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Proposal for UK Prisoners to be Given RFID Implants
Raisey-raison writes "There is a proposal in the UK to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders in an effort to free up more space in British jails. The article states that uses are being considered both for home detention, as a means to enforce punishment, as well as for sex offenders after their release. Many view this as a slippery slope leading to much wider use; starting as a purely voluntary act and gradually becoming more compulsory, it would endanger human rights and privacy. There are also health questions involved, given that long-term studies have linked similar implants to cancer in lab mice and rats. Ironically, the same technology has been proposed for medical purposes as well. In the USA, some state agencies have already made decisions about this issue.
This country has surveillance and tracking that's gone beyond anything the Nazi SS and the KGB could ever dreamed of having. So much for living in a free democracy.
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Or they could stop throwing people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drug offenses... for which 16% of prisoners are there for.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/population-in-custody-0407.pdf
RFID is a "passive" responder that generates a signal when "charged" or "pumped" with enough current from an active RF field. Look at the Wikipedia link I posted and you will see that the most massive part of any RFID device is the antenna. Through that antenna induction takes place and thence the power to generate a signal. RFID are without internal power supplies and must make use of induction to function. The smaller the device the smaller the antenna. Once we reach true microwave frequencies the tradeoff between the energy density of the rf field needed to induce current in the device and the rf energy necessary to excite H2O (cooking level microwave energy) molecules we have reached the limiting factor: cooking your human.
High-energy/high frequency RF is quite dangerous and as you decrease wavelength and increase energy you move through the microwave spectrum and after that the shorter wavelengths include x-rays and, eventually Gamma. That is ionizing radiation and, given the proper exposure, it is lethal. I don't see any way to make microscopic or even 1-2 mm RFID devices that can be driven by non-harmful energy sources.
The technology exists - consider radio scanners and repeaters. Add in some memory and create an interface to your mini scanner/repeater (sounds like a job for gumstix http://gumstix.com/ ) and off you go.
FWIW directional antennas (dish, yagi) could direct a RF signal source at distance & coupled with a rifle site it would make all of those people carrying RFID easy targets to pick out of a crowd.
Whose idea was RDID tags in passports, anyway? The Saudi's?