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Proposal for UK Prisoners to be Given RFID Implants

Posted by Soulskill on from the resistance-is-futile dept.

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.

8 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe it's just me... by Serenissima · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But does no one think that Prisoners might be inclined to remove their tracking chips? I'm just saying I can't imagine most of them are losing any sleep about breaking the law...

    --
    Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
  2. Hmm... by usul294 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How long does it take till this spreads to all criminals, then slowly spreads into the population. The privacy issues are obvious, today dogs can get chips under their skin to help if they get lost, tomorrow the government may use them to find a "person of interest". Thats not to say there are not benefits to the idea. Namely, being able to tie personal identification to the chip (no more REAL ID), and being able to tie personal bank accounts to that chip as well. That's not to say its a good idea, but there are some positive impacts if applied to the whole population.

    1. Re:Hmm... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Parents are the scary ones. A lot of them seem to think chipping their kids is a good idea. I suppose it is if you treat your kids the same way you treat your pets. Prisoners until age 18.

      I think the last time anyone tried this in Western Europe was when the Nazis tattooed numbers on the hands of Jews.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. all state's property can be tagged by memnock · · Score: 2, Interesting

    California is suffering from a huge budget crunch. the Governator is talking about prisoner releases there. and with the state employees (free people. or are they?) there already under threat of implants, i'd say Ahnold will be calling Brown soon for the chip vendor information.

    --
    "To stop the terrorists."
  4. This is /. - how long before chip mods? by grolaw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's get real. If these RFID chip or multiple chip implantation policies become widespread so will chip mods.

    If your ID chip accesses your credit line - how long before Warren Buffett/Bill Gates' ID becomes the hot new fake ID?

    It is well known that all manufacturing processes produce a some number of defective products. How do we deal with those?

    RFID can be zapped with a static charge - anybody for Van DeGraff generators?

    Retasking, rewriting, forged, hacked and destroyed RFID is all that this policy will lead to. AND, /. readers will be in the front of THAT revolution.

    1. Re:This is /. - how long before chip mods? by Cheesey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The solution to most of those problems is to use many RFID chips rather than a single one (these things are microscopic). You'll be identified by the cloud of chips that you carry - some may be implanted, some may be in your clothes, and others will be part of the gadgets you own. Failure of individual chips is no problem: indeed it is expected. The surveillance systems will be watching where most of your RFID chips go.

      Forgery is possible but it's non-trivial, particularly as the chips shouldn't offer any way to reprogram the UUIDs that they broadcast. You'd need a pirate RFID manufacturing plant: possible but costly. Destroying the chips is a more likely attack, but these things will be so common in the future that it will be extremely hard to go anywhere without picking a few up by accident, so you'll soon be back on the system if you do that (albeit as an anonymous person until you do something else to identify yourself, such as using a credit card).

      --
      >north
      You're an immobile computer, remember?
    2. Re:This is /. - how long before chip mods? by Cheesey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I like to make posts such as the grandparent in the hope that someone more knowledgeable than me will tell me why I'm wrong. An RFID-based national surveillance system is clearly on the UK government "wish list", and it would be nice for everyone if it was actually impossible to build one, rather than merely expensive. I would be very pleased if physical laws prevented RFIDs being manufactured in microscopic sizes, but I suspect that this is not the case. It doesn't have to be nanoscale, it just has to be invisible to the naked eye.

      However, I think you are right about the relative ease of forging RFIDs, provided you can knock out the ones you are already carrying. Another poster has pointed out that a computer could be programmed to simulate any number of RFID chips. Like DRM, this type of technology might be easily defeated by those in the know, making it useless against terrorists and smart criminals, i.e. the exact people it is supposed to protect us from.

      --
      >north
      You're an immobile computer, remember?
  5. Banning involuntary tagging won't work.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Things like this don't need to be legally mandated - only socially. When it becomes the 'next big thing' and you can buy a sixpack just by waving your hand next to a reader, it'll catch on and people will voluntarily do it - after which point, in a few years, it would be as odd to be without one as it would be odd to be without a cellphone today. I'd plan on mitigating the effects of everyone having the implants as opposed to trying to stop them.