Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070721/chipping-america/

Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern


TODD LEWAN | July 21, 2007 12:19 PM EST | AP

— CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself _ until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.

The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs _ radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick _ was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."

Innocuous? Maybe.

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention _ a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

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[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. It's much bigger then this.

It's chipping all farm animals and having to give notice when they are moved for any reason. this is really big brother watching. Do some research.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

3. And the small farmers are really upset because of the high cost of doing this. It's going to be

unaffordable for a great many of them.

[Nikki Stone1]

2. Remember the Ruby Ridge types? They were terrified of just this.

The fact that they came at it from the wrong side of the political spectrum (and that they sounded crazy at the time) made it stay below the radar.

I'll bet the next step after fingerprinting your children will be getting them chipped: for their own safety. Really, it will be a way to insure control over every individual.

[yella_dawg]

4. The latest RFIDs can be read over a mile away.

Put readers in cell towers, nobody has any privacy any more.

The makers are pushing these things like the world will end without them. Successfully, I might add. They've been implanted in Alzheimer's patients already.

This is the most Orwellian thing I've ever imagined, and it's real.

[Yael]

5. Orwellian indeed

The MSM makes headlines out of every missing blonde woman on the planet. Just boiling the frog for general acceptance. Add to this missing and exploited children, animals, the elderly walking off in the middle of the night and the sexual predators that left NOLA prisons in the wake of Katrina for parts unknown and you have a recipe for people to clamor for this.

I will go put my tin foil hat on now.