Japan: Schoolkids to be tagged with RFID chips

[JohnLocke]

Japan:Schoolkids to be tagged with RFID chips
Japanese authorities decide tracking is best way to protect kids
By Jo Best -- CNETAsia
Monday, July 12, 2004
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The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.
The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements.
The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray.
RFID is more commonly found in supermarket and other retailers' supply chains, however, companies are now seeking more innovative ways to derive value from the tracking technology. US airline Delta recently announced it would be using RFID to track travellers' luggage.
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Read the rest here.

[NorthernSpy]

1. and so it begins

These devices are to be sewn into the children's clothes -- for now. I figure that eventually they'll dispense with the half measures and install the chips under the skin, as we already do with pets. Tracking, dossier-keeping, and generalized round-the-clock camera surveillance have increasingly become normalized as ordinary parts of everyday life, as if they were on a par with standing in line at the market or buying postage stamps.


:tinfoilhat:


Mary

[Mike Niendorff]

2. prepare for a fundie meltdown.

"ahhh! the antichrist is upon us! ahhhhh!!!!!"

(followed shortly by : "Jesus is coming!!!! quick, buy gold!!!")


MDN

[Baltimoreboy]

12. For once, I can't blame them if they react that way

Hell if I'll be chipped or let anyone in my family do it.

[takebackthewh]

23. just to be devils advocate

1) what if you were always losing your keys?

2) what if you had just bought a shiny new porsche that was a magnet for car thieves?

3) what if your pretty 17-year-old daughter were abducted by a rapist?

4) what if your 17-year-old son was a stoner with a couple of DUIs, and he had a chip that would allow you to locate where he was at all times, and how fast he was driving, and what his BAC was?

5) what if Dru Sjodin, that blond college kid from Minnesota who was found raped and dead this spring, had been implanted with a chip?

6) what if you had a 20-year-old son serving in iraq who was in danger of being kidnapped?

7) what if those poor guys in iraq who were beheaded had been implanted with a chip?

Hmmmm?

[Baltimoreboy]

26. What if the government wanted complete control?

What if they wanted to know where you were?

Who you were with?

How fast you drove?

If you took your medicine?

Not a chance. Life is risk.

[TheWraith]

31. These are just ID tags, not tracking devices.

They wouldn't help any of those things that you described. They can only be used for tracking if you have a web of scanners deployed anywhere that the chips will be.

[takebackthewh]

37. i know

but soon they WILL turn into tracking devices.

and so i ask again, what if you had a pretty 17-year-old daughter who sometimes had to work in bad neighborhoods?

would the idea of a tracking chip suddenly not sound so bad after all?

[TheWraith]

39. Tracking isn't a sustitute for eliminating crime

Even if the chip let you know the instant that something happened, it still wouldn't prevent something from happening by the time the police could get there. Tracking chips wouldn't stop rapes and murders, they would just make kidnapping a thing of the past. I personally would rather see an actual reduction in crime, so that I didn't need to worry about my 17 year old daughter getting raped and murdered, rather than being sure that I could easily find the body.

By the way, most modern mobile phones now have E911 technology which includes GPS tracking.

[takebackthewh]

40. I never said it was a perfect solution.

But it would make kids a little bit safer.

And so what if it did eliminate kidnapping. Would that not be a good thing? I've heard police say that the most dangerous thing you can do in a crime is to allow to criminal to force you into his car. It's almost a sure recipe for eventual death.

Instead, police say, fight to the death to stay out of the vehicle.

That means that if the guy wants to rape you, he has to do it in the parking lot, where someone is likely to see and call the police.

I think those are a hell of a lot better odds than being kidnapped.

[dusty64]

36. Me neither!

x

[leesa]

18. They will be the first in line. They MUST be controlled by an authority

figure and what could be more convenient than to have it installed....no muss, no fuss, no fear of thinking, ever again.

[gp]

3. Battle Royale n/t

[JaySherman]

4. That's what I was thinking.

Next step, exploding collars.

Seriously, the Japan depicted in that movie bears an unpleasant resemblance to the real Japan in many ways. I live and teach here, so I see it every day.

[JohnLocke]

5. Kick

[Freya]

6. This is what we do here

The high schools around here require students to wear ID tags clearly displayed at all times or they are sent home.

I suppose the only difference is that these are electronic.

[truthisfreedom]

7. this is completely ridiculous. anyone who wants to stop this technology

simply needs to do a tiny bit of research on the frequency bands used, and then build a portable transmitter that overloads and fries these chips. they have to ABSORB energy from a transmitter in order to send out a signal... they don't have any power source of their own! so it is very easy to fry them... you simply blind and deafen the chips with a harmless (to humans) device that blows their little guts apart.

[Cronus Protagonist]

8. You could do that but then the school would report you missing

An alarm might sound when you arrive and open a door without a chip, a guard may come and perform a search and call the cops.... it's not only the chips themselves, but what you don't have access to when you destroy one that ensures compliance.

You might disable a chip in your arm, but if it meant that when a cop stops you for a traffic offense, you have to be taken to jail and have your fingerprints taken to prove identity, you might choose to keep it.

Scary times, huh?

Choose Kerry Lose Bush - FUCK BUSH - Drop Bush Not Bombs!
http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

9. Could the same thing be done for cell phones?

Someone could be a billionaire if they would invent a device that would fry the electronics in any phone used in a restaurant, theater, church or anywhere within 50 feet of me.

[MadHound]

10. There is already a device developed in Japan

That is designed to jam cell phone signals within a certain radius. Don't know if it is available here yet.

[truthisfreedom]

11. it's used all over Europe already. restaurants, theaters, you name it.

they are illegal here but legislation will probably make them legal within 5 years. small box, plugs in the wall, kills all cell phone signals without hurting the phones.

personally, i think everyone should own an RFID killer device to kill the inevitable tags attached to everything we own that measure the use of particular products, identify us, and cause direct ads to pop up in our lives (just like in minority report.) they're coming, and fast. they're cheap and they'll tie us to everything we own... here's how it will work.

you'll go to target and buy a sweater. the sweater will be scanned in at the counter to price it (using the rfid tag). you'll hand the cashier your credit card. that particular tag, permanently sewn into the sweater, will identify it as YOURS, using your name and identity derived from your credit card. now, you'll walk around target next week wearing that sweater, and ads will pop up on screens near you appealing to you based on EVERY PURCHASE YOU'VE EVER MADE AT TARGET USING ANY CREDIT CARD. next, you'll be walking down the street miles from any target store, and you'll notice that all the ads you see are interesting... why? because target has purchased advertising on millions of screens all over the planet, which are searching for rfid tags in your clothing and belongings that tell the screens who you are.

and what's more is, poindexter has set us all up for the ultimate in identification. you'll go to a protest, you'll be scanned at a distance of 50 feet or more wearing your sweater. later, a black sedan will drive through your neighborhood where you're hosting an after-protest party. they'll scan your house and instantly identify every single person in your house. they'll know who all of your like-minded friends are.

like i said. it's time for all of us to investigate purchasing RFID burner machines... they'll be small, and they'll be cheap, and they'll kill all of the rfid tags in all of our belongings. RFID TAGS... who need's 'em, except big brother and the corporations? NOBODY.

[LibLabUK]

13. Umm..

"it's used all over Europe already. restaurants, theaters, you name it."

It's illegal to interfere with the radio spectrum in this way across the EU... so no, they're not used in europe.

[truthisfreedom]

14. yes they are. i've read about them. LINK

they are in use in restaurants and theaters in Europe.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2092059/

[LibLabUK]

15. Umm..

Yes you can purchase them... but switch them on in the UK or in mainland Europe and you're committing a criminal offence.

They are not legal to use in Europe.

You are not allowed to interfere with the radio spectrum in the ways necessary for a jammer to work...

[SoCalDem]

16. I actually like this idea.. They should be in cars as well..

I HATE HATE HATE it when people's phones start going off.. How on earth did we manage 35 years ago before answering machines, pagers, cell phones?? We actually called people on a wall/desk phone, or we went to their house to see them in person,.. No one died from "being out of touch" 24/7..

I do not want to hear other people's inane conversations.. and I hate being behind or beside someone in their car , yakking away on their phone..:)

[noonwitch]

19. I believe that hosptials use something like that

I tried to use my cell phone once in a hospital without thinking (it was the first time I used a cell phone), and it wouldn't work. I stepped out of the building, and it worked immediately. It seems that the signals from the cell phones interferes with some medical equipment. Now I laugh everytime I see someone on a tv show using a cell phone in a hospital.

[MadHound]

20. A technical question here

RFID chips have small computer chips in them for memory, correct? Why wouldn't a strong magnet, or degaussing machine do the trick. Wipe the memory, kill the chip, no more worries.

[truthisfreedom]

29. they don't use magnetic memory like a disk drive. they have solid-state

memory, but part of the technology relies on external radio-frequency energy to fire them up so they will transmit their coded information to a reader. overloading them with RF energy is the easiest way to fry their little brains.

[NorthernSpy]

32. okay : what would happen if...

... you briefly microwaved one of those RFID tags (not long enough to melt it or damage the garment)... Do you suppose that would render it inoperative?


Mary


(fixed mistake)

[BiggJawn]

17. Why does Japan always remind me of an ant hill?

Or to use a more popular anology, The BORG?

Back in the '70's and '80's, the Japanese worker was the darling of the management world because of their devotion to the Queen Ant..uh, I mean The Factory. Didn't work trying to bring that shit over here, because your average American factory rat was too much the "rugged individual" to go for stuff like company prayers, company songs, etc.

I just wonder about them. Individuality seems to be considered a personality defect over there...

[bhairava]

25. Many corps try here

Have you ever been at a Wal-Mart early in the morning on the days they have their satellite feed company "meetings"? I wandered in once and it was absolutely surreal with chanting movement (exercises?) and who knows what else, I got the hell out of there! And regarding Japan, a superficial conformity lies over a strangely heterogenous people. Your point is well taken but I have a personal interest in Japan's contradictory and sometimes hidden culture. One thing I've always noticed overseas is that while for instance Euro teenagers can seem quite conformist with their fashions or whatever, they are hardly so when it comes to thinking. We in the US are MUCH more likely to think similarly. I mean how many families have communists, socialists, centre-rights, and right wingers all vigorously represented. There are obviously a cultural effects to having systems with multiple parties and sometimes compulsory (in spirit if not in law) voting. In the US we often can hardly deal with people who look or live differently (see the crossburning threads) to even begin to deal with those who think differently. Hell, we don't seem value thinking period!

[chenGOD]

35. Because you don't know much about them?

Seriously, not to flame or anything like that, but that seems to be a pretty silly generalization to make. Individuality is no less common over there than it is in America or Canada.

[tom_paine]

21. Yes, Totalitarian Evil of the Managed Democracy variety

as put into play by Comrade Putin and Soulmate Bush*, is experiencing a surge and upswing.

I would expect this sort of thing to be everywhere soon, we would have trouble with it EVEN IF The Age of Totalitarianism wasn't likely to begin (The Age of Managed Democracy)

But add THAT in and...

[JohnLocke]

22. Kick

[JohnLocke]

24. Kick

[Minstrel Boy]

27. Here's a "Read-Only Dual Dipole Generic Plastic Tag,"

made by the good folks at Matrics.

"Matrics was founded in July 1999 by Dr. William Bandy and Michael Arneson. Bill and Mike had worked for decades as scientists at the National Security Agency (NSA) developing cutting-edge wireless computing technologies. Based in a quiet suburb of Washington DC, Matrics was created with a vision to revolutionize the logistics and supply chain processes by deploying breakthrough RFID systems."
http://www.matrics.com/about/

I'm sure the resemblance is merely coincidental.

[truthisfreedom]

30. interesting. they seem to operate in the cell phone frequency range, just

below a gigahertz.

[NorthernSpy]

33. whoa!

That's a mighty disturbing graphic. I really wonder what they were thinking when they chose it.


:freak:


Mary

[Solly Mack]

28. What? Are they getting lost and their parents aren't claiming them?

[US_Blues]

34. chips in people inevitable

It's interesting to see two RFID post going on at the same time, the word seems to be getting out. It's very critical that people know how close we are to having these chips implanted in people. I run a market research firm that examines RFID and other wireless technologies and see a decided lack of public discourse on the very rapid proliferations of tracking chips into all facets of life is very discouraging. I do see it as nearly inevitable given how easily people give up their personal marketing information for the most minute financial incentive.

[Coventina]

38. creepy

No way am I going to implant or carry a tracking device on my person.

I'll die first.

Seriously.

[JohnLocke]

41. Kick (nt).