — already required RFID implants in some employees. 'State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans. "RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," Simitian said. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy.'"
The only job that should require surgery are managerial. How else are they going to get the stick up there?
if your employer just shoots you from a helicopter with a tranquilizer dart, and then staples the chip to your ear while you're still groggy?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
this comment is telling "Nine senators opposed the measure, including Bob Margett (R-Arcadia), who said it is premature to legislate technology that has not yet proved to be a problem. "It sounded like it was a solution looking for a problem," Margett said. "It didn't seem like it was necessary."" ah yes, not necessary now, but it is necessary to stop you in your tracks from even going down this road in the first place...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"Invasion of privacy" is misleading.
It's only about privacy in a euphemistic way, it's about sovereignty of ones body.
If it is forbidden on "privacy" grounds, then the privacy grounds can be addressed, resolved, objection removed and then can become a requirement for work/access-to-services etc.
It should be forbidden because the majority of the population said "No" without having to give a reason.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I was thinking of another group that used to catalog humans.
z i_camps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_in_Na
Ironically, the current people doing this are very well connected to those.
What if ALL of the companies in your field start requiring it?
Where is your "choice" now?
My question is who pays to have it removed? Say you switch jobs...
Anyhow, if this tech ever becomes widespread I may turn to a life of crime. IT would just be too easy to tell if anyone were home or not. Just drive up and down the street with a van equipped w/a powerful rfid scanner and voila.
Regards.
Suppose you're raising two kids, and you need job stability. And your company says that you have to get an RFID chip implanted, or else you're fired. Do you leave your job with a chance that your kids might starve, since you can't get unemployment insurance because you left "voluntarily"? Or do you accept that you have to get tagged like an animal? Although, I can agree for some positions where security is of the utmost importance (perhaps if you have access to nuclear material or something), and the terms are agreed upon before hand...
If an RFID tag can be implanted surgically, it can also be removed and re-implanted into someone else. Consequently, it won't provide any extra security against anyone who is willing to steal nuclear materials for presumably nefarious purposes: they simply capture and kill an employee and take the tag from his cold, dead body.
Sure, you could associate identifying information - fingerprints, faceprints, retina scan, whatever - with the tag, but you could just as easily associate it with normal passcard. No, the only "benefit" from the RFID is that it lets you more easily identify people in casual settings (streets and such). It isn't a security measure, but simply another step towards having everyone tracked 24/7, or in best possible case, just someone's private little power game.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The problem is, it doesn't work like that. If you give the rich and powerful enough unchecked power, freedom of choice is either (A) taken from you, because they make a deal, or (B) meaningless, as it went down a spiral where everyone does the same things.
As an example of the former, you can see the last centuries of Rome and the introduction of serfdom. The rich clique that formed the senate:
1. proclaimed themselves not subject to tax
2. raised taxes on everyone else, especially the free peasants (land was the most common pension for soldiers and recruitment incentive, so they eventually had quite a few) to support the ever increasing costs of warfare and the luxury in Rome
3. tried to fix prices _and_ devalue the coin, by law. There goes some of your freedom right there, as a free peasant or small landowner: they already tell you what your produce is worth, and it just became half of what you got for it last year.
4. when people started moving away as a result, they just forbade everyone to move, effectively turning all free peasants into serfs of the empire. In one fell swoop.
I'm sure those peasants still thought they have a choice before step 3. Unfortunately after step 4 it started going downhill fast, and eventually they were not only tied to the land and taxed, but had to work 3 days a week for the local noble too, and some 15 centuries later it had become 6 days a week and no land of their own at all. In some places (e.g., some Polish revolts were against that), serfs could not only be sold, but also rented by burghers, merchants, whatever. The long and painful slide from a free peasant class back to effective slavery, eh?
As a _probable_ example of the latter, well, you can learn a lot about what problems a society had, by the laws they give. That Moses forbade working on Sabbath on penalty of _death_, should tell you that they probably had a _major_ problem there. It also gives you the idea that probably nothing else worked, choice be damned.
At some point, even if you forbid by law to _require_ working on the Sabbath, people will just find weasel ways to require "volunteering" for it. (See the recent EA scandal.) So at some point your choice becomes picking one of X potential employers, all of which require it. You have a choice to take it or starve.
The death penalty on workers on Sabbath is, if you think about it, the ultimate way to stop asking for it right in its tracks. There is no reward someone can promise you, in exchange for maybe getting stoned to death, and no threat they could use to make anyone accept that. Maybe religion could work to motivate someone to go to death, but here religion is what forbade that in the first place. Basically it attacked the supply side of labour, not the demand side.
It makes me wonder how bad it had got, at the very least.
At any rate, sometimes you have to restrict people's "choice" to accept being kicked in the head, because otherwise it can very soon degenerate into something where you have no choice to refuse it.
Finally, don't get me wrong, I'm not against the rich or capitalism... as such. It's just that when one side has disproportionately more bargaining power and power to subvert the system, at some point you have to restrict what they can do with it. Otherwise, if left unchecked, they'll just figure out a way to turn everyone else into their serfs. See, the Romans again.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In a free-market capitalist society, no one has a 'right' to a job that they want.
In any decent society, no employer has the right to treat their employees as cattle.
Unlike a cow, an employee can tell the employer to go and take a running jump, as any sane person would.
That is, assuming they're in a financial position to quit their job, or are so highly in demand in their field, that they can find an equivalent position at a moment's notice.
That's a rather large assumption to make. You may well be in that position, but what about the millions of people who don't have the advantages you do? Don't they deserve better than being tracked like freight in a supply chain?