We knew they'd start chipping people some day...

[Prudence]

I frequently leave my cell phone at home. Or I have it, but I haven't looked at it in three weeks and the battery's been dead for 2.5 of those weeks. None of those devices are indispensable to me.

And no matter how short the range for the implanted chips is - they're still implanted chips. Implanted. In my body. If you want me to carry a special card or wear a special bracelet or don a silly hat or whatever, fine. Want to implant a chip for "ease", no thanks.

[Kevy Baby]

Could you imagine NA without a cell phone? I shudder at the thought.

[Not Afraid]

I wouldn't want a chip implanted in my body, but I'd be all for a cell phone. Now THAT would be useful for me.

[Betty]

Of course I'm not afraid of bar codes. Don't be silly!

But the idea that you have something trackable in your tires isn't much the point as how far it can be read and how many readers are around. Just in the store for tracking isn't as big of a deal as readers all over the place or ones that can read from long distances. I don't want the manufacturer of my tires, or anyone he sells that service to, to know where I when my car drives to. Or how fast the tires are going. Or anything else big brotherly like that.

It's not being paranoid. I just don't want to be the stupid frog.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Frog in the kettle.

Because I KNOW that I am not the only one who was not familiar with this phrase, I looked it up:

They say that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water,
it will leap out right away to escape the danger.

But, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant,
and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling,
the frog will not become aware of the threat until it is too late.
The frog's survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes.

This is a story that is used to illustrate how people might get themselves into terrible trouble.
This parable is often used to illustrate how humans have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in the environment, not just the sudden changes. Its a warning to keep us paying attention not just to obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones.

An example:
Let's say that every year, the local well had an inch less of water in it. A person might realize there's a problem if there's suddenly NO water, but a slowly dropping level might not be an obvious crisis until it's too late!

Here's the source.

And here's your sign.

[Morrigoon]

The issue is not with the concept of RFID itself, it's the concept of putting it in people's bodies and the idea that someday down the road, such a thing might become a government mandate. That someday you might be required to have something under your skin, in, say, your arm or forehead, that would be required in order to, say, hold down a job or buy food at the supermarket.

NO problem with RFID in my driver's license. No problem with RFID in my library card.

[Alex]

That's fine. Doesn't bother me but I agree that governmentally mandated implantation would be bad (not so much that it is unacceptable in private employment practice) and would generally oppose it.

I can't see why the idea of implantation itself is such a problem, as it doesn't bother me but that's a different issue from the "permanently tracked" one. Regardless of implantation we're already approaching permanently tracked status for people who have access to the right databases. And if implanted RFID doesn't come along we'll just slide towards other built in identification markers such as fingerprinting (which is what I was referencing earlier, we have a fingerprint scanner for access to our data center; if I don't submit to it I don't have my job), physiology (WDW's park entry machiens), retinal scanning, facial recognition, etc.

I don't much care if the RFID chip is in my arm or on my arm, but personally if offered the convenience I'm going to choose in.

[Morrigoon]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

There will come a time, in the name of safety for the children - after all, who can be against safety for the children? - that each newborn will be injected with an identity chip so that if they are lost or stolen they can be identified. Anyone who opposes something like that obviously doesn't care about children. A fine application of the technology, right? Why not make it easier for consumers, since we all have the chip from birth anyway, to link it to banking records for easy payment at retail establishments? Or medical records? Maybe every alzeimers patient should have one in case they wander away. Why not expand the range of said device so that it broadcasts the location of felons to law enforcement? That's a fine application of the technology....after all, it would only be used to locate felons. Seems like a great application for establishing citizenship as well.

From the article:

Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer’s patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens — until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged.

[scaeagles]

Hah! Funny. I didn't even read the article. It is a relatively obviously prediction, though. But interestingly, what good does it do for an Army Ranger if it is not possible to turn up the signal (or whatever one does) so that it is readable from orbit or from a drone aircraft? It would have to be able to be used for tracking.

I believe there is a small difference, though, Alex, between the retinal scanner or finger printing. These do not broadcast a signal and they are not easily tampered with or duplicated.

I'm sorry that I didn't post the meaning of the phrase "frog in the kettle", Kevy. I made an assumption that it was more common than it is.

One thing I'd like to point out is that I never made a value judgement as to whether this is good or bad. But each tiny step in the use of this tech will lead to more and more tiny steps, until it is as accepted as a social security number for identification (which was never, ever supposed to happen, and I believe it is even against the law, though I'm not certain).

[Alex]

I assume the purpose of the Army ranger chipping would be for purposes of body identification (internal dogtags) not tracking. For it to work with tracking the soldier would have to carry a larger unit on them that could communicate with the chip and then broadcast to a satallite. If you're going to do that, the chip is almost completely unnecessary as you can just track the sending unit.

They might call it something like GPS if they wanted a fancy military acronym. There is no way you'll get an RFID chip small enough for injection that can communicate over long distances. It would need a power source external to the body.

And retinal scans do involve the scanned thing broadcasting a signal, it is called light. I've played with retinal scanners that work over similar distances as RFID readers (though they are omnidirectional).

Personally I think you have more to fear from facial recognition and ubiquity of networked cameras than you do an RFID network dense enough to do the same thing. I'm not saying the frog won't die, just that it is already pretty much there and that there isn't much difference (except symbolic) between an RFID in your wallet and one in your arm.

We have handed over any claim to "secure privacy" not because of malignant overlords bent on misdeeds but because generally we all want the convenience that giving it up provides.

My exact location to within a couple hundred feed could be tracked at any point today by the dreaded omniscient Big Brother without any further advancement in technology. You're not wrong to predict it, but for most of us it is already here and it really isn't that big of a deal (to me, anyway). The alternative is to pay cash, carry at best a no-name phone, and get a job in a completely different field.

My day as tracked by Big Brother:

I woke up, I logged into gmail (creating an identity/IP match that can be tied to my apartment. Then I grabbed my cell phone no the way out the door and Lani drove me to the BART station creating a GPS trail that the cell company could divulge. Providing secondary confiramtion I used a BART ticket purchased with a credit card in my name to get into the Dublin/BART station and exit at the Macarthur Station. Then things would get fuzzy if it weren't for my phone but 22 minutes later I bought a fruit cup with credit card at Starbuck's and then used my RFID badge to enter my workplace (entry, though not exits, are tracked and stored) where I logged into my work computer and engaged in a level of activity indicating a steady presence throughout the day except for a 70 minutes pause where cell phone tracking and use of my gym membership badge indicate I visited the gym and returned immediately to work (tracked door entry). At 3 p.m. I apparently went to the bathroom because there was only a 5 minute pause in computer activity but I had another door entry (the restroom is in the common area). At 4 p.m. I entered the other secure part of the building and didnt return to my part until shortly after 5 p.m. I logged into a computer in the UE lab so I was probably there for a meeting.

Computer activity stopped at 5 p.m. and then at 5:20 I again used the same BART ticket to enter the BART station and exited at Dublin in a time that indicates no course deviation. From the Bayfair station I placed a call to Lani and her cell phone tracking indicates she picked me up at the BART station rather than me taking the bus from there like usual. GPS tracking of the Wheels bus system indicates this is probably because a 4 minute delay on BART would have caused me to miss the bus. At 6:30 I logged into gmail from a computer IP the same as in the morning. Intermittent computer activity suggest general puttering around and at about 8pm an episode of The Closer was ordered and watched from On Demand.