RFID - Privacy and the Police State

[lostnfound]

With RFID, police will be able to walk around a protest with a scanner in their backpack and quickly compile a list of names of people present; detectives could tell when your car entered and exited the highway or pulled into a grocery store parking lot.

A fascinating (Pacifica) radio program (Radio Frequency Identification) the other night discussed these tracking devices, as small as a grain of sand, which will be embedded in clothing, shoes, food packaging, books, etc. Tires and shoes are among the first products targeted for widespread RFID use.

RFID will allow tracking of person's movements and compilation of huge amounts of data about them, for use by marketing people, government, etc. through billions of less-than-a-penny passive RFID tags and a plethora of less-than-$20 scanners used for many different purposes.

http://www.nocards.org/AutoID/overview.shtml
"Some have suggested that pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with RFID devices to allow doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions. 33"

"people might balk at the thought of police using RFID to scan the contents of a car's trunk without needing to open it."

"The European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the fibers of Euro banknotes by 2005. 24 The tag would allow money to carry its own history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. 25"

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While searching I ran across an actual story of RFID being used at a "charter school" to record when students get to school in the morning. "In the next months, he plans to use RFID to track library loans, disciplinary records, cafeteria purchases and visits to the nurse's office. Eventually he'd like to expand the system to track students' punctuality (or lack thereof) for every class and to verify the time they get on and off school buses."

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Thoughts?

[alexwcovington]

1. Big Brother

The knee-jerk reaction, of course.

That they could tag everything and compile such data with little way to tell...

It would require the resisters to obtain this complex and expensive RFID scan equipment...possible to fight, at least. But we wouldn't have the upper hand.

[lostnfound]

6. Hypocrisy of the Repubs; and long-term vision for a better world?

As disturbed as they claimed to be over totalitarianism and communism, they are doing their best to create it, with corporate elite and religious fundamentalists in charge. It's amazing how similar communism and this style of capitalism end up becoming, when unfettered by what I will call 'participatory democracy'.

Or one of Gandhi's 7 deadly sins, 'politics without principle'.

What is the long term vision being displayed here? What is the world they are in the process of creating? It's a long, long way from where we started from..a long way from independence and freedom. And for WHAT? Ever-more-refined-marketing as a means to force-feed more products to consumers? And for control over consumer-itizens?

I suppose some day we can think about countermeasures..You know, it's not just privacy at stake; it's dignity. Marketers will be the bane of this century.

[ThorsteinVeblen]

2. A small but powerful magnetic "cleaner"

is going to be needed. Something that can destroy any RFID tag within, let's say a 40 foot radius. Or something that "cleans" your clothes, shoes, groceries, money, etc. everytime you get in your car or step into your home.

Once they outlaw this kind of privacy self-defense, only violent means for protecting your children and yourself will remain.

[TacticalPeek]

3. Countermeasures, a people's EMP device.

Also, make it unprofitable for commerce by spoofing, etc.

[RuB]

4. They'd be wondering if I ever! get out of this chair!

Very seldom. When told they had to follow me they'd ask their superiors, "Why, what did I do?"

[rusk2003]

5. That is Troubling

A few weeks ago I went to a Libray and checkd out a few books they ar euseing those radio chips. They had two machines at the door like those shoplifting devices stores have. So Iam not sure f that disarmed them or what But When I arrived home I inspected them they seem removable. Although I did not try since it was a Libray book. But I think money is already marked you know those serial numbers The governmnet can track those from bank to bank. So that is not something new.

The only soultion to the problem is to wrtie your elected Reps and join organzations that will fight for our privacy . Write compaines that are considering on useing this. It worked at Walmart and some other major retail store in London they decided they would only use those on shipments.