Slashdot Mirror
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.
Today.
Tomorrow children. In a generation or 2, everyone will have them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
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.
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."
Let's get real. If these RFID chip or multiple chip implantation policies become widespread so will chip mods.
/. readers will be in the front of THAT revolution.
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,
This makes perfect sense to me!
After all, it's not like RFID chips could be swapped, erased, removed and as we all know, relying on technology to enforce behavior has never failed. That's why DRM is so popular and electronic passports are completely unhackable, and even if they were hackable, it's not like people get used to the new systems and forget to do the most basic of checks.
Also, the social repercussions for putting these in inmates raises no problems, all you need to do is look at the great success the US has had with the sex offender registry in rehabilitating people.
I can't find a single reason not to do this. Go Britain!
WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!? It took me a whole 2 seconds to think of all of these, how has this idea made it this far?
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We really need a moderation option "+1 Sarcasm" because there's no way the above comment is funny or insightful...:(
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.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
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.
I think all that you're missing is the scope of the plans, which are technically achievable, but are also science fiction of the David Brin variety. This is belied by the disparity between what is actually needed (a way to enforce house arrest - existing solutions are adequate) and what we are told is needed (RFID everywhere). The vision is a nationwide network combining RFID with existing surveillance technologies such as CCTV and the automatic number plate recognition system (ANPR). The problem with ANPR is that it only recognises number plates, and the problem with CCTV is that it is no good for automatically recognising anything. RFID is the answer: the tiny chips uniquely identify their carrier. So with the help of RFID you can both (1) record everything and (2) tag each recording with the people featured in it without any human intervention. A database with a record of everyone's activities is the eventual goal. Modern technology makes it possible, if unethical and expensive.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Let me get this straight...
You keep the shitty food and the shitty weather and we get the Great Barrier Reef and lobsters the size of canoes?...
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I'm Jack the Ripper! --No, I'M Jack the Ripper! We're all Jackthefuckingripper!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Thats what they said about your SSN in the beginning, and you see how that didn't creep.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?
Given that criminal only refers to a person whose broken a *law* - We are all criminals... It's only a matter of them deciding to apply the label...
And the fact that you and others like you are using the acceptance of the SSN along with national IDs as the justification to impose more programs like this one that go even further and kill privacy entirely is supposed to be a good way to demonstrate that there is absolutely no slippery slope nor creep??
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Tell me: if I hold an apple in the air and let it go, will it fall to the ground, or hang in mid air?
I think you will agree with me that it will fall to the ground. Why do we predict this? Because of a long history of observing similar cases. We know that unsupported objects tend to fall. We've seen it happen so many times that we have developed a sophisticated theory describing this behaviour, and we call it gravity.
Now, just as we can observe the behaviour of unsupported objects near the surface of the Earth, we can also observe the behaviour of unscrupulous politicians. We've seen them on countless occasions introducing some awful violation of civil rights, and excusing it because it's only for terrorists, for criminals, for paedophiles, whatever. And we've seen them afterwards gradually extending the scope of this violation. Once the principle is admitted, it's just a question of haggling over the details. And no politician will ever be the one to reduce the scope of police powers, because then they look soft on crime and get the blame when some lunatic shoots up a school.
I'd prefer that it be called a ratchet effect, rather than a slippery slope, but the principle is the same, and it derives not from formal logic but from empirical observation of politics and politicians. Dismissing it as a logical fallacy is as ludicrous as dismissing gravity on the same grounds.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Depends on the particular subject. In this case, it's somewhat clear to me that gradual acceptance might occur, and that we should thus not accept it.
First, we tag criminals, maybe even only those who accept it. After a few years, there are some success stories, and it becomes mandatory, it's just criminals after all. People see that nothing bad seems to happen, and a few well-publicised cases occur where the tags prevented a crime from happening. So then people start using them as batches, for entry in clubs and similar stuff. It's cool to get a tag, you get to feel a bit like a criminal, you impress your friends (did it hurt? wow, let me feel!). Next, some people tag their children. After all, it makes them save, and you can always remove it later, and it didn't do anything bad to all those cool people. But of course, you don't remove it later, it's convenient to just leave it in. Then, some kid gets rescued because of his tag, and next thing you know, you get some kind of tax reduction if you tag your kid. Some more years, and it's mandatory with the option to remove it when you reach a certain age. Then, that option disappears.
One huge step will not be accepted by the people. A ton of small steps which all seem logical and inconsequential very well might be.
Dude, that already occurs. Did you go to any kind of club recently?
Fully legalizing drugs would at least regulate advertisment and control quality.
They dont fully understand what legalizing it means.Depends on the drug in question. In some countries, there are plans to legalize ownership and growing of cannabis (within defined limits), while selling it remains illegal. "Legal" doesn't necessarily mean that you have to allow companies to produce and supply the product. Might as well just mean you aren't going to criminalize the users.
You seem to have reinforced my concern.
I am not part of the hive. I do not always think the current fashionable thoughts. That is good, as far as I'm concerned.
My post responded to your question, specifically, "What's the huge issue for abuse?". The huge issue for abuse is that the act of implanting an RFID tag in someone against their will is abuse. The reasons of the objector are irrelevant.
Your original post seemed to make the assumption that there is no harm in having the tags implanted, although there is some evidence to the contrary, and that the only reasons people might have for objecting are religious or to do with privacy. I presented another. I don't see why I should have to fucking well have a foriegn object implanted under my skin. I see that as abuse. I think it is criminal. If they can already track me, good. That's all they fucking need then, isn't it?
Maybe I am creating an "us and them" situation here, but sometimes that happens in a world where we are not all livestock.
I don't therefore I'm not.